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A Novel
by Susann Cokal
Book Reviewed by:From the book jacket: In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model. When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.
Following her debut,
Mirabilis, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American
brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor
movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical sexual
stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops
across the American West.
Comment: Breath and Bones is bawdy romp in the style of (probably more accurately described as satirizing) a classic
"bodice-ripper" (complete with a heroine with "flaming red hair," "sapphire
eyes," and "ruby lips"), and is great fun, so long as you don't make the mistake
of taking it too seriously! As Publishers Weekly puts it, "This
labyrinthine, literary bodice-ripper may titillate readers willing to follow the
improbable plot twists and turns", while Booklist describe it as "interesting
without being completely absorbing."
Depending on your preferences you're
likely to either think Breath and Bones is great, or a total waste of
time (other than a few chapters in the middle where things lagged a little, I
lean towards the former opinion). As always, you can decide for yourself, by reading a
substantial excerpt exclusive to BookBrowse.
Incidentally, the use of "electrical sexual stimulation" as a medical treatment
is well recorded right up to the 1920s - but I can find no record of it being
used as a treatment for consumption - only as a treatment for "hysteria" in
women.
This review
first ran in the May 3, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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