Maggie Black inherits a house in the outskirts of Tucson from Davis Cooper, a poet whom she has never met, but has corresponded with for years. Strange things start happening as she begins to sort through his belongings, the poems he wrote and the paintings his wife made before she died. Before long, fantastical creatures begin appearing in the woods, and these creatures seem to be the key to Davis Cooper. The beginning is slow, and the romance scenes don't always ring true, but once the fantasy starts, it DOES ring true, and makes a compelling and satisfying story. ( )

[The Wood Wife], by Terri Windling, exposes the often unnoticed beauty of the desert, and, with it, a hidden world of spirits and shape-shifters.

Maggie Black takes up residence in Davis Cooper’s home in the high desert of the Rincon Mountains, which frame the eastern range of Tuscon, Arizona, hoping to use the old poet’s papers to write his biography. As Maggie sifts through Cooper’s things, she begins to see the magic and beauty of the hard land around her. With this newfound openness, Maggie is introduced to a world of creatures that live in a borderland between the seen and the unseen, changing forms to reflect those who gaze on them.

Few people see the beauty of the desert. It is, after all, a hard place, bristling everywhere with spiny cacti and rough stone, all baked by a blazing yellow heat. The needles and rocks and hard earthen crust, though, are only an outer protective layer for a subtle and delicate beauty. Windling expands on that dynamic, creating a whole world of eccentric, colorful creatures, seen only by those who are willing to open their hearts to the magic of the desert. Seeing these creatures and interacting with them, for Windling’s heroine, is only the first step in setting her life on a new path, one open to unseen possibility.

Nearly all of Windling’s characters are driven by creative pursuits; they are either musicians or poets or artists. She is clearly at home in such a world, and the beautiful, haunting prose of the novel only echoes her own wizardry. Windling creates a fantastic world in [The Wood Wife] that doesn’t read like fantasy because she convinces the reader to walk a path of discovery and openness along with the characters.

Bottom Line: Fantasy that doesn’t read like fantasy; a plea for wild and unnoticed beauty.

5 bones!!!!! ( )

I have wanted to read this book ever since I read a review on LT describing it as a book that is about Southwestern myth, folklore and culture, an area in which I have great interest. That description, although not untrue, is only a tip of the iceberg and I was really unprepared for the experience of the book. I am not able to write a “review” of the book because in many ways I am still processing it and will have to reread it. For a great review I suggest you go to TadAD’s review .

Here are some of the impressions I have about Windling’s novel. I would describe it as a collision of “real life” with the myth and folklore of the American Southwest. In addition to the folklore the story handles well several other passions of mine, including music, poetry, and art. Both the “real” characters and the mythical characters are well developed, interesting and sometimes difficult to tell apart. The descriptions of the landscape are so vivid that the reader is pulled into the “place” as well as into the story. I may never use the expression “Words cannot describe…” again. Teri Windling has proven that, indeed, words can definitely describe so vividly that the reader can actually see it all.

Bottom line: I loved this incredibly fascinating book. It was an almost overwhelming reading experience that will stand up to several rereads because there is so much to explore and revel in. Highly recommended

BTW If you read it you will also learn why this is a great “Halloween read!” :-) ( )

I had remembered really enjoying this book from when I read it about 12 years ago. I had forgotten how much I liked it, enough that I'm nudging it into my Favorites list for this particular genre.

Windling takes the same basic American folklore stock as Charles de Lint and others have used and, like them, crafts it into a contemporary story where our world touches those myths. Coyote, Crow and other spirits walk just on the edge of our perception, seen only by a few. As is often true in folk tales, Windling populates her story with artists, their creative side drawing them closer to that other world and fragments from the works of Neruda, Borges and Rilke are woven into the tale, along with a bit of Windling's own poetry (which I rather enjoyed) as well as references to Kahlo, Miller and Nin.

There's a narrow path for stories that attempt contemporary fantasy. On one side lie stories where, despite the setting, there's no sense that it's really our world—Harry Dresden may claim to live in Chicago but...no...not really. To the other side lie those stories so rooted in reality that any magical elements seem intentionally to distort the tale. Neither is a bad thing; there are many enjoyable books written in both areas. However, because it's more rare, I enjoy a book that is unquestionably of this world and, yet, still has that sense of fey. This one does—there's never a moment of doubt that Davis Cooper was part of the hip scene in the 30s, or that Anna Naverra was an integral part of the Surrealist movement, or even that Maggie Black is a poet who has mislaid her muse in the commercial world of publishing. Yet, when Crow steps into view on the mountain, all I felt was, "Of course."

Part of it is the wonderful sense of locale that Windling creates. She lives in Arizona much of the year and her story evokes the beauty of the southwest, particularly the Rincon Mountains, rendering it seductive even to the non-native. By preference, I'm a creature of the American northeast, cool, well-forested, and abundantly watered. Yet, I couldn't help but be seduced by her words and want to go and experience the austere landscapes she portrayed.

The story she told and the setting would have been enough for me to enjoy this book, but I also appreciated in her distinctive vision of the spirits. If you imagine a continuum—someone like Jane Lindskold on the left with her mythical figures all too human, squabbling like the immature Gods of Olympus, through Charles de Lint in the center with his spirits otherworldly and remote but still capable of emotions we recognize, then Windling's creations sit over on the right. They are un-human in their concerns and motivations, neither good nor evil but amoral in the strictest sense. It felt chilling and right.

Is there anything I would change? Yes. I think some of the characters were underexposed, Tomás in particular. I would have liked her to stretch the ending a tiny bit, to turn the penultimate 25 pages into 50 and let us spend a little more time with the resolution. Yet, these are minor cavils and shouldn't detract from what I think is one of the better urban fantasy novels out there, one that really captures that fey sense.

I really wish she'd stop painting, stop editing, stop writing children's books, stop whatever else she's doing now and give us another novel such as this one. ( )

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I love it, love it, love it! I've written a very gushy review of it here:

http://the-spiral-path.blogspot.com/2... ( )