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Author 411 October 2008 - Margo Langan Photo © 2007 Adrian Cook
TENDER MORSELS IS a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever—magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga’s refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?
AUTHOR 411 * * * * * 1. What inspired you to write Tender Morsels? Did it spawn completely from your imagination, or was its origin drawn from circumstances you’ve encountered or heard about in real life?
Seeing what the Brothers Grimm did when they took an old tale (Caroline Stahl’s “The Ungrateful Dwarf”) and rewrote it as “Snow White and Rose Red” was what started me thinking about this story. The changes they made transformed the fairy tale from an odd story about justice being done by luck into a moralistic tale for girls about putting up with men’s behavior, no matter how beastly that behavior happens to be. I much preferred Stahl’s lack of a message to the Grimms’ urging of girls to be passively accepting and reliably amiable, and it annoyed me that their version had survived rather than Stahl’s. So in a way the story was an argument against their imposing their agenda on that story.
2. Why did you begin Tender Morsels with a prologue?
Well, the first 50 pages of the main story are fairly hard going—all the sexual violence to Liga is done there (although the actual attacks don’t happen “on-screen”), and the consequences of the assaults on her (the two miscarriages) are depicted quite graphically. I needed readers to have a reason to stay with me through all these dark episodes. The prologue is rather a jolly scene where the dwarf Collaby Dought and the witch-to-be Annie Hornblow, both orphanage children, are having a roll in the hay, after which Annie performs a bit of basic magic on Collaby that allows him a glimpse of what his own personal heaven would be like. This scene is a sort of promise to the reader that there will be humor in this story, and magic, and relations between characters that don’t entail one party trying to harm the other. I included it so that people would know, once they got further in and hit the dark stuff, that it wasn’t going to stay dark forever. The prologue is also there because the events in it happen before all the other events chronologically, and I felt it was important to present them in their right order, and directly, rather than showing them later in a flashback.
3. We’re introduced to Liga’s traumatic childhood/adolescence at the very start of Tender Morsels. At times, it was very difficult for us to take in the horrific scenes that you portrayed so vividly. Why is it necessary to depict such a harsh—and violent—reality for Liga? Why, specifically, do you feature rape in Liga’s suffering? Was it challenging for you to write this portion of the book?
It was necessary if I was going to allow for natural magic to grant Liga her own personal heaven, for her to be seen to deserve it, to deserve being rescued from the real world and allowed to bring her daughters up in a perfectly safe place. So she had to undergo trials in the real world that any reader would agree were more than any person should have to endure. And the reason they were all bodily and sexual (in the first scene, which is the first miscarriage, Liga is so innocent that she doesn’t realize what’s happening—she sees it only as her body turning against her) is that I was taking the Brothers Grimm's urgings of passive female acceptance of beastliness to their logical conclusion. These things happen to Liga only because she is a girl—not because she deserves them in any way, but solely because she happens to have this type of body. These were the first scenes I wrote, so I guess they carry the force of my initial irritation on reading the Grimm story. No, they weren’t particularly challenging, even though they deal with events that in real life would be extremely difficult to bear. I think they’re harder to read than they were to write because, as the writer, I always knew that Liga was going to be at least partly compensated for these disasters by being allowed to escape reality into a pleasant world. Readers, on the other hand, have only that slender prologue to reassure them that things will get better.
4. The two worlds in Tender Morsels provide fascinating and thought-provoking backdrops to compare. How would you characterize the differences between them—what, to you, does each stand for?
The “real world” in Tender Morsels is a town called St Olafred’s, which I envisage as being perhaps somewhere in Eastern Europe , in mountainous, forested country. The time is pre-industrial. I wanted the place to feel believable, but also to have an air of fairy tale about it, not anchored to a particular country or culture. Liga’s heaven was created by her fear of, and antipathy to, certain things in the real world: men’s sexual urges, her father’s drunkenness, small-town gossip, and her family’s poverty. So her heaven is exactly the same as the real world except that there is no hierarchy of rich and poor, no currency (only a barter system), no ale in the alehouses, and nothing judgmental in the townspeople’s regard of her. In addition, the people who have assaulted her the worst, and all their families, have been removed from the town—even their homes are gone. And any person she didn’t know, or who appeared hostile to her, has been replaced with a sort of generic, reassuring nice person with rosy skin and brown hair and a cheerful demeanor. This represents the world as Liga wanted it to be immediately after her rape by the town boys. And there’s the rub, because as she recovers from her childhood, heaven doesn’t recover with her, or grow or change as she matures. She never actually learns how to deal with all the things she has banished from her life, so she remains vulnerable to them, and still afraid of them. Worst of all, she gains a new fear, the fear of losing this heavenly existence and having to face her attackers and all the real townsfolk again.
