The Poison Girl

It's 1973. Bice Rappa's mother is dead, her older brother has disappeared, and her controlling father barely lets her leave their house in Queens. As he reads books on horticulture and dissects the bodies of birds, she dreams of going to school-that is, until she finds out that the man who is raising her has made her poisonous.

For Bice, escaping home means befriending an orphaned daredevil, charming the donor coordinator at a Manhattan fertility clinic, and becoming the single mother of a baby named Mari. For her brother, it means living in a windowless room in an artist commune where he struggles with obsessive fears of climate crisis and death. Against the apocalyptic backdrop of Y2K, their father will want nothing more than to track down-and abduct-his only grandchild. When the Rappas' paths cross again, will Bice and her daughter be able to protect each other?

A contemporary gothic retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter," The Poison Girl follows three generations of girls and women through New York City as they navigate experiences of diaspora and neurodivergence, patriarchal architectures, and environmental violence.

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The Poison Girl

It's 1973. Bice Rappa's mother is dead, her older brother has disappeared, and her controlling father barely lets her leave their house in Queens. As he reads books on horticulture and dissects the bodies of birds, she dreams of going to school-that is, until she finds out that the man who is raising her has made her poisonous.

For Bice, escaping home means befriending an orphaned daredevil, charming the donor coordinator at a Manhattan fertility clinic, and becoming the single mother of a baby named Mari. For her brother, it means living in a windowless room in an artist commune where he struggles with obsessive fears of climate crisis and death. Against the apocalyptic backdrop of Y2K, their father will want nothing more than to track down-and abduct-his only grandchild. When the Rappas' paths cross again, will Bice and her daughter be able to protect each other?

A contemporary gothic retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter," The Poison Girl follows three generations of girls and women through New York City as they navigate experiences of diaspora and neurodivergence, patriarchal architectures, and environmental violence.

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The Poison Girl

The Poison Girl

by Suzanne Manizza Roszak
The Poison Girl

The Poison Girl

by Suzanne Manizza Roszak

Paperback

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Overview

It's 1973. Bice Rappa's mother is dead, her older brother has disappeared, and her controlling father barely lets her leave their house in Queens. As he reads books on horticulture and dissects the bodies of birds, she dreams of going to school-that is, until she finds out that the man who is raising her has made her poisonous.

For Bice, escaping home means befriending an orphaned daredevil, charming the donor coordinator at a Manhattan fertility clinic, and becoming the single mother of a baby named Mari. For her brother, it means living in a windowless room in an artist commune where he struggles with obsessive fears of climate crisis and death. Against the apocalyptic backdrop of Y2K, their father will want nothing more than to track down-and abduct-his only grandchild. When the Rappas' paths cross again, will Bice and her daughter be able to protect each other?

A contemporary gothic retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter," The Poison Girl follows three generations of girls and women through New York City as they navigate experiences of diaspora and neurodivergence, patriarchal architectures, and environmental violence.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781963908398
Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil
Publication date: 12/01/2024
Pages: 226
Sales rank: 325,254
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Suzanne Manizza Roszak is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry whose work has appeared in ANMLY, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, failbetter, New Letters, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection Sicilianas won the 2022 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize from Bordighera Press and was first finalist for the North American Poetry Book Award. Raised in rural northeastern Connecticut and a longtime resident of New York City, Suzanne currently lives in Groningen, the Netherlands. Suzanne holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine and a PhD in comparative literature from Yale.
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