Spinners
Donna J. Napoli
Dutton Books, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-46065-9 (hardcover)
This gripping novel set in long-ago
times explores the mysterious secrets
that weave together the lives of a lonely crippled man and an
innocent girl. Both are spinners, and each one is able to make
extraordinary yarns.
The girl spins at her wheel because she loves it, and she
expresses her artistic nature as well as earns a livelihood for her
and her father. The man also lives by what he spins, but he is
driven to it by a destructive force. For when he spins on a certain
wheel, pumping with his crippled leg, something so darkly magical
happens that he can spin gold from straw. He holds this secret in
his heart, a heart as twisted with bitterness as his deformed body.
In the way she limned the age-old tales in Zel and The Magic
Circle, and re-created their characters in a startlingly new way,
Donna Jo Napoli, with Richard Tchen, spins her own story of
the heights-and depths-to which love can take us. Wholly original
in its imagining, this novel is amazing, tantalizing, and horrifying all
at the same time.
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