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Rachel Pollack

Godmother Night: A Novel Hardcover – January 1, 1996

by Rachel Pollack (Author)

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In a contemporary world much unlike our own, two women named Laurie and Jaqe find themselves and each other, only to be separated by Mother Night - a small, elderly woman in extravagant clothes who is, literally, death. She and her five red-haired, leather-clad bikers cruise through the lives of the lovers and their daughter, leaving behind a tale of heartbreak and humor, of loss and joy, of death and life.

Print length

355 pages
Language

English
Publisher

St Martins Pr
Publication date

January 1, 1996
Dimensions

5.75 x 1.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

031214606X
ISBN-13

978-0312146061
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Almost a set of short stories, this novel breaks into discrete episodes, centered on identity, love, and death. Jaqe has no identity until she meets Laurie, introduced and named by Mother Night; in that moment, she knows herself, and that she loves Laurie. But once Mother Night has become part of their lives, Laurie and Jaqe and their daughter Kate cannot live as other people do. Knowing Death, inevitably each of them seeks to use the knowledge, to bargain with Death, and to change the terms in the balance of life and death in the world.

Pollack's characters, major and supporting, living, dead, and divine, are memorably human. As she transplants myths and folklore into a modern setting, she gives new life to old tales and a deeper meaning to a seemingly simple world.

From Publishers Weekly

Departing from the future society she traced in Unquenchable Fire and Temporary Agency (a Nebula Award finalist), Pollack imagines with flair a fantasy world sprawled across the back of a giant turtle. At a dance at a college in a city "in the eastern part of the turtle, not far from the sea," two young women, Laurie and Jaqe, meet and fall in love. They also meet Mother Night, who helps the couple cope with the obstacles strewn across their path by family and society. An older, redheaded woman who rides around on a motorcycle, surrounded by a crew of younger, similarly carrot-topped women, Mother Night is in fact Death. While she helps Laurie and Jaqe in their quest for peace and justice, she also brings about the early demise of one of the lovers, shortly after a baby daughter is born. Mother Night becomes a true godmother to this child, watching over her and disclosing to her secrets of the departed. Pollack's fairy-tale plot is resourceful and original, but here, as in her earlier fiction, the emphasis is on character as she portrays women's intimate relationships with one another with resonance and realism. This is another fine outing by one of the most gifted and sensitive fantasists working today.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Pollack gives us another solidly crafted, well-researched tale of goddess-centered lesbian life, of magick and magical potions. Set in an unspecified time "when two women . . . lived on the back of a turtle," this allegorical fantasy of love and loss tells the engrossing story of Laurie and Jacqueline, star-crossed lovers whose child becomes a healer with the aid of her godmother, Mother Night. Accompanied by a fetching retinue of red-haired, leather-jacketed MGs (i.e., Motorcycle Girls), Mother Night first brings Laurie and Jacqueline together, then strikes a deal with Laurie that, in the best tradition of the Grimms' tales, brings about a loved one's death and a child's secret tutoring in things glimpsed but rarely seen by mere mortals. To say more would ruin the book for potential readers. Suffice it to say that Pollack (who is an expert on the Tarot, too) has balanced light and dark, delightful fantasy and everyday reality, to make Godmother Night charmingly serious. Whitney Scott

From Kirkus Reviews

While this begins as a depiction of modern lesbian life, it grows inexorably into a magical exploration of the deepest roots of life and death. Pollack (Temporary Agency, 1994, etc.) tells a story that shifts with remarkable ease between the world of mundanity and the world of fairy tale and folklore. Essentially, it falls into three, large movements (which do not quite match the novel's internal divisions). In the first, we meet Laurie and Jaqe, two college women who fall in love and (after Laurie drops out of graduate school) set up housekeeping. They have several disturbing encounters with a mysterious woman called Mother Night and her entourage of Motorcycle Girls. Jaqe eventually decides that she wants to become a mother; a friend finds an anonymous sperm donor, and in due course Jaqe gives birth to a daughter, Kate. Shortly thereafter, Jaqe dies--and we learn that Mother Night is Death incarnate. In the second section, we see Kate growing up (Laurie has adopted her), with Mother Night in the role of godmother. Kate is a bit of a misfit in school, but she moves easily in the ghostly world revealed to her by her godmother. Mother Night offers Kate, who is deeply affected by the suffering of others, a healing potion with which she can save some of those whom conventional medicine cannot help--but only those whom Mother Night tells her are not already doomed. In the third section, we see Kate grown up and working as a healer. When she begins to question Mother Night's decisions, she has to face a difficult choice--with the fate of her own lover in the balance. Throughout the narrative, Pollack finds graceful transitions between realistic portrayals of modern urban life and a fantastic landscape peopled with angry ghosts, lesbian biker Valkyries, and incarnations of supernatural powers. Tender and disturbing, down-to-earth and wildly inventive, this complex novel shows Pollack to be one of our best fantasists. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ St Martins Pr; 1st edition (January 1, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 355 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 031214606X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312146061
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,313,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,757 in LGBTQ+ Genre Fiction (Books)
- #98,864 in American Literature (Books)

