The Doll's Alphabet - by Camilla Grudova (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Dolls, sewing machines, tinned foods, mirrors, malfunctioning bodies--by constantly reinventing ways to engage with her obsessions and motifs, Camilla Grudova has built a universe that's highly imaginative, incredibly original, and absolutely discomfiting. The stories in The Doll's Alphabet are by turns childlike and naive, grotesque and very dark: the marriage of Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter.

Review Quotes

Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award in the Single-Author Collection category
Finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award

"The world [The Doll's Alphabet] inhabits--droll, inexplicable and even beautiful in its slovenly fashion--is unlike any other I've encountered." --The Wall Street Journal

"That I cannot say what all these stories are about is a testament to their worth. They have been haunting me for days now. They have their own, highly distinct flavour, and the inevitability of uncomfortable dreams." --The Guardian

"Grudova's method of storytelling is highly imaginative and incredibly ambitious." --Chicago Review of Books

"The Doll's Alphabet is a dark, yet naive, body of work dripping with eccentricity and weirdness." --CBC

"Grudova does mermaids and magic, but she also does moldy, dingy, scratch-and-sniff interiors that reek of cabbage and old shoes. . . . Grudova's descriptions are crooked and revelatory." --Harper's Magazine

"Grudova is a master of world-building with an incredible command of language." --The Herald

"A singular collection from a unique talent, stories with the force of dreams, a reading experience from which you may never awaken." --The National Post

"If fairytales could dream, this nightmarish collection is what you might end up with. . . . Grudova very efficiently spins us into her weird web." --The Times Literary Supplement

"The stories included in [Grudova's] debut collection [The] Doll's Alphabet are at once macabre and wondrous. . . . Grudova's imagination is among the most potent to emerge in literature in recent memory." --Entropy

"Just when we feel we have escaped the familiar for the fantastical, an event or a detail pulls us back. The resulting picture is one of a society determined by structures as opaque and incredulous as our own." --TANK

"[Grudova's] writing is haunting and humorous, and the attention to gender dynamics adds a layer of truth to these dark tales." --NewPages

"These stories draw on images and myths you know--mermaids, werewolves, children's dolls--but they've been reinvented with darker, dreamier twists." --MPR

"Camilla Grudova's debut short story collection, splits open a dollhouse of domestic life and allows us to examine the magical dystopian interior." --Arkansas International

"Camilla Grudova's collection will appeal to anyone who loves weirdness with a message." --Bustle

"Grudova's beguiling collection of short stories--filled with mermaids and werewolves--announces the arrival of a major new voice in Canadian fiction." --Globe and Mail

"This doll's eye view is a total delight and surveys a world awash with shadowy wit and exquisite collisions of beauty and the grotesque." --Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird

"Down to its most particular details, The Doll's Alphabet creates an individual world--a landscape I have never encountered before, which now feels like it was waiting to be captured, and waiting to captivate, all along." --Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

"Marvellous. Grudova understands that the best writing has to pull off the hardest aesthetic trick--it has to be both memorable and fleeting." --Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk

Praise for The Doll's Alphabet

Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award in the Single-Author Collection category
Finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award

"The world [The Doll's Alphabet] inhabits-droll, inexplicable and even beautiful in its slovenly fashion--is unlike any other I've encountered." --The Wall Street Journal

"That I cannot say what all these stories are about is a testament to their worth. They have been haunting me for days now. They have their own, highly distinct flavour, and the inevitability of uncomfortable dreams." --The Guardian

"Grudova's method of storytelling is highly imaginative and incredibly ambitious." --Chicago Review of Books

"The Doll's Alphabet is a dark, yet naive, body of work dripping with eccentricity and weirdness." --CBC

"Grudova does mermaids and magic, but she also does moldy, dingy, scratch-and-sniff interiors that reek of cabbage and old shoes. . . . Grudova's descriptions are crooked and revelatory." --Harper's Magazine

"Grudova is a master of world-building with an incredible command of language." --The Herald

"A singular collection from a unique talent, stories with the force of dreams, a reading experience from which you may never awaken." --The National Post

"If fairytales could dream, this nightmarish collection is what you might end up with. . . . Grudova very efficiently spins us into her weird web." --The Times Literary Supplement

"The stories included in [Grudova's] debut collection [The] Doll's Alphabet are at once macabre and wondrous. . . . Grudova's imagination is among the most potent to emerge in literature in recent memory." --Entropy

"Just when we feel we have escaped the familiar for the fantastical, an event or a detail pulls us back. The resulting picture is one of a society determined by structures as opaque and incredulous as our own." --TANK

"[Grudova's] writing is haunting and humorous, and the attention to gender dynamics adds a layer of truth to these dark tales." --NewPages

"These stories draw on images and myths you know--mermaids, werewolves, children's dolls--but they've been reinvented with darker, dreamier twists." --MPR

"Camilla Grudova's debut short story collection, splits open a dollhouse of domestic life and allows us to examine the magical dystopian interior." --Arkansas International

"Camilla Grudova's collection will appeal to anyone who loves weirdness with a message." --Bustle

"Grudova's beguiling collection of short stories--filled with mermaids and werewolves--announces the arrival of a major new voice in Canadian fiction." --Globe and Mail

"This doll's eye view is a total delight and surveys a world awash with shadowy wit and exquisite collisions of beauty and the grotesque." --Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird

"Down to its most particular details, The Doll's Alphabet creates an individual world--a landscape I have never encountered before, which now feels like it was waiting to be captured, and waiting to captivate, all along." --Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

"Marvellous. Grudova understands that the best writing has to pull off the hardest aesthetic trick--it has to be both

About the Author