The Mothering Coven by Joanna Ruocco
ISBN 978-0-9637536-2-5 | Fiction | 123 pages | $14
BEST OF 2009
Also available through Small Press Distribution or Amazon
Review on Goodreads.
Mapping a utopia on the brink, The Mothering Coven’s rare blend of charisma and pyrotechnic wordplay makes for an utterly original act of storytelling. Bertrand has disappeared from the house she shared with seven women-artists, scientists, and of course, witches. As the women plan a party for Mrs. Borage’s hundredth birthday, Bertrand’s absence threatens to dissolve the world they’ve created.
Praise for The Mothering Coven
Ruocco’s Coven is an engagingly whimsical tale, graceful and inventive, with its own distinctive lexicon, reminiscent of the works of such writers as Ronald Firbank or Coleman Dowell. It toys with language and knowledge somewhat like the emerald-eyed black cat in the book toys with a large bird. Batting it about
playfully. Coaxing something new out of it.—Robert Coover
Deliriously imagined, The Mothering Coven is a work of wonder. Joanna Ruocco arrives: marvelous, and fully sprung!
—Carole Maso
This book, ostensibly about a group of women missing one of their own, is delightfully strange, both in the way the plot progresses and the way Ruocco plays with language…
—Time Out New York, Best of 2009
About Joanna Ruocco
Joanna Ruocco lives in Providence, RI, where she coedits Birkensnake, a fiction journal. She has published stories in Marginalia, Quick Fiction, Tarpaulin Sky, No Colony, Webconjunctions, Caketrain, and elsewhere. Her short story collection, Man’s Companions, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press. The Mothering Coven is her first novel.
Read an excerpt.
