The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold
5/5
()
About this ebook
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is a lavishly poetic novel that draws upon the motifs of traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore and fairy stories to recount the visionary obsessions of a passionate young woman. The narrative moves freely through time and space, uniting Ketzia Gold's early childhood with her sexual awakenings, creating a dreamscape of haunting vividness. Marked by a logical illogic and disarmingly sane madness, this haunting and innovative fable creates an emotional landscape that's as impossible to escape as it is for young Ketzia to inhabit. Kate Bernheimer interweaves hypnotic imagery and everyday life, moving back and forth through time, piecing together the fragments of memory and imagination with an obsessive lyricism that recalls the poetic fictions of Carol Maso. Bernheimer's story is a rich tapestry, patterned with childhood longings and the luxuriant complexity of womanhood.
Kate Bernheimer
Kate Bernheimer has been called “one of the living masters of the fairy tale” (Tin House). She is the author of a novel trilogy and the story collections Horse, Flower, Bird and How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, and the editor of four anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award winning and bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and xo Orpheus: 50 New Myths. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she teaches fairy tales and creative writing.
Read more from Kate Bernheimer
How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales: and Other Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Horse, Flower, Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Office at Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Review: The Red Issue #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold
Related ebooks
Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orchid Fallen: A Collection of Heartfelt Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaudade Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Night Burial Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fairy Tale Review: The Blue Issue #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Deep Zoo: Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrecordial Thump Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Looking: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sum of Her Parts: Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pajamaist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Only Bread, Only Light: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Abracadabra, Sunshine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHigh Water Mark: Prose Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Witch Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fountainville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSadly Beautiful Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCoachella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Curses, Inc. and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baby Be-Bop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bang Ditto Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Search Party: Collected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flourish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDreaming Frankenstein: & Collected Poems, 1967–1984 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Kisses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto for Better, Braver Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
General Fiction For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold - Kate Bernheimer
Ashbery
chapter one
The Saltmarsh Tale of Lies
I want to tell you something, so listen. I saw two bathers flying. They flew with their breasts turned heavenward and their backs faced hellward. The first wore a striped bikini, the second a plain pair of trunks. Once I saw a bird in a shake at the boardwalk's fancy ice-cream stand, and then an anchor and some dune grass swam across the bay just as gracefully as you please. The anchor was surprising but dune grass is more lovely. Four girls in eyeglasses tried to catch a rabbit that lived in the mansion lawn. The first girl was sad, the second girl was afraid, the third girl was insecure and the fourth girl was just plain mean. Do you want to know what happened? The first saw the animal and tearfully told the second, who ran away to tell the third, who tried in vain to catch the rabbit. Shut up if you don't believe me. This is all in the country by the sea where a lobster chased me to a field of windflowers enclosed by a wall. Inside I saw a cow, who had gotten there by leaping. There are greenflies and black-flies and dragonflies there. So open the window and let the lies out, I say.
chapter two
Brown paneling and a low ceiling trapped darkness here. The bedroom's only window faced a dead-end street, lined with oaks and maples. The Golds had filled this unremarkable nursery with several fine items for their young girls: the wood rocker with scratchy red upholstery; the white crib painted with dancing elephants and monkeys; and the stiff fur plaything, a seal on wheels, larger than Ketzia at this age, that sat in the middle of the room, waiting to carry her through toddling days. It presided over a kidney-shaped brown shag rug.
Meredith—or, as the family called her, Merry—Ketzia's older sister, lay on her back on a small cot next to the crib. Above Merry's bed hung a monkey, suspended from the ceiling by a spring attached to its head. The monkey sprung toward the ceiling and down again as Merry kicked the bottom of its feet with the bottom of her own. Monkee-kee, Monkee-kee,
Merry said. My Monkee.
It had a rather sickly smile, giant ears and denim jeans.
Ketzia lay in the crib on her stomach, arms twisted, hands palm-down by her sides. Pressing a cheek into the pale pink blanket that would later be known as Sniffy
due to an unfortunate accident
with Mrs Gold's bottle of expensive perfume, Ketzia launched two green eyes about the room, noted the orange sheer curtains and the light coming through them—tossing shadows of suburban leaves on the wall—and perhaps, though we can't be certain, the stolid gaze of her sister Merry who looked away at once upon meeting Ketzia's eyes.
chapter three
The Star Pennies
I'm going to tell you something. for a long time I was so poor that I only had one room to live in with a small cot to sleep on. This room was on the road of oracles. You could hear the cars go by through the thin motel door. I did have some real things in storage at my parents' house—a brass bed, an automatic drip coffee maker, a woolen pea coat—but I was too old to go home. And my husband and I were no longer together.
I was tired a lot of the time. I was in a warm place that on the map was always orange, sometimes lined in red. This is on the television, and in the paper. I spent my days walking the desert under the hot sun in a cowboy hat Adam had bought me downtown in another state. We saw the swans that day, and a pigeon ate peanuts off Adam's shoulder while I screeched with fake terror, nearby.
I managed to keep myself fed. I was too proud to ask Adam for money. Money should not pass hands that way, though one must give it to strangers. My parents had lent me so much over the years I was finally too embarrassed to ask them for more. I had learned my lesson well.
I walked down a hot, six-laned speedway every blazing morning to a shop where two teenage boys gave me a plastic bag full of bagels. They did not sell all the bagels every day, they said. We have yesterday's bagels for you,
they said. The boys wore shirts of many colors with bursts of white naked fabric throughout the colors.
Pumpernickel, garlic, sesame, raisin, a wondrous kind called everything.
I'd walk west on the speedway, past the road of oracles to a red-rocked hilly place called the monument. Then I wandered up and down dried-out riverbeds. Thorny plants were all about and when the sun set and snakes came out onto the thin-shaded sand, I'd walk east to the road of oracles and leave the desert behind.
Back at the motel I would pass by the office and lower my chin in a kind of greeting. I entered my small motel room through a door that was never locked and felt as though made of cardboard. The manager had given me a cheap monthly rate. He knew I got my money selling plasma. He mostly let rooms by the hour and had a place for me.
As part payment the manager could see me through a glass window that was shady and grey, though I could only see myself. Inside, everything was dark and seemed like a photograph negative.
Each evening I would strip and wash my body head to foot with soap the manager, with his biker's t-shirt and beautiful hair, left on the sink for me daily. This soap was wrapped in white paper and you could smell the soap through the paper when you entered the room from the road. I would hang my brown dress—so delicately flecked with tiny pink roses—in the bathroom, so the steam could straighten all the small wrinkles. I'd pull my hair back into a tight, wet ponytail and face the mirror, dimming my expression and shrinking into my body. Then, I would lie on the bed in my pale slip and let hot tears burn lines on my cheeks. But only for a moment.
Taking a deep breath, I would try to imagine an erotic scene that might save me. I'd stretch my body out so my hands brushed the pressboard wall and my feet dangled in the hot desert air. Lying flat, I would wait for someone to come. I barely slept that entire year, there was so much to hear inside my head, and out. Inside was the waiting game. Outside, coyotes sang. At first I thought I was hearing a gang of weeping children come to cover the earth. Soon their howls sent words and I knew what they