From Booklist
Since the day her father left her and her mother, Zorka Carpenter has been obsessed with animals. Not just animals such as dogs and horses, but termites, ladybugs, tarantulas, birds, and fish as well. Richard Dorsey was a famous young architect who never finished a project. From the day his girlfriend left him he has been obsessed with the year 1959. Through a series of coincidences and interventions, Zorka and Richard come together and try to overcome their mutual losses. This relationship takes place in a surreal world of talking animals, glass houses, and time travel. It is unclear whether Zorka is an unreliable narrator, or if she lives in a world of magic realism, but this charming first novel is perfect for book groups, who will certainly take up the question. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"[A] richly written tale." --US Weekly
"A whimsical and imaginative novel about loneliness and love." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Alex Brunkhorst suspends her love story in a web of bewitching whimsy. At once playful and heartfelt, this debut of an impressive imagination is a charmer." --Christina Schwarz, author of Drowning Ruth
"Welcome to an enchanted kingdom--a world where women talk to their furniture and bugs are household pets....The Mating Season is a rare gem: extraordinarily inventive, full of irrepressible humor and warmth. Alex Brunkhorst writes like no one else. Her voice is as welcome and refreshing as a cool drink of spring water. This beautiful book sparkles with charm." --Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller
Review
"Welcome to an enchanted kingdom-a world where women talk to their furniture and bugs are household pets. Written as a wildly entertaining love letter that was never intended for publication, The Mating Season is a rare gem: extraordinarily inventive, full of irrepressible humor and warmth. Alexandria Brunkhorst writes like no one else. Her voice is as welcome and refreshing as a cool drink of spring water. This beautiful book sparkles with charm."
-Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller: A Novel
"Extraordinary...Alexandria Brunkhorst's The Mating Season is a strange and gorgeous novel about the symbiotic relationship between loneliness and love. You can feel your heart expanding as you read it." -Joe Weisberg, author of 10th Grade
"Alex Brunkhorst suspends her love story in a web of bewitching whimsy. At once playful and heartfelt, this debut of an impressive imagination is a charmer. "
-Christina Schwarz , New York Times #1 bestselling author of Drowning Ruth
Book Description
Zorka Carpenter lives a life completely devoted to animals. In a glass house on a hill she spends her days absorbed in her menagerie. Enigmatic architect Richard Dorsey has spent his life trying to escape the fame he garnered in his youth. Living in a world of his own construction, he finds solace only in the past. When these two worlds collide in a magical tryst, both Zorka and Richard are challenged to escape their isolated worlds and find connection in the hearts of one another. Astonishingly inventive, Alex Brunkhorst's The Mating Season is a dazzling work of the imagination, and a piercing look at the human heart.
From the Inside Flap
"[A] richly written tale."---US Weekly
Zorka Carpenter lives a life completely devoted to animals. In a glass house on a hill she spends her days absorbed in her menagerie. Enigmatic architect Richard Dorsey has spent his life trying to escape the fame he garnered in his youth. Living in a world of his own construction, he finds solace only in the past. When these two worlds collide in a magical tryst, both Zorka and Richard are challenged to escape their isolated worlds and find connection in each other's hearts. Astonishingly inventive, Alex Brunkhorst's The Mating Season is a dazzling work of the imagination and a piercing look at the human heart.
"A whimsical and imaginative novel about loneliness and love."---Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Alex Brunkhorst suspends her love story in a web of bewitching whimsy. At once playful and heartfelt, this debut of an impressive imagination is a charmer. "---Christina Schwarz, author of Drowning Ruth
"Welcome to an enchanted kingdom---a world where women talk to their furniture and bugs are household pets.... The Mating Season is a rare gem: extraordinarily inventive, full of irrepressible humor and warmth. Alex Brunkhorst writes like no one else. Her voice is as welcome and refreshing as a cool drink of spring water. This beautiful book sparkles with charm."---Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller
"A strange and gorgeous novel...You can feel your heart expanding as you read it."---Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th Grade
Alex Brunkhorst graduated from Georgetown University. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she currently lives in Los Angeles. The Mating Season is her first novel.
About the Author
Alex Brunkhorst graduated from Georgetown University. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she currently lives in Los Angeles. The Mating Season is her first novel.
The Mating Season FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Zorka Carpenter never knew anything about love, though everyone around her seemed to. The experience turned her mother into a martyr as she waited and prayed to obscure saints for the return of her husband, who left the family when Zorka was only eleven. It took Zorka's friend, the beautifully poised and assured Zoe Christie, and made her a weepy, insecure adolescent. Zorka observed that even love for modern architecture had an effect on genius child Kris Tina Woo, who traveled the world obsessed with finding the alleged ninth Monument of the elusive architect Richard Dorsey." "So instead of love, Zorka seeks companionship in the strangest of places, befriending a fastidious termite, who offers her the consistent devotion her father, mother and friends have never been able to give. With this friendship, a new world unfurls, bringing a new family that includes insects, birds, fish, and rodents who are all considered damaged in some way. Living in a modernist greenhouse erected by her former high school classmate Kris Tina, Zorka spends her time cultivating her relationship with her menagerie and isolating herself from the world beyond." But when an enigmatic man, seeking to escape the acclaim he garnered in his youth, stumbles into her world, Zorka finds herself opening her life for the first time, leading her to discover places and feelings she had never imagined. With fragmented clues to his former days of glory, Zorka must piece together what went awry, while confronting demons from her own past and learning to let go of her self-contained life so that she may finally find love.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
A whimsical love story, heavy on the whimsy. Somewhere out west, a plain, lonely girl is having her 11th birthday. Poor Zorka. This is the day her daddy will leave home for good and her mama, who adored him, will start to go gaga. Her schoolmates are not exactly supportive. Kris Tina Woo, a Korean immigrant, has tunnel vision. She wants to be an architect and is obsessed with the career of the mysterious Richard Dorsey, who designed nine striking buildings around the world, all unfinished. Even less helpful is Zoe, a spoiled rich kid who treats Zorka like a servant. That leaves her with 310 human-acting birds, fish and insects for comfort. Anthropomorphism is tricky; it requires no-nonsense characterization. But Brunkhorst is tentative where she should be bold, letting her creatures fade in and out of the story. When Kris Tina, now studying architecture at college, invites her friend to live in her modernist glass house, Zorka brings along the menagerie. She loses Tarantula on a shopping trip, only to discover him resting on Richard Dorsey, who is enchanted with both insect and owner. So begins a lopsided relationship between the world-weary architect, now in his 30s, and the naive animal lover barely out of her teens. When Richard hugs Zorka in the greenhouse, the creatures give him a standing ovation. Yet the three strands of Brunkhorst's narrative-the love story, the creatures, and the architectural enigmas-never feel fully integrated. The prose becomes increasingly gooey as the lovers kiss ("his breath smelled of freshly harvested raspberries"), dance in puddles, and pluck stars from the sky. In this porous world where anything goes, their time-travel back to 1959 is just one morewhat-the-heck experiment. Whatever the year, their romance is doomed, for Richard is still haunted by his first love, who abandoned him and caused him to abandon his buildings. Brunkhorst's bizarre debut fails to transmute her preoccupations into art. Agent: Leslie Falk/Collins McCormick
Art & Photography
Book Info
