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The Centaur's Wife
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
10 posts | 8 read | 1 reading | 26 to read
Amanda Leduc's brilliant new novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic, is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures. Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family are among only a few who survived. But the mountain that looms over the city is still green--somehow it has been spared the destruction that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Heather is one of the few who know the mountain, a place city-dwellers have always been forbidden to go. Her dad took her up the mountain when she was a child on a misguided quest to heal her legs, damaged at birth. The tragedy that resulted has shaped her life, bringing her both great sorrow and an undying connection to the deep magic of the mountain, made real by the beings she and her dad encountered that day: Estajfan, a centaur born of sorrow and of an ancient, impossible love, and his two siblings, marooned between the magical and the human world. Even as those in the city around her--led by Tasha, a charismatic doctor who fled to the city from the coast with her wife and other refugees--struggle to keep everyone alive, Heather constantly looks to the mountain, drawn by love, by fear, by the desire for rescue. She is torn in two by her awareness of what unleashed the meteor shower and what is coming for the few survivors, once the green and living earth makes a final reckoning of the usefulness of human life and finds it wanting. At times devastating, but ultimately redemptive, Amanda Leduc's fable for our uncertain times reminds us that the most important things in life aren't things at all, but rather the people we want by our side at the end of the world.
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review
BookmarkTavern
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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Mehso-so

The world ends when the meteors come. Heather, with her newborn twins tries to create a new life for her family in the ruined city as the nearby mountain calls to her.

I‘m not sure how I feel. Was the prose beautiful & lyrical? Yes. Was it a story about stories, & how they shape us & our world? Yes. Did I have to take this in small chunks because every section left me feeling confused & gutted. Also yes. A story of devastation & hope. 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑

BookmarkTavern CW 👇🏻 (edited) 13mo
BookmarkTavern General warning for ableism and violence; Specific warnings for Chapter 4, parental death; Chapter 6, domestic violence; Chapter 8, infant death; Chapter 9, child death, suicide; Chapter 10, child death, suicide (edited) 13mo
59 likes1 stack add2 comments
review
TheBookWitchON
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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Pickpick

This book had me all over the place. The stories within stories, the truth about new parenting feelings... all of it. It was a good book written by a local, in a city not far from me.

WorldsOkayestStepMom Welcome to Litsy! 2y
8 likes2 comments
review
Kazzie
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
Pickpick

So strange, but good. A fairytale interspersed with an end of the world adventure. I think “monster” ie the centaurs, we‘re placeholders for anyone unusual or different.

blurb
SilverShanica
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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I am posting one book per day from my to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new - don‘t judge me I have a lot of books.
Join the fun if you want. This is day 203.
#bookstoread
#tbrpile
#bookstagram

3 likes1 stack add
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BookBr
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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Pickpick

Possibly not the best book to read after a year of a pandemic, but gosh what a good one. Stories within stories within stories that all spiral around each other until firmly linked. Like a modern fable with thorny darkness, enduring sadness, and just enough hope not to be a tragedy.

2 likes1 stack add
review
cleoh
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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Pickpick

What a wild ride. This felt like a fairytale fever dream and I cannot recommend it enough. Super interested in reading more by Leduc!

Bookgirl Sold! 3y
cleoh @Bookgirl 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 3y
76 likes8 stack adds2 comments
review
Lindy
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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Pickpick

In this fabulist tale, a woman with cerebral palsy falls in love with a centaur. There‘s magic in the soil of a planet fed up with human greed; a heroic lesbian couple helping the survivors of an apocalyptic meteor shower; a young woman who had been waiting for a lung transplant; and a fox who wants to be a mother. It‘s a surprising, carefully crafted, poignant story of love and grief, seeded with brief original fairy tales. #CanadianAuthor

Come-read-with-me This sounds great! Thanks for the review! 3y
Lindy @Come-read-with-me 😘😇 3y
Suet624 Yowzer! This sounds amazing. Stacked! 3y
Lindy @Suet624 😁👍 3y
38 likes6 stack adds5 comments
quote
Lindy
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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She drew herself, a wide-eyed 12-year-old, one leg shorter than the other, her feet twisted and bent. Her mouth open in a silent scream.
She drew herself now. Her father‘s eyes, her father‘s smile. The uneven legs and lopsided shoulders that were entirely her own.

quote
Lindy
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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The mountain told him that humans lived the way that comets shot across the night sky—bright and burning, falling, gone. If you blinked, they disappeared.

(Photo: meteorite captured on my neighbours‘ nest cam)

charl08 Wow! 3y
Lcsmcat Cool! And great quote, too. 3y
Bradleygirl SO JELLY 🤩🤩🤩 3y
See All 6 Comments
Soubhiville Whoa! 3y
Lindy @charl08 @Lcsmcat @Bradleygirl @Soubhiville The meteor was very bright! I saw the flash through my curtains and was delighted that my neighbours had footage. 3y
batsy Oh wow!! 🤩🤩 3y
48 likes6 comments
quote
Lindy
The Centaur's Wife | Amanda Leduc
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He told her fairy tales … Fairies who lived in the salt mines beneath the mountains, long ago, who coated themselves with salt crystals before mating. That one sounded familiar—an old wives‘ tale her father once told her, about elders who threw salt across a doorway to ask good things into a woman‘s life.
“Stories are never just stories,” her father had said. “There‘s always a kernel of truth hidden deep within the words.”

rockpools About 90% of my plant knowledge started with these particular fairy stories 🌼🌸🌾 3y
Lindy @rockpools Ha! 😊 🧚‍♀️👍 3y
40 likes2 stack adds2 comments