Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders

June 15, 2015
The life of Harriet Wolf, beloved (though reclusive) author of a series of fanciful novels, is clouded in mystery, and the rumored existence of the manuscript for a final volume provides grist for the mills of academics, fans, and family members alike. Baggott has written an often whimsical account of long-term damages set in motion by good intentions. Told in four unique, alternating voices-that of Harriet, her daughter, Eleanor, and her two granddaughters, Ruth and Tilton-Baggott's (Burn, 2014) gradual revelation of the meandering course of the enigmatic author's life is part fairy tale, part psychological autopsy. Overcoming an early and erroneous banishment to the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children, Harriet's tenacity in creating a charmed and charming life for herself, on paper if not in the flesh, is recounted in a series of episodes that span the 20th century. Her descendants' stories range from the bleak to the bizarre, but all take place on the stage Harriet created, and it's her legacy of secrecy and fierce familial loyalty that curses and blesses them all. What's hidden in Harriet's saga is as important as what's visible, and Baggott's tale is sprinkled with promises, secrets, pacts, and more than one case of agoraphobia. When a medical crisis reunites Eleanor, Ruth, and Tilton, the weight of Harriet's prescience is felt while it falls to her family to puzzle out how to continue to live and love in a real world that is not as enchanting as that of her novels. Moments of heartbreak balance moments of hilarity in Baggott's ambitious portrait of a family created from equal parts secrecy and love.

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March 1, 2015

Author of the "Pure" trilogy, a bleak and gorgeously rendered dystopian tale, Baggott here does something arrestingly different. Reclusive author Harriet Wolf is long dead, but rumors of a final, revelatory book left unpublished are still very much alive. Harriet; her fiercely protective daughter, Eleanor; and Eleanor's grown daughters, runaway rebel Ruth, and Tilton, now as reclusive as Harriet, share a narrative that delivers a powerful sense of the meaning of motherhood and the bonds between sisters.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015

Baggott moves from her dystopian trilogy (Pure; Fuse; Burn) to a tale of the legacy of family secrets told through the voices of four women. Harriet Wolf, an acclaimed author of six books of magic realism, which are studied by literature professors and venerated by the Harriet Wolf Society; Eleanor, the "gatekeeper" of her mother's legacy, who keeps the scholars and public at bay and denies the existence of a seventh book; Tilton, Eleanor's younger daughter and the only one who knows where Harriet's final manuscript is hidden, having promised her grandmother to release it only in a family emergency. A medical crisis brings older daughter Ruth, who ran away at 16, back home where they all confront the history of Harriet. The narrative weaves among mother and daughters, interspersed with Harriet's final words. Her legacy and her secrets, which she disguised in her novels, have deeply affected her descendants. Eleanor has an intense need to keep those she loves too close; Ruth flees; and naive Tilton is locked away from the world and living an almost fairy-tale existence. VERDICT This exquisite and haunting tale of mothers and daughters, love and loss, and fiction vs. reality will satisfy women's fiction fans. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--Catherine Coyne, Mansfield P.L., MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.