Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders
Julianna Baggott, 2015
Little, Bown & Co.
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316375108
Summary
The reclusive Harriet Wolf, revered author and family matriarch, has a final confession—a love story.
Years after her death, as her family comes together one last time, the mystery of Harriet's life hangs in the balance. Does the truth lie in the rumored final book of the series that made Harriet a world-famous writer, or will her final confession be lost forever?
Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders tells the moving story of the unforgettable Wolf women in four distinct voices: the mysterious Harriet, who, until now, has never revealed the secrets of her past; her fiery, overprotective daughter, Eleanor; and her two grown granddaughters—Tilton, the fragile yet exuberant younger sister, who's become a housebound hermit, and Ruth, the older sister, who ran away at sixteen and never looked back.
When Eleanor is hospitalized, Ruth decides it's time to do right by a pact she made with Tilton long ago: to return home and save her sister. Meanwhile, Harriet whispers her true life story to the reader. It's a story that spans the entire twentieth century and is filled with mobsters, outcasts, a lonesome lion, and a home for wayward women. It's also a tribute to her lifelong love of the boy she met at the Maryland School for Feeble-minded Children.
Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders, Julianna Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet, offers a profound meditation on motherhood and sisterhood, as well as on the central importance of stories. It is a novel that affords its characters that rare chance we all long for—the chance to reimagine the stories of our lives while there's still time (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• AKA—Bridget Asher; N.E. Bode
• Birth—September 30, 1969
• Raised—Newark, Deleware, USA
• Education—B.A., Loyola University-Maryland; M.F.A., University of North Carolina-Greensboro
• Currently—lives in Tallahassee, Florida
Julianna Baggott is a novelist, essayist, and poet who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She is an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts, as well as a visiting professor at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She lives in Florida with her husband, writer David G.W. Scott, and their four children.
Early years
Baggott began publishing when she was twenty-two. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel Girl Talk (2001) while she was still in her twenties. Girl Talk was a national bestseller and was quickly followed by The Miss America Family (2002), and then The Madam (2003), a historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You (2006) with Steve Almond, which became one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2006.
Books
Over the past dozen years or so years, Baggott has published some 20 books. Her 2015 novel, Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders tells the story of a fictitional writer's family searching for their mother's last book. Pure, the first in a dystopian trilogy, came out in 2012, followed by Fuse in 2013 and Burn in 2014, both part of the Pure trilogy.
Pen names and children's books
She has published several books under the pen name Bridget Asher—All of Us and Everything (2015), My Husband's Sweethearts (2008), The Pretend Wife (2009), and The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (2011).
She also writes bestselling novels for younger readers under the name N.E. Bode. Her Anybodies trilogy—The Anybodies (2005), The Somebodies (2007), and The Nobodies (2011)—was a People magazine pick, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girls' Life Top Ten, and a Booksense selection.
In 2007, also as N.E. Bode, she wrote The Slippery Map, as well as The Amazing Compendium of Edward Magorium That book was the "prequel" to the 2007 film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman.
N.E. Bode was a recurring personality on Sirius XM Radio for two years.
She penned two other children's books under her own name, Julianne Baggott—The Prince of Fenway Park and The Ever Breath, both in 2009.
Other works
In addition to fiction, Baggott has published three collections of poetry—Lizzie Borden in Love (2009), Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees (2007), and This Country of Mothers (2001). Her poems have been published in major literary publications, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Best American Poetry.
Baggott's work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Glamour, Ms., Real Simple, and read on NPR's Here and Now and Talk of the Nation. Her essays, stories, and poems are highly anthologized. She also writes haiku, which is one of her many passions.
Philanthropy
In 2006, Baggott and her husband co-founded the nonprofit organization Kids in Need-Books in Deed, which focuses on literacy and getting free books to underprivileged children in the state of Florida. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/5/2015.)
Book Reviews
Many things are hidden in Julianna Baggott's intricate, tenderhearted novel about a writer, her children and a legacy of loss. Love letters, folded into origami cranes that never take flight, are tucked under a mattress. A newborn child, mute and sallow, is spirited away from her mother and secreted in an institution. A young man supports himself as a professional hider of things, until he too must go into hiding. A wife is lost, a husband is lost, a mother is lost and so is a father. Indeed, an entire book, Harriet Wolf's seventh novel, has disappeared. And, like so many precious lost things, it may be hiding in plain sight. All this sounds somber. But in groping for what's lost, Baggott's characters also stumble across pleasure, joy—and recognition.
Dominique Browning - New York Times Book Review
[Recent] mania for literary treasures provides the perfect moment for Julianna Baggott's new novel, Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders. In a daring bit of whimsy, Baggott has imagined what it would be like to have written a phenomenally popular series, a collection of novels that everyone has read.... [T]he chapters narrated in Tilton's fairy-like voice are the novel's most interesting and creative. Baggott conveys her fragmentary understanding of what's happening as she responds to the literal meaning of everything anyone says to her. This is easy to get wrong; the risk of mocking a young woman with special needs is high here, but Baggott captures Tilton's oddness and charm with real affection. Hearing her internal voice, we can tell that she enjoys a rich imagination, seeded long ago by her famous grandmother.... As a novel about learning to love and forgive, Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders offers some sweet moments of reconciliation.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Julianna Baggott can do anything with words. Anything, I tell you.... Wonders is deliberately, playfully strange. It has been made scrumptious with oddities of every conceivable sort....Baggott takes the time to speak truly-about love, about books, about fame, about what it is to be alive.
New York Journal of Books
Julianna Baggott's latest novel refuses to be confined to only one genre. Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders is a captivating multigenerational family saga, a love story, and a mystery-tinged with a bit of fantasy.... Baggott's mesmerizing tale of the resilient ties of motherhood and the bonds between sisters will resonate with a wide variety of readers.
Bookpage
[A] bleak and gorgeous]y rendered dystopian tale.... Harriet Wolf is long dead, but rumors of a final, revelatory book left unpublished are still very much alive.... [A] narrative that delivers a powerful sense of the meaning of motherhood and the bonds between sisters.
Library Journal
[I]t falls to [Harriet Wolf's] family to puzzle out how to continue to live and love in a real world that is not as enchanting as that of her novels. Moments of heartbreak balance moments of hilarity in Baggott's ambitious portrait of a family created from equal parts secrecy and love.
Kirkus Reviews
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