5. How and why did you assign different rates of passing time between the worlds in Tender Morsels? In other words, why did time go by faster in reality than it did in Liga’s heaven, and how did you come up with the idea? One reader noticed a similar treatment of time in The Chronicles of Narnia.
The rule with the time difference is that incursions of people from the real world into the heaven-world cause the times to slip out of alignment. When Annie misused her magic powers to send Collaby Dought between the worlds for the first time, in the process she broke the mechanism that kept the times aligned. Since then, whenever someone has intruded, for the duration of their stay in Liga’s heaven the times have slipped further and further askew. Time races on when Dought is killed and buried in the heaven-place, and only his retrieval can restore them to moving along at the same speed. But by then, even a witch as powerful and competent as Miss Dance can’t actually bring the two time-schemes back into perfect alignment, and between the time when Urdda returns to the real world and the time Branza and Liga return, seven years slip away. The different time schemes do two things. First, they point up the dangers of performing magic without the proper training and practice. Second, they mean that when Liga and Branza return, they are so advanced in age that nobody can logically associate them with the awful events that propelled them into heaven in the first place; the townsfolk, including the men who attacked Liga, don’t recognize her, so she is spared the gossip that would result from everyone putting two and two together when she reappears with her elder daughter. 6. In general, to what degree should we suspend reality when conceptualizing these alternate worlds? Did you intend for us to question the workings of Liga’s heaven? For instance, one teen pointed out that there is no mention of food in Liga’s heavenly world. Are we meant to believe that people did not eat, or is that a detail to which we are not expected to devote as much attention?
There are plenty of mentions of food in heaven: the girls eat bread soaked in milk, Liga makes bread, and has a vegetable and herb-garden; she catches fish; she wonders, when she thinks the girls have brought a villager home with them, how much such a dream-person is likely to eat. There is a market full of fruit and baked goods, which Collaby visits, although as an intruder he isn’t allowed to eat any of them. The man-bears who visit are obsessed with food—practically the first thing they think of is food! The reason Collaby dies is because a hungry bear comes after him. The heaven-people only eat when Liga, Branza, or Urdda is present and sharing the meal; I’m not entirely sure what they get up to when there are no witnesses. Certainly I want readers to poke and prod at the workings of this heavenly world. I hope they don’t find too many holes! But the main purpose of it all, I think, is to prompt people to wonder: If a personal heaven had been offered to me at the age of 15, how would my deepest wishes have constructed that heaven? And how would that satisfy me now, now that I’ve moved on from being 15?
7. Bear Day is a unique and interesting concept. How did you come up with this event? It is based on a real celebration that you know of, either present day or in history? Why was this day the only day people could cross between the two worlds?
It comes from a documentary I saw about a town in the Pyrenees called Prats de Mollo la Preste. You can find a good description of the real-life Bear Day festivities at www.anglophone-direct.com/Fete-de-l-Ours-Prats-de-Mollo . They happen every year in early spring. In Tender Morsels, Bear Day isn’t actually the only day that people can pass from the real world to the heaven-world. Collaby Dought can pass back and forth whenever he wants (and so can magicians). But wherever he chooses to go through, he leaves a weak spot in the membrane between the two worlds. Mostly he uses the first site that worked for him, out of town, down by the stream; but during one emergency, when being pursued by creditors, he creates one of these weak places in a twitten (lane) behind a convent. At times of heightened natural magic, certain people can pass through the softened between-worlds membrane. Because Bear Day is such a time, and the men-dressed-as-bears embody, and attract to themselves, a certain amount of natural magic, they are the people who tend to go through. 8. We’re enchanted by the moon-baby. Where did it come from? What exactly is it?
