Blue Beyond Blue Paperback by Lauren Slater

Product Details

• Publisher: WW Norton (2006-08-08)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 224 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780393328585
• Item Weight: 204.12 grams
• Dimensions: 20.93 x 13.97 x 1.42 cm

An exploration of contemporary family dynamics, moral conundrums, and romantic love through one of our oldest literary forms the fairy tale. "Inspired and barbed, Slater's fairy tales are irresistible." --Donna Seaman, Booklist

Mermaids, seal women, little girls born of eggs, old men born of prematurely aged parents, and other strange creatures populate award-winning author Lauren Slater's stories of magic, psychology, pain, and release. Slater depicts the modern-day psycho-pharmaceutical industry and our ongoing obsession with chemically synthetic solutions, the staleness and surprises embedded in married erotic love, the conflicts in the mother-daughter bond, the universal struggle with dependency and addiction, and more. In addition, she explicitly and implicitly explores the value that fairy tales and fables still have in our culture as tools of healing and illumination.

"World-weary grown-ups will find Slater's tales delightfully wry" (Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday Globe) as she successfully combines her skills as a storyteller and her profound knowledge of psychology to create a bizarre world that is also hauntingly familiar. Daring and absurd, poignant and disturbing, these stories are beautifully written and will enchant and edify adult readers forever after.

About the Author

Lauren Slater is the author of five books of nonfiction and two memoirs, as well as a collection of short stories. She has received numerous awards, including a 2004 National Endowment for the Arts award, multiple inclusions in Best American volumes, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.