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Start giftingThe Saskiad
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Learn more"A novel wise in the complexities of adolescence and the human heart." --The Washington Post
Longing to escape the rundown commune outside of Ithaca, New York where she lives with her organic-farmer mother, assorted half-siblings, and a cow named Marilyn, the precociously well-read Saskia White, twelve, imagines herself as the noble contemporary of Odysseus, Marco Polo, and Horatio Hornblower. But Saskia's elaborate fantasies are soon upstaged by her real-life, long-lost father, who leads Saskia and her best friend Jane on a camping trip that turns into an epic adventure of love, sex, and lies.
Saskia is as unforgettable as her own heroes, a young girl whose story resonates with a rare and joyous sense of life and discovery.
Brian Hall is the author of the novels The Dreamers, The Saskiad, Fall of Frost, and the forthcoming The Stone Loves the World, in addition to three works of nonfiction, including The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia and Madeleine's World. His journalism has appeared in publications such as Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
Reviews
Praise for The Saskiad:“A continual delight . . . exhilarating ambition and inventiveness, an American book of wonders.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Beautiful . . . Saskia speaks in a pastiche of received languages, most of them—like the shards of the Odyssey that crop up everywhere—grandiose, stilted, and unexpectedly lovely.” —The New Yorker
“Some books open at the touch like an enchanted door. So it is with The Saskiad, [an] inspired coming-of-age story.” —The Washington Post
“Richly imagined . . . lyrical and compelling.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Spectacularly inventive . . . [The Saskiad] uses the legacy of one generation to examine the power of history and the lure of the myths that shape us all." —Glamour
“The Saskiad manages, magically, to attain mythic grandeur while remaining entirely true to its contemporary premise, simultaneously an adventure and a psychological portrait, simultaneously vast and meticulously, beautifully detailed and observed. The key to this breathtaking balancing act is Hall's passionate imagining of the inner life of his extraordinary protagonist; her coming-of-age is charted unsentimentally, with real insight, compassion and wit.” —Tony Kushner Expand reviews