Overview

A SMALL-TOWN FABLE OF TRANSFORMATION, MYSTERY, AND UNRULY MAGIC A warm, offbeat comic novel about a small Indiana town upended by a would-be kidnapper, an aspiring witch, a Hungarian herbalist, and a tangle of misunderstanding that somehow leads to love and reconciliation. ""Exuberant...the book's most enduring spell is the one the author herself has cast."" Chicago Tribune ""Wonderfully benign and satisfying...as appreciative and good-natured...as one of Shakespeare's merrier comedies - the ones in which the irrational acquire some common sense and the rationalists learn to have a jolly time."" Washington Post The New Yorker called Elizabeth Arthur's first novel, Beyond the Mountain, ""stunning...stark and subtle"" and described her second, Bad Guys, as ""inspired tragicomedy."" But Arthur's previous books all unfolded in wild landscapes where survival and self-discovery were inextricably linked. In Binding Spell, Arthur gives us a comedy set in the American heartland which follows a motley cast of dreamers, eccentrics, and seekers of transformation who, in a world fraught with real and imagined danger, find a way to live happily ever after. Howell Bourne believes an international banking conspiracy is causing American farms to fail, and when two professors from Russia visit the nearby college in Felicity, Indiana, he thinks God has encouraged him to kidnap them. His sister Bailey, an aspiring witch, and Maggie Esterhaczy, a psychologist obsessed with the threat of nuclear catastrophe, are two of the characters who get swept up in the ensuing events. Also drawn into the turmoil are Ryland Guthrie, a hypochondriacal furniture-store owner; his brother Peale, Felicity's newly elected sheriff; and Ada Esterhaczy, an 86-year-old Hungarian herbalist who is fiercely determined to see her granddaughter Maggie pregnant. And of course, there are the dogs - perhaps the wisest souls in Felicity. As a spring tornado bears down on Felicity, what begins in absurdity becomes something unexpectedly luminous and wise - a wildly funny tale of small-town upheaval and a meditation on connection, structured like a spell itself. Publishers Weekly calls Binding Spell ""an offbeat, modern fairy tale"" while Booklist says ""A warm, disarming novel...With great good humor and compassion for people's foibles, Arthur delicately constructs a sunny, near-magical tale of love and reconciliation."" With a Foreword by Elizabeth Arthur's husband, Steven Bauer.

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9781969498497

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Reviews

""A Midwestern Midsummer Night's Dream."" Kirkus, July 1, 1988 ""Like an offbeat, modern fairy tale..(a) funny and moving story. After a wonderful climax during which a tornado wrecks havoc in Felicity, the characters variously achieve passion, happiness, and balance....Arthur's latest offering (after Bad Guys and Beyond the Mountain) also boasts the best collection of dogs in recent literature."" Publisher's Weekly, July 15, 1988 ""Binding Spell is a wonderfully benign and satisfying novel. It's leisurely, amused tone belies its tight construction, which is patterned on steps in the casting of a spell. If the central premise of witchcraft is the connectedness of all energy, that is also the organizing principle of this novel. . . As appreciative and good-natured in its fashion as one of Shakespeare's merrier comedies - the ones in which the irrational acquire some common sense and the rationalists learn to have a jolly time."" Frances Taliaferro, The Washington Post Book World, Aug. 28, 1988 ""A very funny and exceedingly well-crafted comic novel... Elizabeth Arthur asks what life would be like if it were true that our wishing for happiness - our working for it - negated misery and brought contentment into existence. Life would be, as Arthur demonstrates, wonderful, unpredictable, and above all, funny. But in Binding Spell it is not enough to wish for change. First, one must understand the world as it truly is, a living organism, on which everything is linked, so that ""everything is all one thing."" Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Chicago Sun-Times, August 28, 1988 ""The title of this exuberant new novel refers to a technique in witchcraft that prevents someone who threatens the safety of others from carrying out the act...In truth, the book's most enduring spell is the one the author herself has cast, wrapping sage reflections on human foibles and capabilities, lost dreams, and new possibilities, in a mantle of buoyancy and wit."" Michael Bandler, Chicago Tribune August 21, 1988 ""A sunny, near-magical tale of love and reconciliation."" Booklist, Sept. 1, 1988 ""What's hard to capture in brief quotes is the essential sweetness of the book, its deep faith in human nature and our ability to live in harmony with one another. . . a novel of both charm and substance."" Wendy Smith, Newsday, Sept. 4, 1988

Author Information

Elizabeth Arthur is the author of five literary novels (Beyond the Mountain, Bad Guys, Binding Spell, Antarctic Navigation, and Bring Deeps) and two memoirs (Island Sojourn and Looking for the Klondike Stone.) Her books have been published by Harper and Row, Doubleday, Knopf, and Bloomsbury U.K. She has received fellowships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Vermont Council on the Arts, the Ossabaw Island Project, and the Indiana Arts Commission. She twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and was the first novelist ever given an Antarctic Artists and Writers Operational Support Grant from the National Science Foundation. Her novel Antarctic Navigation was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book. She is the co-author, with her husband Steven Bauer, of the 26 mystery/adventure novels in the New Three Investigators series (2025-2027.) Steven Bauer is the author of three books for young people, the young adult fantasy Satyrday, the middle grade novel A Cat of a Different Color, and The Strange and Wonderful Tale of Robert McDoodle, a picture book in verse. Bauer's writing has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He has also been given grants and awards from Prairie Schooner, the Ossabaw Island Project, the Massachusetts Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He is the co-author, with his wife Elizabeth Arthur, of the 26 mystery/adventure novels in the New Three Investigators series (2025-2027.)

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