Rating: 
Summary: A new entry to my list of favorites
Review: For a book that's supposed to target high school age readers, I got no sense of that whatsoever with this. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy stories that are aimed at younger readers, but this tale is told with a mature voice and a graceful power that kept me entranced throughout, and had me going back to reread many of the passages. I finally finished this not long before writing these impressions, after spending five days with it, and perhaps the best thing I can say about The Wood Wife is that I didn't want it to end, and that I won't be reading another book for at least a few days. I want to live with the mood and the feel of it all for a little while longer. I wouldn't mind a few more novels of this caliber from Terri Windling.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!!
Review: I have never read "urban fantasy" before, but the moment I picked this novel up, I fell in love. Windling's portrayal of the southwest and its desert painted a clear picture in my mind and now I have a yearning to go there. I always imagined this area to be dry, sandy, with cacti and rattlesnakes, but she made me feel that something spiritual can be found there. I recommend this novel to anyone interested in fantasy, mythology & southwest literature.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!!
Review: I have never read "urban fantasy" before, but the moment I picked this novel up, I fell in love. Windling's portrayal of the southwest and its desert painted a clear picture in my mind and now I have a yearning to go there. I always imagined this area to be dry, sandy, with cacti and rattlesnakes, but she made me feel that something spiritual can be found there. I recommend this novel to anyone interested in fantasy, mythology & southwest literature.
Rating:
Summary: Magically enchanting
Review: In the Arizona desert, award-winning, gin-pickled English poet Davis Cooper drowns in a dry gully. He leaves his house near Tucson and his papers to tyro poet Maggie Black though they never met, but clicked through correspondence. Maggie leaves California and her talented musician husband to move into her new home. Maggie finds stanzas from unpublished poems and a gallery of paintings left by Cooper's lover, Anna Navarra. The paintings frighten and enchant her. Maggie learns from the natives that an unseen world of magic hides in plain sight of this mundane realm. Obsessing with a need to better appreciate Cooper and Navarra, Maggie begins digging deep inside her soul. The journey is mysterious and strange as she ventures beyond the time-space continuum into a magical orb where she will begin to comprehend how Cooper died among other enigmas. THE WOOD WIFE is an engaging fantasy that targets readers who like a little magic in their fiction. The story line beautifully yet seemingly effortlessly blends harsh realism of a remote part of the southwest with that of a reverie realm. Readers join the heroine on her journey of self discovery while exploring along side Maggie the magic endlessness of the unseen world seen through the heart. Terri Windling provides a triumphal tale that the audience will appreciate. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Magically enchanting
Review: In the Arizona desert, award-winning, gin-pickled English poet Davis Cooper drowns in a dry gully. He leaves his house near Tucson and his papers to tyro poet Maggie Black though they never met, but clicked through correspondence. Maggie leaves California and her talented musician husband to move into her new home. Maggie finds stanzas from unpublished poems and a gallery of paintings left by Cooper's lover, Anna Navarra. The paintings frighten and enchant her. Maggie learns from the natives that an unseen world of magic hides in plain sight of this mundane realm. Obsessing with a need to better appreciate Cooper and Navarra, Maggie begins digging deep inside her soul. The journey is mysterious and strange as she ventures beyond the time-space continuum into a magical orb where she will begin to comprehend how Cooper died among other enigmas. THE WOOD WIFE is an engaging fantasy that targets readers who like a little magic in their fiction. The story line beautifully yet seemingly effortlessly blends harsh realism of a remote part of the southwest with that of a reverie realm. Readers join the heroine on her journey of self discovery while exploring along side Maggie the magic endlessness of the unseen world seen through the heart. Terri Windling provides a triumphal tale that the audience will appreciate. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: magic realism in the southwest
Review: Our heroine, Maggie, is reeling from her divorce and drifting rather aimlessly through life--she considers herself a poet but hasn't written a poem in years. Then, her mentor dies mysteriously--drowned in a dry creekbed--and inexplicably leaves her his house in the Southwestern desert. She moves there, hoping to research a biography of him. At first, Maggie doesn't like the desert; it seems sterile, forbidding, devoid of charm. Then one night a pooka cuddles up to her in bed, and nothing is the same after that... Maggie soon discovers a world of magic in the desert (and we, the readers, discover it right along with her), and digs up some fascinating secrets about her mentor's life. And suddenly, all the pieces come together. Both a mystery and a fantasy, _The Wood Wife_ is gorgeously written and a good read. As a writer, I was especially moved by the discussions of whether or not Maggie was still a poet. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: Poems and Tricksters