The moon-baby is featured in the Grimms’ tale; I suspect it’s meant to symbolize the Christ child. This annoyed me too, this co-opting of an old tale for a Christian agenda, so I decided I would keep the shining child but turn it into an expression of a pagan belief system. The moon-baby is a benign-towards-humans form of natural magic; it comes into being when Liga attempts to kill herself, and when the two girls almost throw themselves off the same cliff. It is based in that cliff in both worlds (the real and the heaven-world); it’s a feature of the landscape. It’s also part of a larger system that regulates the passage of people between worlds—between life and death, but also between the heaven-world and the real world. Its natural instinct is to preserve life and set things to rights, which is why it saves Liga and the girls and, rather than allowing Bear/Ramstrong to crash to his death on the rocks below, sends him back to the real world. 9. Why did you switch narratives throughout Tender Morsels? How did you determine whose viewpoints to present? Was it deliberate that the two voices featured in first-person were those of men?
I imagined Liga as the central character, but I allowed myself to follow storylines that only occasionally intersected with hers, to show the workings of the magic that she was never going to be able to see; it was also to keep things interesting—someone spending 25 years in heaven is not the most gripping story! So, to show the story of that heaven’s being compromised, I used the viewpoints of the men who intruded into it, intentionally (Collaby Dought) or accidentally (Ramstrong). In the first draft, I also told the story of the Teasel Wurledge bear from his own point of view, but as part of the revision, to develop Branza’s story, I changed all his scenes that she shared to her point of view, and took out his solo scenes. Yes, all the men’s stories are presented in first person, all the women’s in third. I wanted to make a subtle point about how the men are comfortable imagining themselves as the heroes of their own story, whereas the women always feel themselves to be part of a bigger story that is more significant than their own lives. They see themselves as acted upon, rather than choosing the direction of their own lives. 10. The many intricacies you offer about the different worlds and the powers that govern them have really put our brains into overdrive! Perhaps you could clarify a few details? For one, if Branza is the only one allowed in Wolf’s dream (as the locket-opener), how can the others in the room witness it, as well? Another reader wondered how Urdda is ultimately capable of manipulating her magic, once she meets with Miss Dance.
That’s an interesting question about the locket. Let me think, now. It’s Branza’s dream, rather than Wolf’s—does that help? It’s a dream that Urdda induced her to have, by remote control magic from Rockerly, so that Urdda could capture it in the locket. We see this locket-opening scene from Branza’s viewpoint, so that everyone else in the room seems to turn into trees and bits of forest around her. I’d never really thought about what the others in the room were seeing, but I assume that each one experienced the dream as if only she or he and Branza were present in it, and all the other observers disappeared into the background. I think what would happen is, if any person but Branza opened the locket, nothing would happen; if Branza opened it, anyone who was in the room with her would also witness the dream. As for Urdda’s training, I really don’t know what Miss Dance teaches her—that would be secret witches’ business. But the idea is Miss Dance is a properly trained witch; she doesn’t know everything about the magic in this world (nobody does), but she knows how to use her powers responsibly, and how not to make messes such as Muddy Annie created. 11. We’re curious about your choice of words in Tender Morsels. The narrative is rich with poetry and a sense of rhythm that’s outstanding. Sometimes, even, we observed words that we’ve never seen before—like “frighteningest” as opposed to “most frightening,” for example. How did you shape this unusual dialect?
Thank you! I’m delighted you found it rich and rhythmical! I wanted it to carry people along the way an old tale does, a tale that started life as an oral tale, told around a hearth at night. Also, because the story is so long, for both my own sake and the reader’s I wanted to have a variety of voices; people who spoke correctly (Liga and her daughters, Miss Dance), people who spoke less correctly but more colorfully (Annie, Collaby, Bullock) and people who were somewhere in the middle (Ramstrong). It’s the people who speak less correctly who make up new words, and these made-up words are the sorts of words my two sons used to create when they were learning to speak, which my family still use, words like “instressing” for “interesting.” There are also simple mispronunciations arising from not knowing how a word is spelt (as when Annie talks about “transmoggerfercations” for “transmogrifications”) or from not caring and being in a hurry (“Take it offer me, then”, says Bullock). 12. We’ve read online that you live in Australia. Does Tender Morsels reflect local Australian stories or superstitions? How do you think we, as American readers, differ from your readers in Australia?
