Stuff
Product Details
Simon & Schuster, June 2012
eBook, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1451656181
ISBN-13: 9781451656183
Description
“Something good can come from even the most terrifying things. For eve y thing that is taken away, something else is given.” Ruth Brennan is a giant, “a rare, organic blunder pressed into a dollhouse world,” as she calls herself. Growing up in a small town, where even an ordinary person can’t simply fade into the background, there is no hiding the fact that Ruth is different: she can see it in the eyes of everyone around her, even her own parents. James and Elspeth Brennan are emotionally at sea, struggling with the devastation wrought on their lives by World War II and with their unspoken terror that the daughter they love may, like so much else, one day be taken away from them. But fate works in strange ways, and Ruth finds that for all the things that go unsaid around her, she is nonetheless able to see deeply into the secret hearts of others—their past traumas, their present fears, and the people they might become, if only they have courage enough.
“With exquisite insight and boundless imagination, Kristen den Hartog takes me inside the soul and body of a young giant, letting me experience her bliss, her shame, her wisdom. Heartbreaking and exhilarating.”
-- Ursula Hegi, author of Children and Fire
“James and Elspeth, an ordinary couple, become a spectacle when their daughter, Ruth, grows more than seven feet tall. With a delicate and lyrical touch, Kristen den Hartog forces the parents to confront their buried fears in [The Girl Giant], letting the intuitive Ruth navigate the often-scary world.”
-- Elle (Canada)
“Den Hartog captures and amplifies the terrifying fascination all parents feel about their new child by placing Ruth at the centre of a family that teeters around her every issue (normalcy, beauty, growth, bullying, broken hearts, future hopes), all of which are monumentalized by the girl’s size . . . emotionally exquisite and heartfelt, and captures the madness of parenting in an utterly unique twist on the first-person point of view.”
-- The Globe and Mail
“[The Girl Giant]--inspired by Diane Arbus’s 1970 photograph of an American giant and the ‘triangle of mother, father, and child’--is a poignant coming-of-age story leavened by an endearing if vulnerable character whose world view is conveyed through inviting, effortless prose.”
-- Brett Josef Grubisic, Vancouver Sun
“Breathtaking . . . den Hartog works wonders with both the mundane and the extraordinary--we've read accounts of storming the beaches of France during the Second World War before, but the author's recounting is vivid and freshly startling. She can move a reader to tears as well as to awe.”
-- Winnipeg Free Press
“Both lyrical and appealingly nimble . . . an elegant, satisfying investigation of small-town Canadian life, teenage isolation, and the universal quest for acceptance. The fact that it stars a 7-foot-tall clairvoyant is almost beside the point.”
-- Edmonton Journal
“A touching and atmospheric story.”
-- Susan Swan, author of The Wives of Bath
