Butterfly's Tongue

Nov 15, 2024 7:04 AM

Author:Manuel Rivas,Margaret Jull Costa,Jonathan Dunne

Butterfly's Tongue

In the summer of 1936, before the outbreak of the Civil War that plunged Spain into three tears of agony and terror, eight-year-old Moncho is beginning his first day at school. Butterfly's Tongue is about a friendship between the boy and his schoolmaster, born of their shared interest in animal and insect life. In Saxophone in the Mist a young musician discovers the meaning of music and of love in the face of a girl he meets on a foggy night at a fair; while in Carmina the boy listens as an old man relates how a village dog named Tarzan used to frustrate him in his attempts to woo his beloved.

Reviews

Queer is a stunner. A neglected work that became legendary in its very absence.

—— Los Angeles Times

At the top of her form, she is remarkable

—— Jane Shilling , The Times

Shockingly beautiful and painfully funny

—— Observer

The quality of the writing should help to explain Enright's having won the 2007 Man Booker Prize ... single lines and paragraphs are so well crafted, with such salty, pleasantly brutal sensibility, that these stories function like beguiling advertisements for Enright's novels. After sampling Taking Pictures, those who, like me, have not yet read The Gathering will likely move her Man Booker winner nearer to the top of the pile beside the bed

—— Lionel Shriver , Daily Telegraph

She's a sphinx, an alchemist, a literary witch who sticks a spell on you. Angela Carter and Ali Smith can do this too.... buy it, read it, it isn't realism, it's music

—— Scotsman

Every one of these stories takes you to a place you might rather not be in, but which you are drawn in to explore, allured by their dark brilliance

—— Hermione Lee , Guardian

Enright writes beautifully about the distance of desire

—— Financial Times

Dazzling ...These narrative snapshots are skilfully framed and in-focus, the language forthright and fresh

—— Time Out

This short story collection gives those new to her oeuvre a chance to delve into gems from her past...precociously vibrant

—— Melissa McClements , Financial Times

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