Julianna Baggott is the author of numerous novels, including Pure, which was a New York Times Notable Book in 2012. Her poems have been reprinted in Best American Poetry, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and on NPR's All Things Considered. She teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts.
Praise for Pure: "Pure is not just the most extraordinary
coming-of-age novel I've ever read, it is also a beautiful and
savage metaphorical assessment of how all of us live in this
present age. This is an important book by one of our finest
writers." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner "A great
gorgeous whirlwind of a novel, boundless in its imagination. You
will be swept away."--Justin Cronin, New York Times bestselling
author of The Passage Praise for The Madam "A poet has transformed
a piece of history into a luminous and epic piece of literature;
it's as if John Irving and Djuna Barnes had collaborated, each
bringing to the page the fiery best of their various gifts, the
dark and lyrical and bizarre and sexual and comical and violent and
mysterious and supremely heart-breaking spectacle of wide, wild
lives rendered vividly before our eyes."--Antonya Nelson
"Julianna Baggott can do anything with words. Anything, I tell
you... Wonders is deliberately, playfully strange. It has been made
scrumptious with oddities of every conceivable sort....Baggott
takes the time to speak truly-about love, about books, about fame,
about what it is to be alive."
--New York Journal of Book
"All stories worth telling are love stories, a character says in
Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders. This novel about a famous
writer's lost manuscript, the complex legacy of family secrets,
and--yes--a love story that unfolds across generations is
inventive, playful, and deeply affecting."
--Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of
Orphan Train
"[Recent] mania for literary treasures provides the perfect moment
for Julianna Baggott's new novel, Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of
Wonders. In a daring bit of whimsy, Baggott has imagined what it
would be like to have written a phenomenally popular series, a
collection of novels that everyone has read....the chapters
narrated in Tilton's fairy-like voice are the novel's most
interesting and creative. Baggott conveys her fragmentary
understanding of what's happening as she responds to the literal
meaning of everything anyone says to her. This is easy to get
wrong; the risk of mocking a young woman with special needs is high
here, but Baggott captures Tilton's oddness and charm with real
affection. Hearing her internal voice, we can tell that she enjoys
a rich imagination, seeded long ago be her famous grandmother....As
a novel about learning to love and forgive, Harriet Wolf's Seventh
Book of Wonders offers some sweet moments of reconciliation."--Ron
Charles, Washington Post
"A narrative that delivers a powerful sense of the meaning of
motherhood and the bonds between sisters."--Barbara Hoffert,
Library Journal
"An utterly original tale told in four distinct voices, Harriet
Wolff's Seventh Book of Wonders is an exhilarating melange of
heartrending loss, hilarity, and enchantment. Julianna Baggott has
indeed created a book of wonders."--Mira Bartok, author of National
Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The
Memory Palace
"Beautifully rendered, this story is as brave and unique and full
of surprises as the madam portrayed within it."--Elizabeth Strout,
winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Dazzling and ambitious, Julianna Baggott's gorgeously written new
novel explores the miracles born out of desperation of three
generations of women, all set against an astounding sweep of
twentieth-century history. Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders
is a mesmerizing tale of star-crossed love and of the dark secrets
in a fracturing family, but it is also a profound meditation on
stories themselves: how they create and trap us, how they protect
us, and how, even amid great tragedy, they can sometimes make us
bloom. This novel is so full of wonders that it leaves you haunted,
amazed, and, like every great read, irrevocably changed."--Caroline
Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
"Few writers of the twenty-first century can rival the verve, the
energy and the sheer delight in language of Julianna Baggott.
Profoundly different from anything she has done before, The Madam
is an extraordinary novel which will open a whole new phase of what
already looks like a brilliant career."--Madison Smartt Bell
"For Baggott, cosmic irony is always in the details, the absurd gap
between self-knowledge and behavioral excess ... [Her] brand of
witty psychological observation is dark and corrosive... [she] has
the knack for finding the oxymoronic in any situation."--New York
Times Book Review
"Julianna Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity
and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own
heart."--Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Julianna Baggott's devoted readers have long known that she is a
genius who can do whatever she wants. But with Harriet Wolf's
Seventh Book of Wonders she has somehow outdone herself. This
novel, about a woman who is stuck telling and living a family story
that someone else has written and whose ending has been (maybe)
lost forever, reminds me of the best work by the great Steven
Millhauser: brainy, self-aware, tender, full of loss, but also full
of grace and wonder. This is Julianna Baggott's best book, which is
one way of saying it's one of the best books you'll read this year,
or any other."--Brock Clarke, author of the national bestseller An
Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
"Julianna Baggott's latest novel refuses to be confined to only one
genre. Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders is a captivating
multigenerational family saga, a love story, and a mystery-tinged
with a bit of fantasy . . . Baggott's mesmerizing tale of the
resilient ties of motherhood and the bonds between sisters will
resonate with a wide variety of readers."
--Bookpage
"Julianna Baggott's richly imagined new novel is filled with
laughter and heartbreak, and--most wonderfully--with the bright,
pained release of stories, which flutter from these pages like
living birds."--Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point,
long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award
"Julianna Baggott's very winning Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of
Wonders is only incidentally about a lost masterpiece, a marriage
bound by string, and a lunatic literary family. Dig deeper and it's
about mothers and daughters and the conflicts and compromises that
amount to love."--Joshua Ferris, Man Booker Prize finalist for To
Rise Again at a Decent Hour
"Many things are hidden in Julianna Baggott's intricate,
tenderhearted novel about a writer, her children, and a legacy of
loss . . . The narrative Baggott has built might be described as a
post-and-beam structure, a framework of sturdy supports locked into
place with no nails, just fine, firm dovetail joints.Within it, the
four women who make up Harriet's family alternately tell their
stories, giving us a variety of perspectives on her 'gappy grasp of
the world" . . . As distinctively twisted as these characters'
lives are, they still touch our own in ways that can be
unexpectedly playful . . . By the end of Harriet Wolf's Seventh
Book of Wonders, much comes out of hiding. Healing cascades down
the generations. Harriet's 'truthful kind of lie' turns out to be a
gift to her daughter [Eleanor] . . . Eleanor and her daughters will
all find a new ending to their story, and remind Baggott's readers
of a gorgeous truth: 'The world is astonishing, mainly because of
its persistence.'"
--Dominique Browning, New York Times Book Review
"Moments of heartbreak balance moments of hilarity in Baggott's
ambitious portrait of a family created from equal parts secrecy and
love."--Kirkus
"Some novels are a lot bigger inside than out. Case in point:
Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders....[which] signals a quantum
leap....It took Baggott eighteen years to write, and that's
believable. This sprawling tale covers the entire twentieth century
and multiple literary styles. It is not dense, however, and it can
be enjoyed by readers who know nothing of deconstruction or
semiotics....Readers will be reminded of the work of John Irving
(especially Cider House Rules) with touches of F. Scott
Fitzgerald....One thing is certain: Nobody will be bored."
--Wilmington Star-News
"The bond between mothers and daughters spans all the way down to
granddaughters in The Seventh Book of Wonders. It's a beautiful
tale of how secrets in a family harm us, but they can also create
us, protect us, and help us to grow."--Samantha Darby, Romper (17
Books to Build a Stronger Mother-Daughter Relationship)
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NEW PAPERBACK BOOKS FOR THE BEACH -- Real Simple Praise for The
Seventh Book of Wonders: "Family secrets make for ripe hunting
grounds for novelists. In this evocative book, those secrets hide
mystery after mystery, like a set of Russian nesting dolls . . .
Baggott switches narrative perspective among the Wolf women as they
struggle with their individual issues, and you'll grow to care for
them all. No spoilers, but we'll say this: Baggott knows how and
when to reveal answers for the ultimate emotional
punch."--Entertainment Weekly
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