"The youngest siren sister, Ceto is weary of an existence driven by hunger, no better than a fish. She trades her tail for legs, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter—only to find domesticity as suffocating as the sea. Craving more, Ceto flees with her daughter Naia back to the ocean, where she reinvents herself as the star of a mermaid burlesque, performing in a lavish tank carved into the limestone cliffs above the waves.
At Sirenland, Ceto's sensual performances and the erotic allure of her trained sirens transform the seaside attraction into a national sensation—a glittering empire where spectacle, desire, and female power reign. But as Naia comes of age and begins to question her mother's vision, the boundary between empowerment and exploitation grows dangerously thin. When a shocking death rocks Sirenland, Ceto's rule is threatened, and mother and daughter must reckon with the cost of performance on their already tenuous bond.
Bind Me Tighter Still is a lush, provocative exploration of power, sex, sacrifice, and motherhood—a celebration of female strength in a world determined to tame it."
"“In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks,” said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealized alternative. The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are each about girls and women who cross this threshold seeking liberation from family responsibilities, from societal expectations, from their own minds. A girl born with feathers undertakes a quest for the mother who abandoned her. An indecisive woman drinks Foresight, only to become stymied by the futures branching before her. A proofreader cultivates a cage-fighting alter ego. A woman becomes psychologically trapped in her car. A girl acts on her desire for a childhood friend as a monster draws closer to shore. A widow invites a bear to hibernate in her den. Animal Wife was selected as the winner of the Red Hen Fiction Award by New York Times bestselling author Ann Hood, who says “From the first sentence Animal Wife grabbed me and never let go. Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, it made me dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women.”"
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