The Jade Cabinet : A Novel

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Air is the subject of this last volume of Ducornet's Tetralogy of the Elements, set in Victorian England. (Apr.)

Library Journal

This is the fourth novel in Ducornet's brilliant and provocative tetralogy based on the elements--in this instance, air. The story is told by Memory, whose father, an eccentric natural historian, believes that her sister, Etheria, will bring forth the Primal Speech of Adam if she never hears a spoken word. Her resultant muteness and the etherial quality of her pale beauty hover over this magical, surreal tale. All the photographs taken of the two girls by their delightful neighbor, Lewis Carroll, are destroyed by the jealous Tubbs, a gross, abusive industrialist to whom Etheria is given in marriage. He violates her with a jade phallus, and, when he begins to raze her beloved gardens (they lack symmetry and are seen as unsafe), she flees. Etheria reappears years later as a magician named Zephyra--or so the aging, remorseful Tubbs wants to believe. Rich in subplots (e.g., Tubbs's plan to pulverize thousands of ancient ibis mummies into fertilizer and potions) and bizarre characters (a lusty harpy of a hunger artist who stalks Tubbs with a silver pistol), this lovely, exotic fiction is highly recommended.-- Ron Antonucci, Hudson Lib. & Historical Soc . , Ohio