The Jade Cabinet (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [Paperback]

Rikki Ducornet (Author)

Book Description

Series: American Literature (Dalkey Archive) | Publication Date: September 1997

Made speechless by her eccentric father, the beautiful Etheria is traded for a piece of precious jade. Memory, her sister, tells her story, that of a childhood enlivened by Lewis Carroll and an orangutan named Dr. Johnson and envenomed by the pernicious courtship of Radulph Tubbs, Queen Victoria's own Dragon of Industry. The novel travels from Oxford to Egypt where one million ibis mummies wait to be transformed into fertilizer, where Baconfield the architect will cause a pyramid to collapse, and where a scorned and bloated hunger artist who speaks in tongues will plot a bloody revenge. The fourth element in a tetralogy of novels - Earth (The Stain), Fire (Entering Fire), Water (The Fountains of Neptune) and Air - The Jade Cabinet is both a riveting novel and a reflection on the nature of memory and desire, language and power. Following the novel is an afterword, "Waking to Eden, " in which Ducornet reflects on the sources for her writing and on the quartet of novels completed by The Jade Cabinet.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The language and action are as lush and intricate as William Morris Victorian wallpaper. Memory, the sister of silent Etherea, tells the story of their childhood with an eccentric father who trades Etherea for a piece of jade to Radulph Tubbs, a despicable character who is Queen Victoria's Dragon of Industry (Dickens would have disliked him intensely). Etherea magically disappears from Tubbs' grasp after he brutally attacks her, and in Egypt, a hunger artist who speaks in tongues plans a revenge that will surprise everyone. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This novel, representing Air, is a numinous finale to Ducornet's Tetralogy of Elements, which also includes The Stain (Earth), Entering Fire (Fire) and The Fountains of Neptune (Water). Born into an eccentric household in Victorian Oxford, Etheria is beautiful, imaginative and, because of her father's attempts to discover the Edenic Original Speech by keeping his firstborn innocent of language, mute. Her sister, Memory, narrates the story as Etheria is courted by, and then marries, a philistine manufacturer with the Dickensian moniker of Radulph Tubbs. Tubbs's desire to possess his wife leads him to cruelty, Etheria's eventual "vanishment" and his increasing sense of humiliation and regret. Added to this boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl plot is a cast of bizarre extras: a vicious, anorexic circus performer, an architect who has gone mad pondering pyramids, a magician and butler, Lewis Carroll, and one million ibis mummies, the ingredients for a failed experiment in a new powdered soup--"Though the broth had the colour of bouillon, it tasted like boiled pavement." All told, this is a lilting but nonetheless propulsive story of magic, imagination, language, memory and other elements illusory, elusive and essential.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 1st Paperback Ed edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781739
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781734
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #596,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)