The Stain - by Rikki Ducornet (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The provocative, spellbinding debut novel, set in a village in the Loire Valley in the late 19th century, by prolific worldbuilder Rikki Ducornet. In The Stain, Rikki Ducornet tells the story of a young girl named Charlotte, branded with a furry birthmark in the shape of a dancing hare, regarded as the mark of Satan. "Sadistic nuns, scatology, butchered animals, monkish rapists, and Satan" (Kirkus), as well as the village exorcist, inhabit this bawdy tale of perversion, power, possession, and the rape of innocence. Ducornet weaves an intricate design of fantasy and reality, at once surreal, hilarious, and terrifying.

Review Quotes

"A riotous extravaganza, comic, melodramatic and touch­ing, that goes over the top time and time again but never loses its antic grace and sure sense of place." --Angela Carter

"This is the most brilliant first novel I have read in years. . . . Rikki Ducornet's real talent is for language. She is a minor lord or lady of it, achieving abstruse comic effects by a kind of clowning classicism. The Stain is a very odd, accomplished and memorable novel by any standards." --Robert Nye, The Guardian

"A highly disciplined extravaganza. . . . The writing is highly impressive." --Times Literary Supplement

"A tale of witchcraft, prostitution and sex . . . the images evoked in relentless detail recall Brueghel and Bosch . . . the atmosphere is steamy and pungent, indubitably a powerful nightmare vision." --London Times

"An extraordinary black, erotic fairytale, an exuberant, touching and very funny novel." --Time Out

"Ducornet displays distinct page-by-page talents (vivid im­ agery and invention) along the lines of Angela Carter." --Kirkus Reviews

"Readers with voracious appetites for the bizarre may relish the spread prepared by Ducornet." --Publishers Weekly

"A bold, Rabelaisian mixture of bawdy and horror, this first novel . . . is highly recommended." --Library Journal

About the Author

Rikki Ducornet is a transdisciplinary artist. Her work is animated by an interest in nature, Eros, tyranny and the transcendent capacities of the creative imagination. She is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and artist, and her fiction has been translated into fifteen languages. Her art has been exhibited internationally, most recently with Amnesty International's traveling exhibit I Welcome, focused on the refugee crisis. She has received numerous fellowships and awards including an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard College Arts and Letters Award, the Prix Guerlain, a Critics' Choice Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Her novel The Jade Cabinet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.