Customer Reviews:
28 ratings

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Rachel Pollack

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Rachel Pollack is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the modern interpretation of the tarot. She is a member of the American Tarot Association, the International Tarot Society, and the Tarot Guild of Australia, and has taught at the famed Omega Institute for the past 15 years. She is an award-winning fiction writer and has also written 12 books on the tarot. She lives in New York.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

28 global ratings

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4 star		31%
3 star		15%
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1 star		7%

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Julie Stein Makowsky

Amazing!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 26, 2023

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This book takes my breath away. This has given me an entirely different way to see death. As someone who works with people who are facing death - this story has been a gift of going much deeper into how one can face it. You are an amazing storyteller Rachel Pollack!

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lisaleo (Lisa Yount)

disparate elements that come together only toward the end

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

I had somewhat mixed feelings about this book for much of its length because the main elements in it, though both were well done, did not really seem to fit together. One element is a lesbian love story (eventually, two)—and yes, there is sex, sometimes fairly graphic (plus perhaps a bit more about DIY/“turkey baster” artificial insemination than readers might want to know). The other element is the three main characters’ encounters with a mysterious Death Goddess, “Mother Night,” who introduces the first couple and later becomes godmother to the third character, their child. Another reviewer rightly points out Mother Night’s resemblance to the mysterious woman in Jean Cocteau’s Orphee, complete with her motorcycle-riding helpers; she definitely puts a whole new spin on the “fairy godmother” concept!

At first the meetings with Mother Night occur rather infrequently and (except for the initial one, in which she introduces Laurie and Jaqe, the two lovers-and-parents-to-be) seem to have little direct impact on the two women’s lives. Most of the first third of the book is devoted to the pair’s struggles with their parents, Laurie’s graduate-school studies, etc., which require no fantasy elements at all. Mother Night and other fairy-tale features are more strongly involved in the second third of the book, in which the couple deals with Jaqe’s sudden, powerful urge to have a baby—but they still feel rather separate; close to one another as they are portrayed as being, Jaqe and Laurie never talk to each other about the mysterious events in which they individually have taken part. Only in the last part of the book, told from the point of view of Kate, Jaqe and Laurie’s daughter and Mother Night’s goddaughter, do the realistic and the magical fully come together… with a definite emphasis on the magical.

Of the two aspects of the story, I was more interested in the fantasy one, so I found the first half or so of the book rather slow going. I had no objection to Laurie and Jaqe as characters, but I wasn’t strongly attracted to them either. On the other hand, I found Mother Night extremely well done—perhaps not surprisingly, since Pollack, as a Tarot expert, is bound to be well acquainted with archetypes. I also found Kate, the daughter/goddaughter, more interesting than her parents, as she faces moral dilemmas brought about by her magical heritage. The last third of the book, focusing on these two and their relationship, became very powerful for me. Overall, therefore, I would recommend the book, though different parts of it may appeal to different readers.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2015

Verified Purchase

I was expecting more from an award winning novel. The characters were interesting but some left center stage just when they became interesting. I have to admit that I am still uncertain of what or whom "Godmother Night" represents. And then there were the dead who reappear seeking "?" and behave like nuisance vagrants. I thought this reanimation was a prelude to a return to the plot of more important characters to enlighten the reader and give more depth to the narrative. Not so.

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AmazonAddict

Book came without jacket.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

Love the book. Read it when I was young and have been wanting a copy ever since. However the book was listed as used but like new and it arrives without the jacket which I’m disappointed about since I wanted to display the book on my shelf.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

I have been wanting a copy of this book for quite some time. An absolute keeper.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 4, 2015

Terrific writing!

Transcendant. Extraordinary. Beautiful.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 22, 2008

I read Godmother Night years ago, and it still creeps into my thoughts often. This book gave me chills and tears and those strange aha! moments when I felt like the story made me understand joy better.

I love how this book worked on several levels simultaneously. The love relationships (lovers, parents, friends) are heartbreakingly real and believable. The overlaying mystical/fantastical elements are like beautiful poetry: true as any truth, but dwelling outside the mundane. The layers lay together like an unfolding rose, impossibly perfect, impossibly beautiful. After Godmother Night, other love stories seem shallow and banal.

This is my favorite book of all time.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

spice is nice

For any age, for any gender, for any love, for any PERSON

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 14, 2004

Rachel Pollack has left me completely smitten. Smitten with Laurie, with Jaqe, Kate, and Godmother Night. I didn't want the story to end. She had me nervous, laughing, crying, anticipating. It's a story about love. Love that any reader can understand, in a very universal form. It's a story of high imagination, and vivid details. I could not put this book down. I have since recommended this book to 2 people who have also completely fallen in love with it. This is by far, the #1 on my lists of favorites. It is so beautifully written, and I have never had a book pull me in the way this book has. Thank you Rachel for your gift, without this book, I'd be missing out on something so damn good.

4 people found this helpful

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Godmother Night: A Novel Hardcover – January 1, 1996

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