Customer Reviews

Breath and Bones

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In Denmark in the late 1880's, Famke Summerfugl finds comfort in the arms of her English artist/lover, Albert Castle, posing for him in a shabby garret, transported by his adoration of her youthful charms. Born in Denmark, Famke is left as an infant at the Orphanage of the Immaculate Heart, an early victim of the consumptive lungs that plague the orphans in that cold climate. The child is favored by Sister Birgit, who is in thrall of the flame-haired child from the start. In her eagerness to feed, baby Famke bites off the glass top of her bottle, tiny shards of glass cutting her tender lips. Sister Birgit delicately removes each sliver, forging a bond with the child that will never be broken.

A curious and feminine girl, Famke's precocious nature unsettles the sisters of the convent and they are happy to release her to work as a maid and goose girl. But Famke isn't meant for such a life and when she meets an artist, Albert Castle, she enthusiastically joins him as his model and lover. When Albert finishes his larger-than-life painting of the idealized beauty, he leaves for England, then later on to America. Waiting for Albert's return, Famke falls on hard times. When the opportunity arises, she follows Albert to America. So begins a long and desperate search that takes her to Utah, Colorado, the New Mexico Territories, Hygeia Springs, California and finally, to San Francisco.

Famke follows Albert's trail, always but a few steps behind, steadfast in her purpose. As the tale unravels, Famke is at the center of it all, suspected of cohesion with the infamous "Dynamite Gang", pursued by the Mormon man she marries, Heber Goodhouse, one of his plural wives, an enterprising yellow-journalist and a young man from her past at the orphanage, Viggo, a mortician's apprentice, who has been sent by Sister Birgit. Little does our heroine know that she is the object of all these searches, intent as she is on her own desperate quest.

Only seventeen-years old, a wiser woman would be overwhelmed, but Famke is single-minded, bravely navigating uncharted territory in pursuit of her youthful fancy. Like a chameleon, she adapts to place and circumstance, but soon realizes the advantages of men, rather than an unprotected woman. Famke's drama unfolds as she travels America, leaving behind men who are obsessed with her, prostitutes who remember her in male disguise as Albert Castle's brother or the mysterious woman with the terrible cough of the tubercular, the bright red drops that spill from her fevered lips. The illness is part of the woman's unique attraction, emphasizing her delicate beauty, the contrast of white skin, fevered cheeks and titian tresses.

Cokal has done a masterful job of blending the threads of Famke's life and love for Albert into an impressive canvas that covers the continents, from Denmark to the barren deserts of Utah and the pristine wilderness of the West, as it is eagerly subsumed by the advances of industry. The characters have not caught up to industrialization, mired in the past, save Famke, their Victorian morals grounded in the last century; Famke draws this disparate group in her wake. The ending is a shocking conflagration of misspent emotions, misguided intentions and the final fury of unrequited passion. The age of invention meets the Wild West in this outstanding Victorian drama. Luan Gaines/2005.

From its stunning prologue to the disturbing, shattering beauty of its finale, Breath and Bones gets under your skin. This sexy, exuberant picaresque takes you and its heroine on a fast-paced ride from Copenhagen to San Francisco via the wild west of the late nineteenth century, but each place it takes you is so immediate and vividly rendered it stays with you long after you close the book. Cokal's originality, humor, and extraordinary ear for language purge historical fiction of its fustiness and bring it to life.

Susanna Cokal introduces us to Famke, a poor Danish orphan with Tuberculosis whose sex appeal gets her in trouble with the nuns and in bed with the rest of the orphanage, a painter, a polygamist morman & an early model vibrator, all while a multitude of others pursue what's under her skirts across the Atlantic and the American West in the late 1800s. Cokal's debut novel "Miribilis" was darkly sexual & intriguing - she clearly has the imagination and skill to deliver tantalizing stories! But in comparison, "Breath and Bones" disappoints.

Famke searches for Albert, a narcissistic mediocre painter with whom she believes herself to be in love, throughout the story. Her quest takes her across the Atlantic and the United States, into a polygamist family, and in and out of numerous brothels in the west. Famke's story lacks bits of reality needed to keep this reader truly interested. Though she is a young woman who apparantly oozes sex and is traveling alone, she encounters no violence. She is blissfully ignorant and blind to obvious coercion, and appears to be an accomplice to her own "captivity" at times. Further, she is wildly successful posing as a man and a painter though she is neither and descriptions of her physical appearance and artistic abilities lead one to wonder how she could have pulled off either ruse. Her luck and ability to land on her feet, which I suppose may amuse some, seemed too contrived.

