Black Spring

by Alison Croggon

Overview

Inspired by the gothic classic Wuthering Heights, this stunning new fantasy from the author of the Books of Pellinor is a fiercely romantic tale of betrayal and vengeance.

In a savage land sustained by wizardry and ruled by vendetta, Lina is the enchanting but willful daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood companion, Damek, have grown up privileged and spoiled, and they’re devoted to each other to the point of obsession. But Lina’s violet eyes betray her for a witch, and witches are not tolerated in a brutally patriarchal society. Her rank protects her from persecution, but it cannot protect her from tragedy and heartbreak. An innocent visitor stands witness to the devastation that ensues as destructive longing unleashes Lina’s wrath, and with it her forbidden power. Whether drawn by the romantic, the magical, or the gothic, readers will be irresistibly compelled by the passion of this tragic tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763667085
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Lexile:	1060L (what's this?)
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Alison Croggon is the acclaimed author of the Books of Pellinor and an award-winning Australian poet and playwright. About Black Spring, she says, “This book is my love letter to Emily Brontë, whom I've adored since I was a child. I was especially inspired by the free spirit and passionate music of her poems.” Alison Croggon lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Alison Croggon was born in 1962 in South Africa to English parents. When she was four, her family returned to England, and then migrated to Australia when she was seven, where she has lived ever since. She is considered a major figure in the generation of Australian poets that emerged in the 1990s, but writes in many genres, including criticism, theater, and prose. Most recently, with the publication of the acclaimed series The Books Of Pellinor, she has become known as a writer of fantasy.

She has published seven collections of poetry, and her poems have been published widely in anthologies and magazines in Australia and elsewhere. Ash, a forty-page chapbook was published by Cusp Books in Los Angeles, and a new full collection was published by Salt Publishing in 2008. Attempts At Being was short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and also was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the U.S. In 2002, 2003, and 2005 she toured the U.K., where she participated in the Poetry International Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London and Soundeye International Poetry Festival in Cork.

The year 2002 saw the publication of Alison Croggon’s first fantasy novel for young adults, The Naming, which was nominated in two categories in the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction in December 2002 and named one of the Notable Books of 2003 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Publication in the U.K. and the U.S. followed swiftly, with German editions published in 2007/08. The Naming was picked as one of the Top Ten Books for Teens in 2005 by Amazon.com. Alison Croggon maintains a writing blog on her website where readers can discover more about the Books of Pellinor’s creation and development.

Alison Croggon has written and had performed nine works for theater, including operas and plays, which have been produced at major international theater festivals in Australia. Many of her poems have been set to music by various composers, including Michael Smetanin, Christine McCombe, Margaret Legge-Wilkinson, and Andreé Greenwell.

She was the 2000 Australia Council writer in residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, U.K. She was poetry editor for Overland Extra (1992), Modern Writing (1992–1994) and Voices (1996) and is founding editor of the literary arts journal Masthead. She also has a passion for theater, and as well as running a respected theatre blog, Theatre Notes, she is the Melbourne theatre critic for the Australian, Australia’s only national daily newspaper.

Editorial Reviews

In language and pitch, the pastiche is spot on... Devotees of Brontë’s original work will still enjoy Croggon’s amplification of the story’s supernatural elements.
—Publishers Weekly

Brontë devotees will swoon.
—Kirkus Reviews

Beautifully written, emotionally intense, lots to think about and entirely deserving of its beautiful cover.
—KirkusReviews.com

An atmosphere dripping with gothic touches and a darkly captivating tale of heartbreaking, destructive passion. ... Readers unfamiliar with Wuthering Heights will stick around for Lina’s obsessive and doomed romance with Damek, but fans of Brontë’s classic will delight in the clever echoes of the original.
—Booklist

More than a story told in the style of Emily Brontë, this is a retelling of Wuthering Heights in a fictional land that hates witches and relies on wizards, vendettas, and blood money to keep its royal family in power. ... As a comparison novel for Wuthering Heights, this book would be a valuable addition for the high school library.
—Library Media Connection

The insistent power of the Gothic is on full display here, with the added dimension of the kinds of magic that appeal to contemporary teen readers. The language is challenging in the best sense, echoing the prose of its source text. ... [T]he world is compellingly made and fully immersive, and readers will be as attracted and repulsed by Lina and Damek as they have been for nearly two centuries by Catherine and Heathcliff.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

[A] romantic and magical tale with a gothic flair.
—School Library Journal

Goths of every era have found romance in darkness, and Croggon is no exception.
—The LA Times

From the Publisher

Cleaving to the sensibility of the original, this love letter to Wuthering Heights is for fans of genuine Victorian Gothic. On the Yorkshire moors–like Northern Plateau, city-born Hammel visits his landlord, perpetually angry and sadistic Damek. A dog bite forces Hammel to stay overnight. In his room, the ghost of long-dead Lina appears in a mirror. Racing back to his rented house, Hammel stays abed recovering while housekeeper Anna narrates what happened to Lina, Lina's adopted brother, Damek, and herself "so long ago" in their childhood and teen years. This is the Land of Death, where vendetta is the law of the land: Any man killed must be avenged within a precise time period by a specific male relative, and then that killing must be avenged in kind, and so on. Generations-long strings of dictated murders devastate families and villages, yet vendetta is "the ground beneath us," unquestionable, unchangeable and supposedly honorable. Damek and Lina's family (unlike Anna's) is exempt from vendetta due to royal blood, but Damek covets wealth, Lina might be a witch (punishable by death), and both crave vengeance when done wrong. Lina's beauty is that of "superb pallor" and "dangerously bright" eyes; only stolid Anna keeps anything steady. Readers seeking the warm, solid core of Croggon's Pellinor series won't find it--Damek and Lina's quasi-incestuous love is unbalanced and punishing--but Brontë devotees will swoon. For those who take their romance tumultuous and doomed. (Gothic horror/fantasy. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews