Gretel and the Dark

Granville's debut is a back-and-forth tale of secrets and imagination, deftly intermingling two distinct and seemingly unrelated stories of loss and redemption. A fairy tale prologue opens onto 19th century Vienna, where Herr Doktor Josef Breuer, a respected psychoanalyst, is stumped by a strange new case. A nameless and stunning young woman%E2%80%94Lilie, he calls her%E2%80%94claims not to be a girl at all, but a machine who yields no clues about her origin. Simultaneously, the story of Krysta, a pale and lonely girl some years later in Nazi-controlled Germany, unfolds. She spends her days home alone telling herself old stories while her physician father visits the mysterious zoo next door. When Krysta's reality becomes more frightening than the darkest of her fairy tales, Krysta retreats further into her imagination and begins to invent her own stories. Chapters alternate from Krysta to Lilie, and as truths shift beneath their feet, readers may feel the whiplash. Nonetheless, Granville weaves her two tales together through lush prose; her novel is both a thoroughly engaging journey into the darkest corners of humanity, as well as an illumination of the redemptive power of the imagination. And if Lilie's and Krysta's stories are any indication, it's the victors, indeed, who write history. (Oct.)