Demons & Divas: Three Novels

by Ursule Molinaro

For this trilogy of short novels--her first new book in six years--Ursule Molinaro drew upon a wealth of sources (including Balzac, Flaubert, and Hildegard of Bingen) to transform the grotesqueries of our time into timeless tales. Angel on Fire presents Clara Corvo, who was born with three peculiarities--a cloven hoof, phenomenal intelligence, and clairvoyance. Her mother finds her unbearable, and to escape her family takes a young student as a lover. When six-year-old Clara matriculates at Harvard Law School, an almost classical conclusion is inevitable. In twenty letters gathered for the pending canonization of Jacob Erskine Wooster, a picture emerges not of humility but of large contraditions in an ordinary man whose beatification is as strange as his life. Saint Boy is Diane Arbus in prose. In April in Paris, Molinaro spins Southern gothic into French embroidery. An American woman out of her element wherever she happens to be.

239 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Ursule Molinaro (1916, Paris -10 July 2000, New York City) was a prolific novelist, playwright, translator and visual artist, the author of 12 novels, two collections of short prose works, innumerable short stories for literary magazines and dozens of translations from the French and German. She lived and wrote in French in Paris until shortly after World War II, when she came to New York in 1949 to work as a multilingual proofreader for the newly formed United Nations. Just a few years later, having realized that she would stay in the United States, she made the decision to systematically retrain herself not only to write, but to dream, think, and speak, in the language of her new soil. In the latter part of her life, she developed a method for teaching creative writing that relied wholly upon the oral and taught creative writing at several universities and in her home until her death in 2000.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on who/what can be considered a demon and as well as a diva. An interesting read, but one that takes some doing, as the author has her own very distinct style and pacing. By working that hard to read, you immerse yourself into their world. And a strange one it is. Engrossing, I was relieved that the novellas were thankfully short.