Stories of such a physical journey during the early years of a young woman's life often parallel an internal journey to finding a sense of self, self respect, etc. Famke's character, however, remains nearly one-dimensional. She is stubborn about her health to the point of her near death. She misses out on opportunities for true affection to pursue a narcissist who never respected her. She does not use her voice to defend herself at any opportunity. Famke is hell-bent on believing her limited exposure to "art" via Albert is perfect, unassailable and complete. These components of character were offered with little context and simply just didn't add up.

Cokal opens and closes the book with a morbid scene which holds promise of a dark and gruesome story, but somehow that promise is lost in the pages between. The elements which advertise this to be a bizarre and ribald tale (polygamists, brothels, etc) only provided an off-beat background for this meandering middling tale.

In Breath and Bones, Susann Cokal explores pursuit - of beauty, perfection, art, love, lust, survival and even death. Possessed by their own addictions, each character follows one after another that person they believe will fulfill the missing pieces of their lives.

The repetition of the searching threatens to smother the reader until he or she falls beneath the surface of the plot to ponder the compulsions that drive humans toward that something they believe will make them whole.

Cokal bids us ask - Are our perceptions and reflections true or merely creatures of our soul's pursuits?

Art, science, sex, and the unstoppable geography of love, feature in this story of absolute Dickensian proportions. Set in 1886, Susan Cokal's gorgeously imagined Breath and Bones, is a sweeping saga, a giant feat of literary imagination that covers two continents and is told with a kind of breathy, wild, and unadulterated abandon.

From the snowy streets of Copenhagen to a remote dust-filled Mormon settlement in Utah, to the rough-and-ready mining towns of Colorado and points west - San Francisco, the city of artistic and intellectual enlightenment, Breath and Bones is always compelling and never dull.

Famke Summerfugl has recently been released from the Immaculate Heart Catholic Orphanage. Young, and idealistic, but also hard working, Famke finds employment as a house cleaner for a Herr Skatkammer. However, Famke is soon awakened to the possibilities of art and life, and is almost immediately seduced by English Painter Albert Castle.

Offering to pose as his muse, and desperately wanting more "detail, more beauty and more of the world," Famke soon falls in love with the young artist. The affection is reciprocated, as Albert is absolutely besotted with her naked, and unabashed beauty; he likens Famke to a gorgeous Botticelli angel and vows to immortalize her stunning beauty in a painting.

Albert's paints Famke as the myth of Nimue; it's his magnum opus and he believes it will be hung in the English Royal Academy's annual exhibition. He also hopes it will allow him to join the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, win him respect and commissions, and convince his father to continue the financial support.

For Famke, Albert is her savior and hero, so when he heads to America, Famke, remains totally lovesick "and in love with all the passion and force and urgency and trepidation of her years." With an unusual blend of naiveté and courage, opportunism and single-mindedness, Famke fends off assaults on her virtue and sets off across the Atlantic following the no-better-than-average painter who has abandoned her.

But America is not the land of hope and glory that Famke was led to believe. Mired with a bloody, rasping cough, that steadily debilitates her, Famke traverses a country on the verge of industrialization in search of her true love, her beauty and unadulterated loveliness steadily captivating the people of the West.

Famke ends up in Utah, married to Heber Goodhouse, a Mormon, who wants to establish his fortune by farming silk worms. A Nordic soul trapped in the land of dust and heat, Famke plots her escape, frustrated and homesick, she never gets enough: enough air, Albert, and paintings.

In Denver, she tries to convince herself that the huge, rough, rushing city of brick buildings and carriages resembles Copenhagen. The city emanated the stench that accompanied all flourishing enterprises: "coal, smoke, sewers, and carthorse dung." For this is the world of the Wild West, "a world of mutilated Indians, gun-holstered ranchers, and whole flocks of "Ludere" - prostitutes."

The stockyards fill the air with the reek of blood and the mountains of white and bones inspire a lonesome feeling that makes Famke cry. But she keeps going, because the West is a place where men are likely to buy buckeyes and potboilers; obscure works by unknown artists. Dressed like a man so that she can survive more easily, Famke sleeps in inexpensive bagnios, nickel-a-night flophouses, and hog ranches - homes for decrepit prostitutes who now sell themselves cheap.

As Famke follows Albert's trail, from saloon to saloon to general store, she discovers that he has left behind a string of portraits of prostitutes, executed with overtones of Danish warrior women, Valkries, and muses, tinged with Pre-Raphaelite romanticism - all with some element of her, or so she hopes.

