Overview

From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre - author of the celebrated Governesses - come three bewitching, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales. 'To make a pact with the thing that threatens you is arguably the smartest trick of all.' 'The Fool' may have stepped out of a tarot pack - to walk a mountain trail or worm his way into a writer's mind. 'The Narrator' proposes his mirror image, a storyteller in sheep's clothing, who has a bone to pick with language. In 'The Wishing Table', the orgiastic antics of an incestuous family are recounted by one of three daughters. A dream logic rules each of these unpredictable, sensual and surreal stories: romps no doubt, yet deeply moral, and entirely unforgettable ones.

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9781838014155

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Reviews

'I love the way Anne Serre's mind works, and her slyly seductive approach to narrative.' -Adam Mars-Jones; 'With its psychological reality infused with fabulism, Serre's fiction seems to have invented its own genre of literature. The Fool and Other Moral Tales is an impeccable collection.'-Ankita Chakraborty, New York Times; 'From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.'-Three Percent; 'Drawing on fairy tales and psychoanalysis, pornography and poststructuralism, Serre constructs stunning and searing stories. Dreamy and deeply sexual.'-Publishers Weekly; 'Three wild novellas - each of these stories plumbs the depths of desire, morality, and our willingness to go on an unpredictable ride.'-Katie Yee, LitHub; 'Serre's collection speaks bravely, poignantly and perversely to the hazards of alienation - from one's self, from those around you - while also illuminating the blessings and curses, the gifts and sacrifices, of being called to dwell in the gauzy world of stories.' -John Biscello, Riot Material; Praise for The Governesses; 'Genuinely original - and, often, very quietly so. Seriously weird and seriously excellent...call it the anglerfish of literature.'-Parul Sehgal, The New York Times; 'Anne Serre's style is perfectly controlled. Colorful, by turns elegant and violent, it provokes that enchantment borne out of an unbridled imagination.'-Marie Claire; 'Hypnotic, enchanting.'-Publishers Weekly; 'Serre's language is tight and fabulist, a slim and sensuous fairy tale that reads like something born from an orgy between Charles Perrault, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter.'-Full Stop

'I love the way Anne Serre's mind works, and her slyly seductive approach to narrative.' - Adam Mars-Jones ‘I read Anne Serre’s The Fool and Other Moral Tales two years ago, during a hard time. Reading it again, I am startled by the force and splendor of her descriptions of cruelty and compassion in families, friendships, sexual entanglements, art, poetry, tarot, and everything in between.’ — Merve Emre, on Twitter 'With its psychological reality infused with fabulism, Serre's fiction seems to have invented its own genre of literature. The Fool and Other Moral Tales is an impeccable collection.'-Ankita Chakraborty, New York Times; 'From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.'-Three Percent; 'Drawing on fairy tales and psychoanalysis, pornography and poststructuralism, Serre constructs stunning and searing stories. Dreamy and deeply sexual.'- Publishers Weekly; 'Three wild novellas - each of these stories plumbs the depths of desire, morality, and our willingness to go on an unpredictable ride.'- Katie Yee, LitHub; 'Serre's collection speaks bravely, poignantly and perversely to the hazards of alienation - from one's self, from those around you - while also illuminating the blessings and curses, the gifts and sacrifices, of being called to dwell in the gauzy world of stories.' - John Biscello, Riot Material  Praise for The Governesses: 'Genuinely original - and, often, very quietly so. Seriously weird and seriously excellent...call it the anglerfish of literature.'-Parul Sehgal, The New York Times;  'Hypnotic, enchanting.'- Publishers Weekly; 'Serre's language is tight and fabulist, a slim and sensuous fairy tale that reads like something born from an orgy between Charles Perrault, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter.'- Full Stop; 'Anne Serre's style is perfectly controlled. Colorful, by turns elegant and violent, it provokes that enchantment borne out of an unbridled imagination.'-Marie Claire (France)

Author Information

Anne Serre is the author of fourteen books, as well as numerous short stories and essays, and the recipient of a 2008 Cino del Duca Foundation award. Her first novel Les Gouvernantes was praised in La Croix for 'its remarkable economy of style and in Liberation as 'a delightful Sabbath'. From its publication in 1992, till 2000, she worked under a pseudonym as book editor of a leading magazine for women. Serre won the 2020 Goncourt short story prize for her collection Au coeur d'un été tout en or.

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