My Death
by Lisa Tuttle
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A widowed writer begins to work on a biography of a novelist and artist-and soon uncovers bizarre parallels between her life and her subject's-in this chilling and singularly strange novella by a contemporary master of horror and fantasy. The narrator of Lisa Tuttle's uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband, but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At show more once the answer comes to her: she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan's much-reproduced painting Circe, and the inspiration for his classic children's book, Hermine in Cloud-Land. But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most radical painting, My Death, deemed too unsettling-malevolent even-to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves an astonishingly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman's history and her own. Whose biography is she writing-really? show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This little novella tells the increasingly strange story of a recently widowed writer who, in wrestling with writer’s block, decides to write a biography of Helen Ralston, an artist’s muse/painter in her own right/author, after happening across a painting of Circe for which Ralston had been the model. Ralston was an artist whose work was overshadowed by the painter and author who was her lover. While this story explores the plight of the woman artist in a man’s world, it also looks at self-identity and at what it means when art speaks to us.
Though I’m calling this horror, it’s more just weird fiction—strange and haunting. show less
“I’d had no idea, when I’d huddled on my bed and lost myself in the mythic story and compelling, almost ritualistic phrases of In Troy, that its author was staring down at me from theshow more
wall.”
Though I’m calling this horror, it’s more just weird fiction—strange and haunting. show less
Such an interesting and weird novella. I loved how things progressed and changed. It's basically an "Old Dark House" mystery but that ending came when I wasn't expecting it. I love how ambiguous this story is. You could do a book club and have 10 different interpretations.
I'm not really sure how to describe My Death, except to say that it's entirely unexpected from beginning to end, and so strangely interesting that I read it all in one go - not that it's very long, but I literally couldn't put it down.
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121+ Works 3,660 Members
Lisa Tuttle won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1974 & is the author of numerous short stories & novels. (Bowker Author Biography)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- My Death
- Original title
- My Death
- Original publication date
- 2004
- Epigraph
- why must I write?
you would not care for this,
but She draws the veil aside,
unbinds my eyes,
commands,
write, write or die.
-H.D., Hermetic Definition
...a typical death island where the familiar Death-goddess
sings as she spins.
-Robert Graves, The Greek Myths - First words
- Why do we long to know more about the lives of our most treasured authors? (Introduction)
As I travelled, I watched the landscape - lochs and hillsides, the trees still winter-bare, etched against a soft, grey sky - and all the time my empty hand moved on my lap, tracing the pattern the branches made, smoothing th... (show all)e lines of the hills. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And when they do, who knows what they do with you? (Introduction)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I kissed her cheek. "Let's stay in touch." - Blurbers
- Gaiman, Neil; Hendrix, Grady
- Original language
- English
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Statistics
- Members
- 266
- Popularity
- 121,537
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.98)
- Languages
- English, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 4
