Pirate Talk or Mermalade - by Terese Svoboda (Paperback)

About the Book

A gender-bent novel of reluctant pirates, a suicidal mother, and a schoolmarm mermaid that ends in the Arctic.

Book Synopsis

Pursued by a mermaid, two boys talk their way into pirating and end up in the Arctic where a secret unhinges them both. Disabled piecemeal, harassed by a parrot, marooned on a tree-challenged island, posing as Pilgrims, scrimshawing and singing their way out of prison, the spunky pirates of Pirate Talk or Mermalade defy and indeed eliminate all description: it's a novel in voices.

The many faces of Terese Svoboda's luminous writing include eleven books of poetry, fiction, translation, and over one hundred short stories. Trailer Girl and Other Stories, her third novel, was reissued in paperback last fall.

About the Author

Terese Svoboda: The many faces of Svoboda's luminous writing include eleven books of poetry, fiction, translation and over 100 short stories. Trailer Girl and Other Stories, her third novel, was reissued in paper last fall. "Unnerve thyself: the violent and enthralling short stories in Trailer Girl detonate on contact," writes Vanity Fair. Her memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent was termed "Astounding!" by the New York Post, selected as a Japan Times "Best of Asia 2008" book, and won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Praised as a "fabulous fabulist" by Publishers Weekly for her last novel, Tin God, Vogue lauded her first, Cannibal, as a female Heart of Darkness. Svoboda is also the recipient of the Bobst Prize (for Cannibal), the Iowa Prize for poetry and the O. Henry Award for the short story. Her work has been selected for the "Writer's Choice" column in the New York Times Book Review, a SPIN magazine book of the year, and one of the Voice Literary Supplement's ten best reads. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall in 2005. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, Bennington, Davidson, University of Hawaii, U. of Miami, Fairleigh Dickinson, Williams College, San Francisco State College and the College of William and Mary and is teaching fiction this spring at Columbia's School of the Arts.