Cokal writes with a formidable knowledge of the period, bringing to life a many-layered and multi-faceted America. This is an America that is full of polygamists, wide-eyed immigrants, corrupt journalists, prostitutes, and amateur scientists, all of whom are seduced into the West and it's promise of wealth, adventure and prosperity. It's a time of profound, tumultuous change with the author focusing on the human face, the individuals who value the fragile beauty of the earth, the vivid colors, and the promise of new growth and expansion.

Our gutsy and fearless heroine flees from one tight spot to another, while gradually getting sicker with tuberculosis, "the worms gnawing their way into her lungs, spinning their artful cocoons to smother her." While all the time she aches to be reunited with Albert - hoping that she might paint along side him matching his strokes with her own until there is no telling where his work ends and hers begins.

Sanctuary for Famke intermittently comes in the form of amateur doctor, Edward Versailles, and his Hygeia Springs Institute for Phthisis. Famke is a goddess in his eyes, a woman whose funereal loveliness seemed to "call into question the capacity of art to represent anything at all."

The characters in Breath and Bones are alive with the pulsating heart of history; they're grappling with change in a world where the artistic, scientific, and the economic have often formed uneasy and ill-at-ease alliances. Cokal paints a portrait of a world alive with the possibilities of hope, courage, love, and of mythical and divine immortality. Mike Leonard June 05.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century in Denmark, Famke was raised by nuns who cannot deal with the precocious rowdy child. Finally the sisters find her work when she was a teen on a farm. Toiling on a farm seems too boring so Famke takes off for Copenhagen.

She moves in with an untalented English painter Albert and earns a living as a model and his lover though he performs worse in bed than he does with a brush. Failing in Europe, Albert returns to the States leaving his mistress behind. Missing him, Famke follows Albert across the Atlantic though to pay passage she "converts" to Mormonism so that a missionary will pay her ocean voyage tab even if that means becoming the third living wife. Landing in America, her trek continues cross country while her tuberculosis that she caught in the monastery worsens until she reaches the Hygeia Springs Institute for Phthisis in California where they promise a cure. The electrical treatments provide sensual pleasure much greater than Albert ever did, but the TB remains as strong as ever. Still following her ex, she catches up to him in San Francisco, but will they reunite.

This is an oddly amusing but extremely dark look at the late nineteenth century as seen mostly through the eyes of a delightful hedonist protagonist. The strong cast provides a different perspective to the 1880s in Denmark and the United States then the audience normally sees, but it is fabulous Famke as a female Tom Jones (the novel not the singer) who holds the tale together. Susann Cokal is an author worth following with this strong showing and her previous powerhouse (see MIRABILIS).

Harriet Klausner

I thoroughly enjoyed Breath and Bones, for the most part. The 'heroine' was lovable even through her misadventures, and even the sections on other characters' experiences were interesting. The ending, though, didn't really ring true to the story or to the main character. The writing was beautiful from cover to cover, but the ending felt hurried and wrong. It felt profoundly unworthy of Famke after all of her travels, troubles, and searching. The character deserved a more heartfelt tie-up.

This novel had a good beginning with Famke the orphan growing up in a Catholic orphanage and running off with the sudden appearing Albert, an artist. Her and Albert have a love affair while he paints her picture. Albert leaves her for parts unknown but Famke is obsessed with him and marries a Mormon man to gain passage to America, where Albert was last known to head. She becomes a third wife and lives in Utah briefly and then suddenly runs off to Colorado looking for Albert. Here it gets ridiculous. While Albert runs all over Colorado painting pictures of the local prostitutes in each town, Famke is running after him, coughing constantly and repainting all of his pictures. Running after Famke, is a reporter in a green suit and a fellow orphan from her home country. Then, a Mormon lady named Mrytice begans to join the "musical chairs" and follows Viggo, the fellow orphan. When Famke runs into a strange doctor that holds her captive and uses a vibrator on her a couple times a day, he too, joins her obsessed followers. Oh and let us not forget her former employer back in her homeland that is also obsessed with her and trying to find her. Finally, after spending most of her years simply looking and chasing, Famke finds Albert only to meet with unpleasant and appalling circumstances.

Not written as well as I like. Cokal should have restrained herself a bit, instead of indulging herself and sending the protagonist on many ridiculous, not to mention fanciful, journeys. A failed picaresque novel indeed. Got so tired of the outlandished plot of the novel that I stopped reading--which is very unusual for me. I would not recommend this book.