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Ursula Pflug

The Alphabet Stones Kindle Edition

by Ursula Pflug (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The Alphabet Stones is about three families, one of them supernatural, and how they intertwine—with each other and with the land, a moody eastern Ontario of communes, music festivals and cedar swamps; stony farms and muddy rivers. This is a story about enchantment—how the land enchants us, how we enchant one another—why it’s necessary that we do, and dangerous when we don’t. Like 14 year old Jody, we learn not just the names of trees and stars and birds, but also of “the gate between worlds,” a place she stumbles across in a forgotten back pasture, both ordinary and powerfully mysterious.

“Pflug sets out to do no small thing: worry the voice out of stones, the magic out of secret rooms; trace the shifting shape of a shadow childhood. This is an enchanting book, quietly spell-binding. A minor miracle” – Tim Wynne-Jones

“The Alphabet Stones does what a good fantasy is supposed to do: take on difficult subjects without losing the story’s underlying sense of wonder. This is an absorbing, modern day fairy tale and I loved every moment of it” – Charles de Lint

“Quietly beautiful, The Alphabet Stones is magical and ethereal yet also
deeply evocative of, and grounded, in place."
-Jan Thornhill

Print length

228 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 14, 2013
File size

817 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00F7SA0T6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blue Denim Press Inc; 1st edition (September 14, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 14, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 817 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 228 pages

Customer Reviews:
6 ratings

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Ursula Pflug
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Ursula Pflug
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Ursula Pflug is the critically acclaimed author of the novels Green Music, The Alphabet Stones, Motion Sickness (illustrated by SK Dyment) and the story collections After the Fires and Harvesting the Moon. She edited the anthologies They Have To Take You In and Playground of Lost Toys (with Colleen Anderson). Her award winning short stories and nonfiction about books and art have been appearing for decades in Canada, the US and the UK, in genre and literary venues including Strange Horizons, Postscripts, Lightspeed, Fantasy, Leviathan, LCRW, Now Magazine, Bamboo Ridge, The New York Review of Science Fiction and many more. Her books have been endorsed by luminaries including Tim Wynne-Jones, Candas Jane Dorsey, Charles De Lint, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and NYT bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer. Her short stories have been taught in universities in Canada and India, and she has collaborated extensively with filmmakers, playwrights, dancers and installation artists. Pflug has been shortlisted or nominated for the Sunburst Award, the Aurora Award, the Pushcart Prize, the 3 Day Novel Contest, the Descant Novella Award, the KM Hunter Award and others; her work has been funded by The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and The Laidlaw Foundation. Her new YA book Mountain is due out from Inanna in May 2017.
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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

6 global ratings

5 star		56%
4 star		23%
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2 star		21%
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ChrisG

I loved the beautiful writing and how real and familiar the ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 28, 2016

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This is a jewel of a story that blends an unorthodox rural life with a connection to a magical world. I loved the beautiful writing and how real and familiar the world was for me. Wonderful!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 17, 2014

Ursula Pflug has produced a finely-wrought “coming of age” tale that combines the immediacy of prose-poetry with fantasy fiction. With her lush metaphors and biting humor, Pflug’s narrative and warmth of phrasing imagines a young girl's proximity to the worlds of ancient magic and mythical beings in the wilds of rural Ontario. Deep bonds to the landscape are at the heart of this contemporary fantasy, and the Settler farm folk, hippie sybarites, home-schooled children, poets, teenage runaways and Anishnaabe characters who animate the pages also weave together in surprising ways. The mysterious experiences “Jody Bear” has with the alphabet stones that define a sacred site holding a portal between the worlds, and the ambiguous beings she meets there, mark her indelibly. Are Hawk and Snake archetypal ancestors, from the realm of the Fae, “genius loci” or earth spirits? We are left to wonder, and to consider the existence of other worlds “beyond the veil.”

Moving past her unforgettable childhood into the responsibilities of adult life, Jody’s long journey of love, loss and redemption across North America traces right back to where she started. Interspersed with gorgeous earth-connected poems and evocative musings on the bonds of lovers and family, The Alphabet Stones engages the reader in the tension between the old and the new, the original inhabitants of Turtle Island and the colonial interlopers, and ultimately, the divide between the modern urban worldview and the consciousness of those who remain in love with the land. Through the device of fiction, Pflug has crafted a wonderful modern fairytale that at the same time reminds us of our intimacy with rural places, and our vital interaction with the original First Nations and earthkeepers of these lands. Both paradox and pleasure, The Alphabet Stones is a marvelous read, and an excellent addition to the Canadian genre of mythic literature.

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Michael R. Dyet

An Engaging Tale of Enchantment and Coming of Age

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 19, 2017

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I have an inclination towards novels that have titles for every chapter. It makes each chapter seem like a story in itself. However, I did a bit of a double-take when I read “Gas Station Washrooms” as the title of the first chapter of The Alphabet Stones. But it is the nature of this novel to tread the line between the everyday and the timeless, between the real and the surreal.

We see through the eyes of 14 year old Jody as the lives of three families are intertwined through time and through the supernatural. “The gate between the worlds”, hidden away in a back pasture, is the hinge point – literally and figuratively – on which the novel swings The characters relationship to the land underscores their interpersonal relationships which are complex and, as is the case in real life, as often painful as they are rewarding.

I am not usually drawn to novels that venture outside the bounds of reality. But The Alphabet Stones is an engaging tale of enchantment and coming of age that grows on you as the story evolves.

2 people found this helpful

MARGARET SLAVIN DYMENT

I love the way the narrative moves in an Ontario landscape ...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

Ursula Pflug sees around corners. I love the way the narrative moves in an Ontario landscape I know well, and then slips into magic to make us aware of the mysterious energy which underlies the seeming mundane. On a more sociological level, I always wondered what life was like for homeschooled hippie kids in the 60's and now I may know. Give yourself a treat and read this book. It's a great present for anyone who lives near Lanark too.

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