Pricksongs and descants: fictions - robert coover

Pricksongs & Descants, originally published in 1969, is a virtuoso performance that established its author - already a William Faulkner Award winner for his first novel - as a writer of enduring power and unquestionable brilliance, a promise he has fulfilled over a stellar career.

It also began Coovers now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories.

In these riotously word-drunk fictional romps, two children follow an old man into the woods, trailing bread crumbs behind and edging helplessly toward a sinister end that never comes; a husband walks toward the bed where his wife awaits his caresses, but by the time he arrives shes been dead three weeks and detectives are pounding down the door; a teenaged babysitters evening becomes a kaleidoscope of dangerous erotic fantasies-her employers, her boyfriends, her own; an aging, humble carpenter marries a beautiful but frigid woman, and after hes waited weeks to consummate their union she announces that God has made her pregnant.

Now available in a Grove paperback, Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coovers remarkable career and a brilliant work by a major American writer.