Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author & editor. Her books include the novels Magonia, Aerie, Queen of Kings, and the memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of this book was written. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho, and now lives in Brooklyn.
"So: I loved The Mere Wife and I bet lots of other people will too
. . . Everyone should read The Mere Wife. It's a wonderfully
unexpected dark/funny/lyrical/angry retelling of Beowulf; what's
not to like?" --Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey "Smart,
tough modern flip of Beowulf, told through Grendel's mother."
--Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale
"Fan-fucking-tastic . . . this book! Oh, this book! It's brutal and
beautiful and unflinching." --Justina Ireland, author of Feral
Youth "Headley's jabs at suburban smugness are fun . . . [and her]
prose can be stark, lacerating, insightful . . . The role reversals
Headley devises--and the way she adapts an ancient tale into a
21st-century struggle between haves and have-nots, brown-skinned
and white, damaged and intact--are largely effective." --Michael
Upchurch, The New York Times Book Review "The most surprising novel
I've read this year. It's a bloody parody of suburban sanctimony
and a feminist revision of macho heroism. In this brash
appropriation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Headley swoops from comedy
to tragedy, from the drama of brunch to the horrors of war." --Ron
Charles, The Washington Post "Spiky, arresting . . . The novel
plays ingeniously with its ancient source."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "A sly satire of suburbia,
wittily detailed and narratively bold . . . with its roots in
ancient legend [The Mere Wife] proves especially relevant in this
time of heightened fear of the Other." --Michael Berry, San
Francisco Chronicle "The lives of two protective mothers in
American suburbia collide in [this] fascinating contemporary
retelling of Beowulf." --Entertainment Weekly "Headley (whose own
translation [of Beowulf] comes out next year) brings the story of
the hero, the monster, and the monster's mother into contemporary
times with uncommon vigor and depth." --Boris Kachka, Vulture
"Headley's divergences and additions, descriptions of glittering
scenery and bloody battles, keep us entranced as those who once
gathered round the fire to hear of heroic deeds and shudder at the
monsters among us." --Kathleen Alcala, The Cascadia Subduction Zone
"The world needs this book . . . In Headley's hands, Beowulf is
revealed to be the perfect story to bring forward from the depths
of Western history. Headley has turned it over, poked its squishy
underbelly, asked it a bunch of questions, and come out with an
entirely new version of the tale, exploring new perspectives and
revealing truths new and old. It's also a great, heart-wrenching
read . . . If you enjoy battling monsters, I can't recommend this
book enough." --Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com "Maria Dahvana Headley's
new novel, The Mere Wife, is much more than a simple recasting of
the ancient epic poem Beowulf in the suburbs . . . Headley, who is
also working on a new translation of Beowulf, subverts the epic by
exploring its good-versus-evil battle from the perspective of women
who were largely left on the margins by the ancient bards."
--Jennifer Kay, The Associated Press "The Mere Wife is a book on
par with Lidia Yuknavitch's The Book of Joan: electric, feminist,
literary retellings of famous tales, but with dystopian spins. The
Mere Wife reimagines Beowulf by setting it in a suburban landscape
of intense economic disparity . . . Headley's language is exquisite
and imaginative, the contemporary adaptation on-point and thought
provoking--essentially, this is how to retell a classic." --Elena
Nicolaou, Refinery29 "Bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley
takes a significant gamble in recasting Old English epic Beowulf in
the American suburbs--but the gamble pays off. She enhances the
themes of the classic with contemporary and feminist accents,
creating a work that is both unique and worthy." --The Christian
Science Monitor, Best Books of July "[A] stunner: a darkly electric
reinterpretation of Beowulf that upends its Old English framework
to comment on the nature of heroes and how we 'other' those
different from ourselves... A strange tale told with sharp poetic
imagery and mythic fervor." --Booklist, starred review "There's not
a false note in this retelling, which does the Beowulf poet and his
spear-Danes proud." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Headley
(Magonia) applies the broad contours of the Beowulf story to her
tale but skillfully seeds her novel with reflections on anxieties
and neuroses that speak to the concerns of modern parenting."
--Publishers Weekly "The Mere Wife [is] an intense, visceral
reading experience. . . [the book is] a revisioning of Beowulf, and
Maria finds the bones, the sharp edges, the bleeding heart of that
story, and tells it against a modern context." --Kat Howard, author
of An Unkindness of Magicians "Maria Dahvana Headley is a gift, a
genius, and an absolute wonder; I would follow her anywhere."
--Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties "The
Mere Wife is a work of magic. A wild adventure; a celebration of
monsters, myths, and the power of mother-love. Imagine a writer so
bold, so ambitious, so about it that she challenges Beowulf to arm
wrestle. That writer is Maria Dahvana Headley and let me tell you
something, she is here to win." --Victor LaValle, author of The
Changeling "Maria Dahvana Headley translates the excesses of
contemporary life into the gloriously mythic. This is not just an
old story in new clothes: this is a consciousness-altering mind
trip of a book." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble "Maria
Dahvana Headley writes with crackling headlong sentences that range
among old plots and news observations about a world that earlier
today seemed too familiar. Master story teller, brilliant stylist,
a writer with this sort of command of language is a delight to
read. Here's a book to call up an old story in the newest possible
way." --Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Dark Reflections
"The Mere Wife is an astonishing reinterpretation of Beowulf:
Beowulf in suburbia--epic, operatic, and razor-sharp, a story not
of a thick-thewed thegn, but of women at war, as wives and
warriors, mothers and matriarchs. Their chosen weapons are as
likely to be swords as public relations, and they wield both
fearlessly. They rule, and they fight." --Nicola Griffith, author
of Hild "With a sharp eye and a deft flourish, Maria Dahvana
Headley reimagines one of our oldest stories to give us a chilling,
elemental vision of our latest selves. The Mere Wife is a bold,
stunning riptide of a book." --T�a Obreht, author of The Tiger's
Wife
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