The Wealdwife's Tale [Paperback]

Paul Hazel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1994

Obsessed with constructing a miraculous flying machine that will carry him to his dead wife, the Eighth Duke of West Redding journeys through the sky and retrieves a curse from a dark, impenetrable wood. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The boundaries between present, past and future, between reality and illusion, are permeable and shifting in this eerie, convoluted version of a classic folktale. The holdings of the Eighth Duke of West Redding, Rudyard Riding Wenceslas (known as Waldo), border the Weald, a mysterious wood that no one has ever been able to enter. Convinced that the Weald holds his beloved late wife Elva, who died 11 years earlier giving birth to their daughter, also named Elva, Waldo builds wings to fly to her. He returns with a strange old woman named Avle and her daughter, who looks like the late duchess. When he marries the daughter, his three sons flee to the Weald. Elva discovers them there in altered form; one tells her she can save them if she keeps silent for a year. Fleeing the Weald, she finds herself in a place much like, but not the same as, the West Redding she left. There the Ninth Duke, Odlaw Wenceslas, seeks to wed her despite her silence and the suspicions of his people. Fantasist Hazel ( Winterking ) blends the earthy and spiritual with suggestions of mirror worlds and interwoven generations in this vivid but unwieldy concoction of greed, power, deceit and love.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

An aging duke's obsession with his dead wife leads him into a magical forest in the hope of finding his lost love in this eerie retelling of a classic folk tale by the author the Finn Trilogy ( Yearwood , Bantam, 1991; Undersea , Bantam, 1987; Winterking , LJ 10/15/85). Hazel's style is enigmatic and introverted, implying much more than it reveals and leaving traces of haunting imagery in its wake. Purchase for those readers who enjoy stories rich in atmosphere and stylish in the telling.
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
• Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (March 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380718804
• ISBN-13: 978-0380718801
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,518,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine book by an obscure author, December 22, 2010

By 

Mithradates (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wealdwife's Tale (Paperback)

Paul Hazel - ever heard of him? Seems he wrote a trilogy of novels (one of which was a World Fantasy Award nominee) in the `80s, and then one more book, The Wealdwife's Tale, in 1993, then dropped off the face of the earth. I bought a copy of this last one back in 2000 at a remainder shop; then it sat unread on my bookshelf for the past ten years. I was browsing through my library the other day and cracked the book open. The first few paragraphs seemed pleasantly droll, so I decided to give the book a read.

This jaded fantasy fan, who has come to dislike almost any post-Tolkien book set In a Feudal Realm Where Magic is Real!, is surprised at how much he enjoyed this book. It's droll and creepy all at once. The setting is a dukedom (the technology level seems to be in the 19th century, with a couple of references to people having traveled to a large city to send a wire or board a train) nestled against an enchanted/cursed wood which no-one has ever entered. The duke, grieving for his dead wife, has been told by a soothsayer that he can find her again if he goes into the impenetrable forest, and naturally he figures out a way to do just that.

Occasionally the sentence structure threw me off; I'd have to go back a few sentences to make sense of the sentence I was trying to read. This is really something best read aloud. Given the proper intonation, there'd be no doubt what was going on.

This is not one of those books that have happy endings. The curse is pretty awful, and it's apparently going to continue forever, and as for a reason why, it looks like it's just because that's how it's always been. Maybe it wouldn't be your cup of schnapps, but I was delighted to discover it.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mervyn Peake, March 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wealdwife's Tale (Avonova Book) (Hardcover)

If you enjoyed P. Hazel's book you might also enjoy Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. Both series rely heavily on rambling Welsh/Celtic mythology. I, though, don't care for either!