Tender Morsels

Starred review from September 8, 2008
In her extraordinary and often dark first novel, award-winning story writer Lanagan (Red Spikes
) creates two worlds: the first a preindustrial village that might have sprung from a Brueghel canvas, a place of victims and victimizers; the second a personal heaven granted to Liga Longfield, who has survived her father's molestations and a gang rape but, with one baby and pregnant again, cannot risk any further pain. As she raises her two daughters, placid Branza and fiery Urdda, she discovers that her universe is permeable: a dwarf or “littlee man,” in Lanagan's characteristically knotted parlance, slips in and out of her world in search of treasure; and a good-hearted youth also enters, magically transformed into a bear in the process. A less kind man-bear follows, and then a teenage Urdda, avid for a richer life with the “vivid people,” figures out how to pass through the border, too. Writing in thick, clotted prose that holds the reader to a slow pace, Lanagan explores the savage and the gentlest sides of human nature, and how they coexist. With suggestions of bestiality and sodomy, the novel demands maturity—but the challenging text will attract only an ambitious audience anyway. Ages 14–up.

Starred review from November 1, 2008
Gr 9 Up-A traumatized teen mother magically escapes to her own personal heaven in this daring and deeply moving fantasy. The characters, setting, much of the action, and even the very words of the title are taken from the Grimm Brothers' "Snow-White and Rose-Red," a sweet story of contrasting sisters who live deep in the forest and whose innocent hearts are filled with compassion for a lonely bear and an endangered dwarf. In the novel, Liga's daughtersone born of incest, the other of gang rapefirst flourish in Liga's safe world. But encounters with magical bears and the crusty dwarf challenge them to see a world beyond their mother's secure dreamscape. Eventually the younger one, Urdda, and subsequently her sister and Liga are drawn back into the real world in which cruelty, hurt, and prejudice abound. But it is also only there that they can experience the range of human emotion, develop deep relationships, and discover who they truly are. The opening chapters vividly portray the emotional experience of a boy's first sexual encounter, mind-numbing abuse by Liga's father, and a violent gang rape. It's heavy fare even for sophisticated readers, but the author hits all the right notes, giving voice to both the joys and terrors that sexual experience can bestow without saying more than readers need to know to be fully with the characters. While the story explores what it means to be human, it is at its heart an incisive exploration of the uses and limitations of dissociation as a coping mechanism. Beautifully written and surprising, this is a novel not to be missed."Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 9, 2008
This book opens with a teenage girl miscarrying a child. Liga lives with her sexually abusive father in a small cabin set apart from their poor village. When he dies, she is left alone to care for their newborn baby. A group of boys takes advantage of her isolation, and, pregnant again, Liga attempts to kill herself and the baby. Instead, magic takes her to a place where she can safely raise her daughters, Branza and Urdda, apart from the cruelty of the world. Safety comes with a cost, and sometimes the skin protecting Liga's realm is thin enough to let people through-first a greedy dwarf and then one magical man-bear followed by another. When the girls return from their self-imposed isolation, they must learn to love and understand the people of their village, with all of their flaws. Why It Is a Best: The author's two short story collections, Black Juice (2005) and Red Spikes (2007), focused on the beauty and cruelty of human nature. Here, she takes the same theme and reinterprets the Brothers Grimm story "Snow-White and Rose-Red" with stunning linguistic precision. Why It Is for Us: The book's chilling scenes of sexual violence contrast with the healing power of womanly sisterhood-familiar stuff for fans of Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison-whereas its magical realism is reminiscent of Isabel Allende. Employing multiple viewpoints, Lanagan's writing withstands these comparisons and more.-Angelina Benedetti, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2008
After a horrific upbringing, 15-year-old Liga and her two daughters are magicked away into another world, which differs in one crucial aspect: it is utterly safe and free from surprise. In time, though, the old world intrudes upon their quiet heaven, and Liga and her daughters must face a painful reunion with reality. At its essence, this is a story about good and evil, not at all unusual for a fantasy, but there isnt a single usual thing in the way that Lanagan (who won a 2006 Printz Honor for Black Juice) goes about it. As in Red Spikes (2007), Lanagan touches on nightmarish adult themes, including multiple rape scenarios andborderline human-animal sexual interactions, whichreserve this for the most mature readers. She employs a preternatural command of language, twisting it into archaic and convoluted styles that release into passages of absolute, startling clarity. Drawing alternate worlds that blur the line between wonder and horror, and characters who traverse the nature of human and beast, this challenging, unforgettable work explores the ramifications of denying the most essential and often savage aspects of life. It isnt easy, but this book is nevertheless a marvel to read and will only further solidify Lanagans place at the very razors edge of YA speculative fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2009
After escaping from horrifyingly abusive circumstances, Liga raises her daughters, Branza and Urdda, in a parallel world without aggression or fear. When strangers pique Urdda's curiosity, she finds her way to the real world, rupturing Liga's haven. Earthy folk dialect tethers the fantasy even as the lyrical narrative and mythic imagery intensify its fairy-tale atmosphere. A story of extraordinary depth and beauty.

(Copyright 2009 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from September 1, 2008
Raped repeatedly by her father and, after his death, brutally gang-raped by village youths, fifteen-year-old Liga determines to kill herself and her baby. Instead of dying, the two enter a parallel world; a place without aggression, fear, or pain. There Liga raises her two daughters, Branza and Urdda. As the girls grow, strangers visit Liga's heaven -- a "stumpety" little man intent on magical riches; two bear-men who have wandered in from Liga's former village's seasonal fertility festival. They pique young Urdda's curiosity, and she finds her way back to the real world. Her discovery ruptures Liga's safe but stagnant heaven forever but results in a fuller life for all three women. Lanagan's poetic style and her masterful employment of mythic imagery give this story of transformation and healing extraordinary depth and beauty. The characters' earthy folk dialect tethers Lanagan's fantasy firmly to very real physical and psychic experience even as the lyrical narrative voice ("Morning came, sweet as new milk spilling up the sky, all dew and birdsong and bee-buzz") intensifies its fairy-tale atmosphere. At the same time, Lanagan offers up difficult truths -- and complicated, human characters -- that are as sobering as they are triumphant.

(Copyright 2008 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)