Tender Morsels has nothing at all that is characteristically Australian about it; it’s rooted in European cultures, the fairy tales that white people brought with us when we came (or were sent) to Australia. Hmm, differences between U.S. and Australian readers? Well, we share the same heritage of old tales. But there’s still the sense of Australia being, culturally as well as geographically, on the world’s periphery, whereas it’s hard to deny that the U.S. is kinda close to the center, if not actually the center. There are many thousands of ways this affects us; I don’t know that it affects us as readers any more than it affects us generally. And in terms of this book, I think there’d be very little difference in readers’ responses, because the story deals with themes that relate to Western culture generally, not specific nations; it’s about the way women and men get along, and parents and children, and families and communities. 13. How, in general, do you create your characters? Are they ever inspired by people you know, or know about? Are they at all derived from characters in folktales, like “Snow White and Red Rose”? How do you come up with the names of your characters? Of those in Tender Morsels, with whom do you identify most?
I don’t have a particular template that I use when creating characters, or a particular process. Some of them arrive on the back of someone’s overheard remark, when I decide that the remark represents a whole way of speaking or being that I can use. The Tender Morsels characters arose in reaction to, and rebellion against, the “Snow White and Rose Red” characters. Liga came first, struggling in the snow over the afterbirth of her first miscarriage, miserable and abject and yet strangely self-contained and complete in herself—she’s a reaction to the super-nice widow of the Grimm tale, who was so absolutely colorlessly good. Several other characters have arisen from people I’ve read about in the paper; a newspaper interview sometimes provides just the right quotation or set of characteristics or activities to suggest a story-sized character. And for the rest, yes, I’m sure they’re inspired by people I know or have heard of, but it’s not often that I can point to a character and say that the whole of them is based on the whole of this person in the real world. Generally they arise from the years of thinking about and comparing different aspects of the people I’ve known and met. From this kind of sludge of experience, the idea, which will be something as vague as “Snipers killing off clowns,” will call up the appropriate person with whom to illuminate or enact itself. Often the first thing I’ll know about a character is something they’ve said. I went back to find the very first piece of writing I did on Tender Morsels, and I found that it was Liga, shouting to her father through the cottage door: “Let me out, let me out, or I will shit on the floor of your house!” Which is a fairly clear announcement of her inner strength, even though she’s in the midst of one of many humiliating episodes. As to my identifying with the characters in this novel, they all feel like different slivers of myself, carved off and given independent life. I think the ones I enjoyed writing the most were Annie and Collaby; every time I put Annie in a scene she would surprise me with the rude, funny things she said. And that wastrel Collaby Dought—he was one of those maddening but intriguing people whose energy and refusal to be discouraged you can’t help but admire.
14. Whom did you intend to be the protagonist in Tender Morsels? Most of us agree that Liga is the main character—yet she seems, in many readers’ opinions, to undergo the least significant change throughout the novel. We certainly felt sorry for her, and we cheered for her when she is granted her heaven. But Liga never conquers her inner struggle to accept reality on her own. In this sense, she does not embody the heroism we tend to associate with protagonists. How would you respond to this claim?
Oh, Liga’s no hero. I don’t think protagonists necessarily have to be heroes. She is definitely a reactive personality rather than a proactive one; even her most independent work, getting herself trained as a seamstress, is a result of her being offered to be taught, rather than her asking. I wouldn’t say that Liga doesn’t accept reality. She does accept a whole lot of unpleasant reality before she gets to go to heaven. And then, for the sake of her daughters, she accepts the necessity of returning to the real world, and once there she makes a pretty good fist of real life, setting up her own business (not unassisted, but she does do the work necessary) and weaving herself back into the community. She may not serve on the church committee or anything, but she does go to the Midsummer Dance, and summon up the courage to dance (again, on someone else’s invitation/prompting). And right at the end, the implication is that she is rewarded by seeing both her daughters doing so well. I think she’s “working towards the desired outcome,” as my sons’ school reports used to put it. She may not have achieved it quite as completely as Branza and Urdda have, but she’s well on the way.
15. We all liked Ramstrong (Bear), and some readers asked why he wasn’t introduced sooner. Why did the men appear as real bears in Liga’s heavenly world? How and why do Ramstrong’s feelings fade for Liga? How would you explain his affections toward her throughout the progression of Tender Morsels? Finally, why did Ramstrong eventually choose Branza?
