Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice [Paperback]

Eugie Foster (Author), Vonda N. McIntyre (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2009

"Whimsy and malice­--yes­--also mystery, a very female sensuality, and wit. An elegant and entertaining book."
--Ursula K. Le Guin

"The tales are beautifully written, elegant, passionate, funny, and moving. The entire collection is a delightful, magical bridge across cultures. I hope many readers find their way to it."
--Patricia A. McKillip

"Noted short story author Foster offers a dozen enchanting and sometimes chilling tales alive with elegantly sketched characters and sensibilities drawn from Asian folklore . . . Readers who long for a break from European medieval fantasy will be charmed and entertained by Foster's tales."
--Publishers Weekly

Enchantment, peril and romance pervade the shadowy Far East, from the elegant throne room of the emperor's palace to the humble teahouse of a peasant village. In these dozen stories of adventure and magic from the Orient, a maiden encounters an oni demon in the forest, a bride discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, a samurai must appease his sister's angry ghost, strange luck is found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony.

A striking debut collection from Eugie Foster.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Noted short story author Foster offers a dozen enchanting and sometimes chilling tales alive with elegantly sketched characters and sensibilities drawn from Asian folklore. Revenge and family loyalty drive the title story as well as The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father and the historical fantasy A Thread of Silk. In Shim Chung the Lotus Queen, good deeds and sacrifice are rewarded, but The Raven's Brocade shows how easily those rewards can be lost. The most memorable stories follow shape-changers: the fox spirits of Year of the Fox, the lively rabbits-turned-human of Daughter of Bótà and a most unusual tea kettle in The Tanuki-Kettle. Readers who long for a break from European medieval fantasy will be charmed and entertained by Foster's tales. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Norilana Books (July 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1607620111
• ISBN-13: 978-1607620112
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eugie Foster calls home a mildly haunted, fey-infested house in metro Atlanta that she shares with her husband, Matthew. After receiving her Master of Arts degree in Developmental Psychology, she retired from academia to pen flights of fancy. She also edits legislation for the Georgia General Assembly, which from time to time she suspects is another venture into flights of fancy.

Eugie received the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, was named Bards and Sages Author of the Year for 2009, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, BSFA, Black Quill, and Bram Stoker awards. Her fiction has been translated into seven languages, and her publication credits number over 100, including stories in Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Cricket, Fantasy Magazine, and Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show; podcasts Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and PodCastle; and anthologies Best New Fantasy and Best New Romantic Fantasy 2. Her short story collection, Returning My Sister's Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, is available from Norilana Books.

Visit her online at EugieFoster.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grace, Energy and Heart, February 28, 2010

By 

Ken Schneyer (Barrington, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)

The book contains twelve stories, originally published as early as 2004, in venues as various as Cricket, Paradox, Realms of Fantasyand Jim Baen's Universe. They are all drawn on Japanese, Chinese or Korean traditions, and in several cases drawn directly from existing folktales or well-known narratives. Being myself disgracefully ignorant of these literary traditions (I could earn maybe a C+ in an oral exam on Introduction to Eastern Religions, but that's about it) I have no idea how well Eugie is reflecting or representing them, but I don't care. She tells her tales with such energy, grace and heart that one feels instantly transported and moved.

My favorite story in the collection was "A Thread of Silk," based loosely on actual historical events in Japan, and weaving together this Japanese tradition of storytelling, a scifi sensibility and a reflection of western (Greek!) mythological tropes. It is a tour de force. I love it especially for its thematic and complexity, its twist added upon twist, a feature also present in "Daughter of Bótù" and "Honor Is a Game Mortals Play."

I also adored "The Tanuki-Kettle," a fairy tale also drawn on a Japanese tale that is too unutterably cute for, er, utterances. I read it aloud to my ten-year-old while he chortled. The newest story in the collection, "The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father," is a strange mixture of adorable cuteness and philosophic profundity.

Nearly as fun as the stories themselves are Eugie's one-paragraph commentaries at the end of each tale, reflecting such things as the family expectations at her own birth, the prevalence of unfair "foxist rhetoric" in Chinese and Japanese folktales, and the habits of her pet skunk.

I recommend this collection highly.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far Eastern Fairy Tales Second to None, March 18, 2009

By 

R. Santa - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)

What a joy, a delight, and an experience that makes a fellow writer breathless for having gone through it. Ms. Foster's collection of stories is mind-boggling in its juxtaposition of both complexity and simplicity. Simple, in that almost all of these stories I could read to my young girls at bed time; complex, in that I would be hard-pressed to emulate the storytelling style of Ms. Foster who has obviously mastered the skill. I've given the book to my 10-year-old daughter who is enchanted by it almost as much as I was. No amount of embarassingly rich praise is too much for this collection. "The Tiger Fortune Princess," "The Tanuki-Kettle," The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon," along with the story from which the book takes its name...classic storytelling flow and structure, set in mostly ancient Asia. So lovely, words fail me, so I shall stop trying to think of them.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Style, June 22, 2009

By 

Scott M. Sandridge "Scott M. Sandridge" (Columbus OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)

Eugie Foster's writing style contains a near-poetic flow that'll keep you reading from start to finish. And when it comes to characterization and plot and so forth, her stories never disappoint.