Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

Book Overview

In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for ... sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932961062
• ISBN13: 9781932961065
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A soul's pursuit - It's worth the time.

In Breath and Bones, Susann Cokal explores pursuit - of beauty, perfection, art, love, lust, survival and even death. Possessed by their own addictions, each character follows one after another that person they believe will fulfill the missing pieces of their lives. The repetition of the searching threatens to smother the reader until he or she falls beneath the surface of the plot to ponder the compulsions that drive humans toward that something they believe will make them whole. Cokal bids us ask - Are our perceptions and reflections true or merely creatures of our soul's pursuits?

"And thus she resigned herself to the one path open to her"

Art, science, sex, and the unstoppable geography of love, feature in this story of absolute Dickensian proportions. Set in 1886, Susan Cokal's gorgeously imagined Breath and Bones, is a sweeping saga, a giant feat of literary imagination that covers two continents and is told with a kind of breathy, wild, and unadulterated abandon. From the snowy streets of Copenhagen to a remote dust-filled Mormon settlement in Utah, to the rough-and-ready mining towns of Colorado and points west - San Francisco, the city of artistic and intellectual enlightenment, Breath and Bones is always compelling and never dull. Famke Summerfugl has recently been released from the Immaculate Heart Catholic Orphanage. Young, and idealistic, but also hard working, Famke finds employment as a house cleaner for a Herr Skatkammer. However, Famke is soon awakened to the possibilities of art and life, and is almost immediately seduced by English Painter Albert Castle. Offering to pose as his muse, and desperately wanting more "detail, more beauty and more of the world," Famke soon falls in love with the young artist. The affection is reciprocated, as Albert is absolutely besotted with her naked, and unabashed beauty; he likens Famke to a gorgeous Botticelli angel and vows to immortalize her stunning beauty in a painting. Albert's paints Famke as the myth of Nimue; it's his magnum opus and he believes it will be hung in the English Royal Academy's annual exhibition. He also hopes it will allow him to join the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, win him respect and commissions, and convince his father to continue the financial support. For Famke, Albert is her savior and hero, so when he heads to America, Famke, remains totally lovesick "and in love with all the passion and force and urgency and trepidation of her years." With an unusual blend of naiveté and courage, opportunism and single-mindedness, Famke fends off assaults on her virtue and sets off across the Atlantic following the no-better-than-average painter who has abandoned her. But America is not the land of hope and glory that Famke was led to believe. Mired with a bloody, rasping cough, that steadily debilitates her, Famke traverses a country on the verge of industrialization in search of her true love, her beauty and unadulterated loveliness steadily captivating the people of the West. Famke ends up in Utah, married to Heber Goodhouse, a Mormon, who wants to establish his fortune by farming silk worms. A Nordic soul trapped in the land of dust and heat, Famke plots her escape, frustrated and homesick, she never gets enough: enough air, Albert, and paintings. In Denver, she tries to convince herself that the huge, rough, rushing city of brick buildings and carriages resembles Copenhagen. The city emanated the stench that accompanied all flourishing enterprises: "coal, smoke, sewers, and carthorse dung." For this is the world of the Wild West, "a world of mutilated Indians, gun-holstered ranchers, and whole flock

A sexy, exuberant, beautifully written picaresque!

From its stunning prologue to the disturbing, shattering beauty of its finale, Breath and Bones gets under your skin. This sexy, exuberant picaresque takes you and its heroine on a fast-paced ride from Copenhagen to San Francisco via the wild west of the late nineteenth century, but each place it takes you is so immediate and vividly rendered it stays with you long after you close the book. Cokal's originality, humor, and extraordinary ear for language purge historical fiction of its fustiness and bring it to life.

(4.5) The uncharted territory of passion and art

In Denmark in the late 1880's, Famke Summerfugl finds comfort in the arms of her English artist/lover, Albert Castle, posing for him in a shabby garret, transported by his adoration of her youthful charms. Born in Denmark, Famke is left as an infant at the Orphanage of the Immaculate Heart, an early victim of the consumptive lungs that plague the orphans in that cold climate. The child is favored by Sister Birgit, who is in thrall of the flame-haired child from the start. In her eagerness to feed, baby Famke bites off the glass top of her bottle, tiny shards of glass cutting her tender lips. Sister Birgit delicately removes each sliver, forging a bond with the child that will never be broken. A curious and feminine girl, Famke's precocious nature unsettles the sisters of the convent and they are happy to release her to work as a maid and goose girl. But Famke isn't meant for such a life and when she meets an artist, Albert Castle, she enthusiastically joins him as his model and lover. When Albert finishes his larger-than-life painting of the idealized beauty, he leaves for England, then later on to America. Waiting for Albert's return, Famke falls on hard times. When the opportunity arises, she follows Albert to America. So begins a long and desperate search that takes her to Utah, Colorado, the New Mexico Territories, Hygeia Springs, California and finally, to San Francisco. Famke follows Albert's trail, always but a few steps behind, steadfast in her purpose. As the tale unravels, Famke is at the center of it all, suspected of cohesion with the infamous "Dynamite Gang", pursued by the Mormon man she marries, Heber Goodhouse, one of his plural wives, an enterprising yellow-journalist and a young man from her past at the orphanage, Viggo, a mortician's apprentice, who has been sent by Sister Birgit. Little does our heroine know that she is the object of all these searches, intent as she is on her own desperate quest. Only seventeen-years old, a wiser woman would be overwhelmed, but Famke is single-minded, bravely navigating uncharted territory in pursuit of her youthful fancy. Like a chameleon, she adapts to place and circumstance, but soon realizes the advantages of men, rather than an unprotected woman. Famke's drama unfolds as she travels America, leaving behind men who are obsessed with her, prostitutes who remember her in male disguise as Albert Castle's brother or the mysterious woman with the terrible cough of the tubercular, the bright red drops that spill from her fevered lips. The illness is part of the woman's unique attraction, emphasizing her delicate beauty, the contrast of white skin, fevered cheeks and titian tresses. Cokal has done a masterful job of blending the threads of Famke's life and love for Albert into an impressive canvas that covers the continents, from Denmark to the barren deserts of Utah and the pristine wilderness of the West, as it is eagerly subsumed by the advances of industry. The characters have not caug

amusing but extremely odd and dark look at the 1880s

In the latter half of the nineteenth century in Denmark, Famke was raised by nuns who cannot deal with the precocious rowdy child. Finally the sisters find her work when she was a teen on a farm. Toiling on a farm seems too boring so Famke takes off for Copenhagen. She moves in with an untalented English painter Albert and earns a living as a model and his lover though he performs worse in bed than he does with a brush. Failing in Europe, Albert returns to the States leaving his mistress behind. Missing him, Famke follows Albert across the Atlantic though to pay passage she "converts" to Mormonism so that a missionary will pay her ocean voyage tab even if that means becoming the third living wife. Landing in America, her trek continues cross country while her tuberculosis that she caught in the monastery worsens until she reaches the Hygeia Springs Institute for Phthisis in California where they promise a cure. The electrical treatments provide sensual pleasure much greater than Albert ever did, but the TB remains as strong as ever. Still following her ex, she catches up to him in San Francisco, but will they reunite. This is an oddly amusing but extremely dark look at the late nineteenth century as seen mostly through the eyes of a delightful hedonist protagonist. The strong cast provides a different perspective to the 1880s in Denmark and the United States then the audience normally sees, but it is fabulous Famke as a female Tom Jones (the novel not the singer) who holds the tale together. Susann Cokal is an author worth following with this strong showing and her previous powerhouse (see MIRABILIS). Harriet Klausner