I started Ramstrong’s story at the moment it was about to meet Liga’s, the same way I started Bullock’s. For a while I was dithering about whose story this was going to be, whether one person’s or many. But when I decided it would be Liga’s story, that determined the different points at which the others would be brought in. Only with Collaby’s and Annie’s stories do you see any of the secondary characters’ history, in the prologue, and that’s because what they end up doing contributes so importantly to the malfunctioning of Liga’s heaven that their earlier connection had to be made clear. The men appear as real bears in Liga’s world because the rules of her heaven dictate that there must be no sources of fear for Liga, and a real-world man would be a source of fear. Animals, however big and real-world predatory, are not fearsome in heaven, as you see when Ramstrong-as-bear visits the cottage for the first time, and Liga welcomes him in; the girls, unfamiliar with bears, are scared, but Liga is not because she now trusts her heaven-world not to present any dangers to her. Ramstrong is a good, loyal man; when he returns to the real world, still in love with Liga, he does what he can to get back to her world. When he realizes that’s not possible, he allows his affections to transfer themselves to Todda. He has two sons with her, which further cements his love of her, and takes it beyond anything he had with Liga. When Liga returns, not only is she an old woman (by St Olafred’s reckoning), but his wife and children are right there beside him; he’s not just Ramstrong now, he’s part of this family, and his affections are no longer his own to bestow or withhold as he pleases. He must take account of these three other people in everything he does. Then I take Todda away from him, and you can see what a cruel loss that is. Both Liga and Branza stay present in his life, as do Urdda, Annie, and a bunch of other town women. It’s possibly because Liga is just slightly more retiring and passive than Branza (whose experiences with men aren’t anything as embittering and cautious-making as Liga’s), in combination with the age difference (Liga is 40, Ramstrong 23), that she doesn’t win Ramstrong in the end. Branza is 26, only a little older than Ramstrong; also, Branza is clearly in greater need of protection from the world than Liga is, in greater distress at having to accustom herself to the real world—Branza really needs him more, and being a good, kind, loyal man, he responds to that need.
16. Why, once Liga and her daughters re-entered the real world, was it important to include revenge against the men who raped her? Moreover, was the nighttime assault on the rapists meant to serve justice on Liga’s behalf or on Urdda’s?
I knew that Liga would never attempt any kind of retribution for what was done to her. I also knew Urdda would be the kind of person to question her mother about her real-world past. And once she knew what had happened, she was too passionate a person to do nothing in response. Putting the gang-sodomy scene in served two purposes: it allowed for Liga to be avenged in a way that satisfied the reader and Urdda, and it showed, again, the damage that undisciplined magic arising straight from unregulated passion could do, so it gave me the final step in Urdda’s story, to send her away to learn how to control her newfound powers.
17. It seemed to some teens that Urdda is the only character who achieves her goal by the end of Tender Morsels. Why only Urdda? Would you argue that she’s not alone in getting what she wants at the novel’s finish?
Oh yes, I think all three women get something of what they want. Liga does get a safe world in which to raise her children; she may not win Ramstrong, but it’s perfectly imaginable that some other suitable man might come along in future; she’s still a good catch! Also, she makes a career for herself, which was unimaginable to her as a teenager, so she ends up in prosperity, with a respectable place in St Olafred’s society. Branza gets a life where she is protected and can put her caring nature to good use in raising Ramstrong’s children, and no doubt, in time, bearing and raising some of her own.
18. What makes Tender Morsels a book for young adults and not a book for adults, only? Some readers suggested that scenes in this book were much more graphic than what they’ve read in most adult books! Is it true that Tender Morsels is marketed as an adult book in other countries? What classifies young adult literature, in your opinion?
Yes, Tender Morsels is being published as an adult book here in Australia . I have spent quite a lot of my publishing life on this blurry line between adult and YA literature; all I can say is that sometimes my stories definitely fall to one side or the other, and sometimes publishers can’t make up their minds what it is I’ve written! I’m very happy to go with whatever market they decide they’re aiming at. I’m not sure what defines young adult literature. It’s usually about young adults; it often deals with issues associated with coming-of-age and establishing one’s place in the world. It can usually be relied on to have an interesting plot, which is not always the case with adult literature, which is allowed to be just internal musings. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to confine it any further; young adult literature is the literature that parents, librarians, and schools offer to young adults, thinking they might find it rewarding—whether it’s graphic novels, literary classics, or targeted stories about teens.
19. What does it take to be an author? When did you decide you wanted to write books? We’d love for you to describe your writing process. When you get an idea for a novel, do you research background information? Do you follow an outline, or does the story play out organically as you go along? Do you write on a computer, typewriter, or freehand? Do you ever get writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it?