Review: There is high fantasy, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, urban fantasy as admirably espoused by authors such as Charles de Lint, and this piece, which might be called rural fantasy. Windling mixes elements of Celtic myth, native American folklore, the rarified worlds of poetry and surrealistic painters with the desert setting of the area surrounding Tucson to create a well crafted work of slightly nebulous otherness, an evocation of the mystical, that will resonate with and absorb the reader. Maggie Black, journalist and sometime poet, divorced but still somewhat in love with her high-profile musician husband, is the main character. Maggie inherits the property of Pulitzer prize winning poet David Cooper upon his mysterious death by drowning (in the desert!). With the idea of writing Cooper's biography, she goes to his home located in the hills above Tucson. Once there, she is slowly drawn into the rhythm of life in the desert, finding beauty in the landscape and the local people, and gradually finding new interpretations of Cooper's most famous poems collectively known as The Wood Wife. From this prosaic beginning, the story slowly adds elements of the fantastic, as Cooper's inspiration for the poems and his lover's surrealistically painted visions of the creatures that populate the area becomes evident. Maggie's character is well portrayed, that of a somewhat insecure woman slowly finding her own self worth from behind the smothering light of her former husband, finding her own long-buried poetic voice, finding a way to deal with fantastic events and creatures while remaining a practical cosmopolitan woman of today's world. Cooper himself becomes a distinct voice, as we see many of the letters that he wrote when he first settled in the area and was drawn into the area's ambience. The characters of Johnny Foxxe and some of the magical creatures are not so well defined, in some cases merely sketched in for use as plot enhancers, and could have used some further development work. The descriptive prose work is excellent - it is easy to get the feeling and mental picture of the area, people, and creatures, while at the same time things are not over-described, allowing the reader to fill in his own mental picture. The eventual story climax is perhaps slightly disappointing, as it seemed to me to derive too many of its elements from fairly well known folk tales, and certain of those elements were really unnecessary, gratuitously added to fill out the story line. But this is a minor quibble to what is in general a very engrossing story that is quite different from the normal, well told, with a definite poetic air that is far above the typical fantasy work attempts at the evocation of faery. And there is a level of meaning beyond the straightforward story line, a fair amount of both psychology and the symbolic, that is also quite unusual in a fantasy work. Recommended for anyone looking for something different from the standard everyday fare that fills the book racks to overflowing.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing, Magic, Mesmerizing...
Review: This book was my first foray into the genre of mythical fiction and what an introduction! I'm hopelessly hooked. I loved the way Ms. Windling wove real people into her fictional story (Henry Miller and Anais Nin to name a few). The haunting beauty of the desert jumped out from the pages and gripped my heart making me want to visit the desert for the first time in my life. I'm a water person by nature (Moonchild) but long to see the desert now and experience it's magic for myself. This book is a poem. No other way to put it. Read it only if you're tired of the same old, same old and be prepared to be whisked away to a whole new dimension from which you'll never want to return.....
Rating:
Summary: A visit between worlds
Review: This book won some important awards, and its easy to see why. It's one of the best books I personally have ever read, and sure to open a door to faerie for any who read it. I would give it six stars if that were possible. It's a shame Ms. Windling doesn't publish her own stuff more often.
If you love this book, you may also be interested in works such as The Little Country and Forests of the Heart, both by Charles de Lint.
Rating:
Summary: A Surprising Find at the Library!
Review: This is a compelling book, with characters you come to care about. I found this book quite by accident as I was leaving the library one day. I was passing the last stack of Fantasy/Sci-Fi and saw a book by Terry WIndling, a name I knew but couldn't remember why. (Turns out she edited a couple of anthologies I'd read.) Anyway, I was in the mood for a more contemporary story and the dust jacket blurb drew me in. The first chapter would not let me go.
Windling builds her story with snatches of poetry, bits of native lore, scenes with human characters, and dreamlike scenes with faerie characters. But this is not a faerie story in the normal sense of the words, and the influence of Brian Froud (who also designed the world of "The Dark Crystal" for all you Jim Henson fans) is plain throughout the descriptions of the spirit creatures Maggie Black meets along her journey. This story is part murder mystery, part romance, part fantasy, and all about Maggie discovering who she is and who was the man who drew her into this place in the American Southwest.
I was drawn in quite easily, and I found myself wondering where this all was going, what would happen in the end. And after all, isn't that what should happen with all the best stories? My only complaint is that so much of the final solution to the murder mystery was left to the very end of the story. Sure, some foreshadowing occurred, and Windling certainly gives the reader opportunities to figure out other things (like the true nature of some of the characters), but the solution feels too much like a "deus ex machina". Still, it all makes sense, it works for the most part with all the other parts of the story, and the conclusion is indeed just that, a conclusion. The story rambled only a little, but her descriptions of the Rincons made me want to visit there and see if I could hear the stones speaking to me and see the jackrabbits and coyotes who are not always what they seem.
Another thing this book did for me: It reminded me how much I like to write. Like Maggie, I feel like my life has for a long time been lived for others, and my writing has gone by the wayside. Perhaps I can find my way back to it now. Thanks, Terry.
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