Breath and Bones Reviews "Riveting." —Library Journal "Hilarious, bawdy, and deliciously fun reading." —Barbara Hoagland, The King's English, Salt Lake City, Utah “Cokal’s storytelling blends the morbid and the titillating with imaginative exuberance. [...] Breath and Bones speeds along like the narrow-gauge railways that carry [Famke] through the West.” —The New York Times Book Review "It's almost impossible not to be amused, then intrigued and finally impressed with the heroine of Susann Cokal’s new novel, Breath and Bones....Cokal has a special gift for starting many of her chapters with lines that zing. Actually, each begins with some sort of quoted matter, but it is Cokal's own prose that arrests….At various points in its narrative, Breath and Bones elicits laughter, empathy, shock. But Cokal pulls our strings while maintaining a consistent, authoritative voice; she is sure of herself without being arrogant or chilly. Essentially, this is a book about art, flesh and spirit-and Cokal delves into all three areas of her inquiry with wit but also heart." —John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star “Breath and Bones, set in 19th-century America, is masterful in the European style rooted in great erudition. Cokal draws the reader into a literate experience that’s also a gripping tale in the tradition of great picaresque novels like Moll Flanders and Don Quixote. Like Moll and Don, her heroine’s adventures reveal as much about the social and moral structures of [her] society as it keeps the reader simply entertained. Cokal’s writing is splendid.” —-Southwest Bookviews "Cokal's rich language and ability to craft an intriguing tale and heroine will pull readers along as they hope for the heroine's happiness." —The Rocky Mountain News "A poetic, comic, tragic, and surreal story of art, love, and searching." —Richmond Magazine "A big, passionate fun book full of twists and myths and a great heart. Escapism has never been so intelligent, inventive, or (s)heroic!!" –-Sandra Scofield "[W]ithin it lies a historical richness that is Cokal's greatest strength, and which she used just as well in her first novel, Mirabilis." —Megan Milks, PopMatters "It's quite a trick, lassoing the literary bounty of historical fiction, the sheer oddness of what people did and the words they used, and lashing it tight to a clever, irreverent, a la page voice. Susann Cokal has pulled that off in her second novel, Breath and Bones. Her language is fresh. It's bawdy. It's laugh-out-loud funny in parts. And if it's historically astute, do we care? This is fiction for fun." —The Durango Herald "Another offbeat adventure from Cokal (Mirabilis, 2001), who sends a consumptive but dauntless Danish teenager across 1880s America in search of her lover…fun-in a kinky sort of way. An intriguing sophomore effort from a writer who definitely has her own unique voice." —Kirkus Reviews "This steamy historical novel (Cokal's second, after Mirabilis) chronicles the adventures-sexual and otherwise-of its consumptive, red-haired heroine, Famke, from her childhood in a late 19th-century Copenhagen orphanage to her fate in the American Wild West. [A] …literary bodice-ripper…" —Publishers Weekly "As a story, Breath and Bones is definitely unique. As wordsmith, Ms. Cokal is a standout. I literally devoured this book, enticed by her skill to keep reading from first page to last…Throughout, Ms. Cokal blends fascinating characters and locations, humor and history into a splendid tale of an amazing woman and her travels. And she accomplishes the telling of her story in grand style." —The Midwest Book Review "A quinta-sensual novel. [...] That Cokal makes all this work is a testament to her research, for much of Breath and Bones is based in fact (evidenced in the cunning headnotes); to her balance of the erotic and the esoteric; and to her ability to plot characters on a fibrous network—from invisible Chinese servants to a yellow journalist in a money-green suit to multiple wives who exchange ‘speaking looks.’ Cokal also has a ticklish sense of humor." —Pages Magazine " Give to insatiable fans of historical fiction..." —Booklist

back to Books