It takes persistence and an absolutely pigheaded determination not to let anyone deter you from your goal to be an author. I decided I wanted to write books in my late 20s—I’d written poetry up to that point, and I really wanted the writing to flow more generously, to cover page after fascinating page, and to have a storyline that would suck people in and keep them reading. My writing process is a bit all over the place. I don’t usually start with research; I usually write a few scenes just to explore the idea, which gives me a sense of whether I need to research, and if so, how much. With Tender Morsels, I paused occasionally to sort out the order of scenes and make notes towards scenes still to be written, but I tried to keep the process very loose and free, because I’d ruined several novels I’d attempted by trying too hard to hold them to their plans. I was allowed to go back and rewrite scenes from different points of view, and also to play around with storylines that might not end up being part of the novel. When the three editors (Australian, U.S. , and U.K.) came back to me with editorial advice, I assessed what they were telling me and then I went off and rewrote quite a lot of the novel; it definitely changed shape between the second and third drafts. And I had to feel comfortable about that, not hold onto any story element too tightly, but be prepared to cut away stuff, and then replace it with new material. I write longhand, on A4 pads of bank paper, which is quite flimsy—it has the right draft-y feel, all temporary and disposable! When I’m in full flow on a first draft, I try to write 10 pages a day, which amounts to about 3000 words. I only type it up when I’ve got 3–4 chapters completed. I’ve discovered that when I stall on a story it’s because I went off-track just before I stopped writing. The longer I write, the easier it is to spot when I’m heading in the wrong direction. It used to be that I could write whole chapters before I realized I was lost. Now I can almost feel it as I do it, and when I find myself hemming and hawing and chewing the end of my pen, often I discover that I took the previous paragraph in a not very interesting, or a not very relevant direction.
20. What kinds of books do you enjoy reading now—fantasy, historical fiction, nonfiction? What did you read as a teenager?
These days I like reading good prose. I don’t mind if that’s in a biography, a history or a novel for adults, YA or children’s. I also find I’m better at reading nonfiction books (guides to birds and trees, dictionaries and books about society, culture and psychology) than I used to be, and worse at reading poetry than I used to be, although I go over to the Poetry Daily Web site every several days and read the poem. As a teenager I read mostly novels. Young adult literature was a much less developed category than it is now, although I remember some good teen books—Paul Zindel’s The Pigman and My Darling My Hamburger and K. M. Peyton’s Pennington books. I remember discovering Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy in my local library, and swimming in that world for a while. I also read Tolkein and Watership Down, Dune, and Alan Garner and William Mayne. Hundreds of other books that don’t come to mind unprompted! We were all big readers in my family, but we tended to read what we enjoyed rather than feeling obliged to know canonical works. Part of my reason for studying English Literature at university was to be made to read books that I otherwise wouldn’t have the discipline to tackle.
21. Many readers have recognized a common theme in your books—evident in Tender Morsels and your short story collection, Red Spikes—by which you’ve demonstrated a dark view of the world, and then counteracted it with examples of redeeming human nature. Is this deliberate? Do you believe your books follow recurring themes?
No, I don’t think I’m consciously pointing out darkness and light. Certainly I’m not trying to say that human beings neutralize their bad behavior with their good; the most I would be saying is that these behaviors coexist. I do find myself exploring the same sort of territory over and over again, finding the same sorts of points of view attracting me again and again. Some of the recurring thematic concerns in my stories are: taking responsibility for your life, for your actions; progressing from ignorant bliss to a state closer to awareness and, sometimes, wisdom; power equations and how they operate between people; the experience of inhabiting a physical body.
22. Finally, what message would you like readers to take away with after reading Tender Morsels?
No message. I’d like to think they’d look up from the last page, shake themselves, and find it hard to come back to the real world. I’d like to think that for the next several days, questions that were touched off by the novel would keep being brought back to their minds, such as: What is heaven? What was that dwarf supposed to symbolize? Why can’t I have a Wolf of my own? I’d like the smell of moss and bear-fur, water and earth, to hang about them for a while afterwards, and the stink of magic.
* * * * * Thanks to the following Teen Book Groups for participating! Chicago Public Library – Chinatown Branch Chicago, IL Grand Junction Book Club Grand Junction, CO Harold Washington Library Center Chicago, IL Newark High School Book Club Newark, DE
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“Scintillates,
titillates and altogether wows.”— Kirkus Reviews, Starred
