One week on: 2 starred reviews, 1 best of the year

Tue 18 Nov 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Young Woman in a Garden: Stories cover - click to view full sizeIt’s been a great first week for Delia Sherman’s first collection, Young Woman in a Garden. It already had a starred review from Publishers Weekly but then just before pub date, it was selected as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year. Yay! Then we found out that in the current issue of Library Journal the book receives its second star! I didn’t find the whole review online, but part of it can be found here:

In this first collection from Sherman (The Porcelain Dove; The Freedom Maze), what seems ordinary consistently veers into the extraordinary and often downright surprising. . . . Ranging in length and style, these tales are captivating and odd, with characters and settings fully and memorably fleshed out.

More fun: Jason Heller gives the book a cracking review on NPR:

Real magic, right next door, indeed; each of the 14 stories in Young Woman in a Garden deals with some version of that equation, and it’s a testament to Sherman’s award-winning knack for fabulism that she pulls off such impossibilities with whimsy, dazzle and heart — not to mention a sharp edge of darkness.

Delia is reading in New York in a couple of weeks (more exactitude? On December 2 with Ellen Kushner) as part of the NYRSF reading series, this one guest hosted by Claire Wolf Smith.

Should you have gotten this far and begun to wonder where your next clickityinternetclick will be taking you, here’s a suggestion: one of Delia’s fabulous stories from this here book. Here’s “Nanny Peters and the Feathery Bride,” originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, in February 1990 and brought to you by the magic of The Internet Tubes.