Description
Book SynopsisMiss M., a pretty and diminutive young woman with a passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies and stuffed animals, struggles to deal with her isolation from the rest of society due to her extraordinarily small size. When her father dies, she must make her own way in a world that treats her as an entertaining curiosity, a momentary diversion from the game of making ones way up the social ladder. An elegiac, misanthropic, sometimes perverse study of isolation, de la Mare's prize-winning classic seduces by its gentle charm and elegant prose.
Trade Review'Here is a great book.' New York Times' It sticks like a splinter in the mind.' Angela Carter' For centuries to come this book will inspire imaginative people.' Rebecca West 'One of the strangest and most enchanting works of fiction ever written.' Alison Lurie Small things do come in big packages. Originally published in 1922 and just released in this new edition, Memoirs of a Midget is a faux memoir that details the life of the tiny Miss M., who ingratiates herself into high society only to find they view her merely as a curio. Resolving to claim her peculiarity as her own, she joins a traveling circus. In a mannered but limpid style, Walter de la Mare unravels his bizarre story with heart, finding a winning voice for his miniature creation. The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize upon publication, which put the author in the company of E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence, but in the literary world his stature has undeservedly remained, like that of his protagonist, diminutive. Keith Staskiewicz Entertainment Weekly 24th November 2009
