Novels
- Ghost Dance (1986)
- The Art Lover (1990)
- AVA (1993)
- Defiance (1998)
- Mother and Child (2012)
Non fiction
- Break Every Rule (2000)
- The Room Lit By Roses (2000)
- Beauty Is Convulsive (2002)
Novels Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Carole Maso Books Overview
The Art Lover
While her father and best friend are dying, a young American woman tries to find the limits of love and the power of art in the face of the inevitable. What is the power of art in the face of death? In The Art Lover Carole Maso has created an elegant and moving narrative about a woman experiencing and reliving the most painful transitions of her life. Caroline, the novel’s protagonist, returns to New York after the death of her father ostensibly to wrap things up and take care of necessary ‘business’ where her memory and imagination conspire to lay before her all her griefs and joys in a rebellious progression. In different voices, employing a collage like fragmentation, Maso gently unfolds The Art Lover in much the same way the fragile and prehistoric fiddlehead fern unfolds throughout the novel, bringing with subtle grace the ever entangled feelings of grief and love into full and tender view. Various illustrations throughout.
AVA
In a celebration of life and joy, a professor recalls the thirty nine years of her life as she lies dying, revealing emotional and intellectual richness and variety, including the horrors of her family’s experiences during World War II. IP.
Defiance
Bernadette O’Brien: misfit…
child prodigy…
professor of mathematics at Harvard…
sentenced to die in the electric chair for the shocking murder of two male students. In her journal, her ‘death book,’ Bernadette takes a dark look back at the unfolding events that led to the extraordinary crime for which she was convicted. In the incandescent, erotically charged prose for which she is known, Maso probes the depths of a female psyche inextricably embedded in a uniquely American matrix of sexuality, violence, and the clash of class difference. A raw and fearless performance by an author of fierce vision, Defiance stays with readers long after they put the book down. ‘Dark side aesthetiscism washes over you in waves, mixing wild pleasure and brutal fury.’ Spin magazine ‘Shockingly original…
a convincing study of a brilliant yet damaged mind, and a sharp exploration of new extremes of cynicism and darkness.’ The Wall Street Journal ‘A dark and intelligent festival of the mind, a labyrinth of shattered mirrors.’ Village Voice ‘Carole Maso…
writes with the fury of Jeannette Winterson.’ Los Angeles Times ‘Startling power…
builds to a psychologically astute and emotionally devastating climax.’ Out ‘A tour de force…
Establishes her as one of the very best living novelists.’ The Women’s Review of Books, Wellesley College
Break Every Rule
Ecstatic essays from the new standard bearer for experimental belles lettres ‘The future is women, for real this time. I’m sorry, but it’s time you got used to it.’ ”Well, we’ve been kept from ourselves too long, don’t you think?’ an old woman says to a friend / two women in the park at dusk.’ From Break Every Rule In this groundbreaking work of ecstatic criticism, Carole Maso shows why she has risen, over the past fifteen years, as one of the brightest stars in the literary firmament. Ever refusing to be marginalized or categorized by genre, Maso is an incisive, compassionate writer who deems herself ‘daughter’ of William Carlos Williams, a pioneer in combining poetry and fiction with criticism, journalism, and the visual arts. She is ‘daughter,’ too, of Allen Ginsberg, who also came from Paterson, New Jersey. Known for her audacity, whether exploring language and memory or the development of the artistic soul, Maso here gives us a form challenging collection, intelligent, and persuasive.
The Room Lit By Roses
A poetic memoir of the writer’s pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, Rose, this is a magical journal of joy, pain, and the hope of parenthood. From Carole Maso, one of our most daring experimentalist writers, comes this intimate and seductive book: a working journal of her pregnancy. We have come to rely on Maso to say that which is true as well as unexpected. The Room Lit By Roses delineates, with searing and poetic honesty, the months leading up to the birth of Rose, the long awaited daughter born to Maso and her partner, Helen. During the early months, when Maso is beset by the worry that the child will be lost, her journal becomes a meditation on art and life. Maso becomes more confident as the baby reaches the second trimester: ‘We are flying, as the finishing touches are applied. The eyelids close over the eyes by the ninth week and temporarily seal them like a kitten’s. They will remain closed until the sixth month. You travel in darkness for now, little one. I’m right here.’
Beauty Is Convulsive
A vibrant series of prose poems celebrating the life of artist Frida Kahlo. Beauty Is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth century’s most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo 1907 1954. At the age of nineteen, Kahlo’s life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self portraits. In 1928, at twenty one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. The forty one year old Rivera, Mexico’s most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlo’s personality and by the authenticity of her art, and the two soon married. Though they were devoted to each other, intermittent affairs on both sides, Frida’s grief over her inability to bear a child, and her frequent illnesses made the marriage tumultuous. This prose poem is typical Maso vigorous, daring, always original. She brings together parts of Kahlo’s biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlo’s paintings.
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