Barbara Comyns's enchanting novel The Juniper Tree

The latest addition to the NYRB Classics series, now on sale at 30% off A hypnotic book inspired by a Brothers Grimm fairy tale [T]([HE JUNIPER TREE]( BARBARA COMYNS INTRODUCTION BY SADIE STEIN Homeless and jobless, Bella Winter is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn’t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she's recently disentangled herself from a selfish boyfriend and a cruel mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns’s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As the novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Grimms' macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bella’s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others? "The Juniper Tree, which appeared in 1985, is one of Comyns’s most successful, confident and curious productions. It has the clear pure narrative quality of a fable, but also shows a humanity and maturity." —Margaret Drabble [MORE ABOUT THE BOOK]( For three days only, The Juniper Tree, along with Comyns's [Our Spoons Came from Woolworths]( and [T]([he Vet's Daughter](, will be available at 30% off. New York Review Books 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300 New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](