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Book Review of Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home

Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home
althea avatar reviewed on + 774 more book reviews


Scandinavian/Celtic myth-influenced tale.
The trilogy reminded me rather a lot of A.A. Attanasio's Arthurian fiction - a comparison I haven't seen elsewhere, but that I nonetheless feel is rather apt.
They take an unusual view of myth, playing with time and reality...
The first book, Yearwood, with its giants, heroes and witches could almost be straight from the Mabinogion. The second, Undersea, is more experimental, playing with multitudes of identities and the concepts related to how mythological figures and gods can be conflated over time.
The third, Winterking, is strikingly different - but, I thought, more entertaining - moving the characters and concepts into an alternate American of indeterminate (but more modern) time. An immortal man conspires to keep him immortality secret, while pursued by the keepers of his fortune, the women who may love him, and the god of death himself....