The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780156027397)

Donoghue finds her inspiration for these wry, robust tales in obscure scraps of historical records: an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits; a plague ballad; surgical case notes; theological pamphlets; an articulated skeleton. Here kings, surgeons, soldiers, and ladies of leisure rub shoulders with cross-dressers, cult leaders, poisoners, and arsonists.

Whether she's spinning the tale of an Irish soldier tricked into marrying a dowdy spinster, a Victorian surgeon's attempts to "improve" women, a seventeenth-century countess who ran away to Italy disguised as a man, or an "undead" murderess returning for the maid she left behind to be executed in her place, Emma Donoghue brings to her stories an "elegant, colorful prose filled with unforgettable sights, sounds and smells" (Elle). Here she summons the ghosts of those women who counted for nothing in their own day, but who come to unforgettable life in fiction.


Author: Emma Donoghue
ISBN-10: 0156027399
ISBN-13: 9780156027397
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2003
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 8.54h x 5.63w x 0.66d