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Knopf
May 2008
On Sale: May 13, 2008
Featuring: Aslaug; Maren; Rune
416 pages ISBN: 0375851763 EAN: 9780375851766 Hardcover
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Young Adult
At once a literary novel and a psychological thriller, a novel of suspense and an intellectual puzzle, MADAPPLE draws the reader into a world where reality seems a puzzle in which the pieces are organic, forever changing: a world in which plants may be murder weapons; Roman letters may be runic symbols; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil may be the Norse tree of life, Yggdrasil; and virgin births may be commonplace. Told alternately in terse trial transcripts and in the atmospheric voice of Aslaug, a sixteen-year old girl on trial for murder, we learn of Aslaug's childhood of seclusion in rural Maine, with a mother who is at once pitiful, cruel and cerebral. Aslaug's mother tells her she has no father and teaches her daughter far more about mythology and botany than she does about the modern world. Aslaug knows of the God Odin, and of his secrets, and of the old crones who live at the base of Yggdrasil and who weave the tapestry of fates. And she knows how to use uncultivated plants for everything from food to soap to narcotics. And perhaps to poison. Is Aslaug the innocent she would have the reader believe, or a calculated killer? Only MADAPPLE will tell.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - July 20, 2008
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