The Lion in the Room Next Door Author:Merilyn Simonds A debut collection that follows one woman's journey from child to adult, through spectacular and enchanting landscapes, and through the darker, more mysterious terrain of the human heart. — As I turn, a man passes. Beside him walks a lion. Her fur is smooth, the color of deserts or sun-scorched plains. Though her paws against the carpet make no s... more »ound, I feel each tread, a tingling through the soles of my shoes. Her eyes, when she looks at me, are soft with secrets.
He presses the button for the elevator. The lion swings her tail and bends her neck to gaze back at me standing fixed by my own closed door. Then the brass gate folds open, and the man and the lion disappear. I stand alone in the long blue hall. A faint scent of feline. A memory of topaz eyes.
Lush prose and magical realism unite eleven stories of one woman's life in The Lion in the Room Next Door. A child embraces magic in a Brazilian hotel corridor and watches an angel fall from a white-hot sky. A young woman in Calgary finds her mate by the light of a candle of a particular shade of blue. A wife slips the bonds of her marriage on a beach in Mexico. A mother travels deep into a Guatemalan jungle with her adolescent son to unravel the mysteries of the Maya. In a desert canyon on the island of Kauai, a woman in middle age discovers just how much she is willing to risk.
Time and place coalesce in episodes of a life filled with danger, love, and wonder. Tantalizing and affecting, The Lion in the Room Next Door is a work of extraordinary imagination and beauty.« less