Horse, Flower, Bird

Eight marvelous, melancholy new fairy tales for daring readers.

In Kate Bernheimer’s familiar and spare, yet wondrous world, an exotic dancer builds her own cage, a wife tends a secret basement menagerie, a fishmonger’s daughter befriends a tulip bulb, and sisters explore cycles of love and violence by reenacting scenes from Star Wars. Enthralling, subtle, and poetic, this collection evokes the age-old pleasures of classic fairy tales and makes them new.

Publication date: August 24, 2010

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 7.5

Page count: 208 pages

ISBN: 9781566892476

Kate Bernheimer is the author of two novels and the children’s book The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. She is also the editor of the literary journal Fairy Tale Review, and three anthologies, including My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (forthcoming from Penguin in 2010). An Associate Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette each spring, she spends the rest of the year in Tucson, Arizona.

An artist and fiction writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile.

“The stories in Horse, Flower, Bird are melancholy—as are Rikki Ducornet’s accompanying illustrations—but also as bright and sprightly as a little caged bird.”

—Baltimore City Paper

“[Bernheimer’s] strangely moving stories . . . combine fantasy with deep wisdom; the illustrations by Rikki Ducornet are an added delight.” 

—Reader’s Digest

“Hauntingly poetic. . . . This is a collection readers won’t soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original.”

—Booklist

"Despite its playful packaging, this book recalls the grim cautionary messages of old-world fairy tales. Bernheimer’s message? ‘Be careful what you read.’”

—American Book Review

“As we once wanted to read classic fairy tales over and over, the melancholy tales in Horse, Flower, Bird need to read over and over.”

—Contrary Magazine

“Once I was pulled into the worlds of these stories, I did not want to stop reading until I found out where Bernheimer was taking me.”

—New Pages Review

“A strange and enchanting book, written in crisp, winning sentences; each story begs to be read aloud and savored.”

—Aimee Bender

“Each of these spare and elegant tales rings like a bell in your head. Memorable, original, and not much like anything else you’ve read.”

—Karen Joy Fowler

“Kate Bernheimer is reinventing the fairy tale.”

—Peter Buck, R.E.M.