The Fool and Other Moral Tales

Fairy-tale atmospheres and complex narratives are a hallmark of Anne Serre's fiction. A dream logic rules each of these unpredictable, sensual, and surreal stories: romps no doubt, yet deeply moral and entirely unforgettable ones. THE FOOL may have stepped out of a tarot pack: 'I believe in magic figures and distrust them - a figure observing you can turn the world upside down.' THE NARRATOR concerns the amorous and social relationships of a writer-antihero during his hiking retreat in the mountains: 'Outcasts who can't even tell a story are what you might call dropouts, lunatics, misfits. With them the narrator is in his element, but has one huge advantage: he can tell a story.' The power of fiction to trump the starkest reality is perhaps at its strongest in the last story, THE WISHING TABLE, a Rabelaisian account of the life of an incestuous family, told by one of three daughters who discovers the naked truth about her childhood, and the freeing power of art.