Fear - A Novel

Zusatztext "Anna haunts us! moves us! and convinces us."  - Los Angeles TImes " Fear ...is a unique construction of time! place! and circumstance."  - Time Out New York "A beautiful and moving book! tenderly understanding in its depiction of a sensitive! intelligent girl's coming-of-age."  - The Washington Post Book World Informationen zum Autor Irini Spanidou lives in New York City. Klappentext Irini Spanidou's highly praised first novel, God's Snake , introduced a writer of rare perception and a character, Anna Karystinou, with whom readers fell in love. In Fear , the author returns to Anna as she comes of age. It is now 1959, and thirteen-year old Anna is a perpetual newcomer, moving from place to place with her family. Her father, a demanding army colonel, has raised her to be invulnerable and proud. But Anna's confident air belies her anxiety as she grapples with her burgeoning sexuality, and begins an uneasy friendship with the smug and challenging Veronica Koroneou. When Anna learns that a serial killer is preying on young women nearby, she is lured toward the sourch of her terror. From a unique and brutally honest angle, Fear is an unflinching protrait of a girl's difficult transition into womanhood. Leseprobe They called them "Saint John's fires," but they were of the ancient gods--a summer solstice ritual as close to myth and magic, and as old, as the cult of Demeter. Men, women, and children--little ones in their parents' arms--jumped through the flames, and as they jumped, they chanted, "I'm done with the bad; I'm new with the good." This was done three times. The first jump was one's strength, the second jump was one's courage, and the third jump was the jump that counted, for the third jump was one's luck. And while everyone else jumped, a young girl chosen by lot was sent to fetch spring water. She carried her pitcher to the fountain, then back home, and if perchance she met someone on the road, she kept silent and uttered no greeting or other word. For this was the "Unspoken Water." And when she got home, the girls who had jumped through the fire would be waiting for her, and they would throw their rings in the pitcher, and make a circle around her, and begin to sing. And she, who had been forbidden to jump through the fire--she, now forbidden to sing--would dip her hand in the pitcher and bring out a ring; and the words being sung the moment the ring passed the pitcher's rim would tell the owner's fortune. But for the girl holding the Unspoken Water, fate could not be foretold. Two Days in June She had just turned thirteen. Her name was Anna Karystinou and she was the daughter of an army colonel. On the evening this story begins, she was wearing a dress she had long outgrown. It was faded and frayed, fit her tightly at the bodice, squashing her breasts, and rode up her waist, drooping unevenly above her knees. She looked much older than her age, and the childish dress--with its puffed sleeves, round collar, and a belt that tied in a bow at the back--lent her an affronting innocence. It was Saint John's Eve, June 1959. All day, this day of the solstice, there had been no sun. Now, with nightfall coming on, the sky was low, the color of charred steel. There was no wind. The bonfire in the middle of the street heaved upward with a steady, lapping quiver. A group of neighborhood children stood huddled nearby, waiting for the flames to become low enough to skim. Anna stood apart at some distance. She had tried to meet the other children's eyes but had been shunned, and now, standing with legs slightly apart, a stiff back and arms straight at the sides like a sentry, she was staring steadfastly at the flames. It was the moment in twilight when there are no shadows on the ground. For a while, the fire seemed to exist as in a dream, a shadowless light of solitude. B...

Product details

• Authors: Irini Spanidou
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.06.2000
• EAN: 9780679730484
• ISBN: 978-0-679-73048-4
• No. of pages: 192
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 13 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature