Remember the Tarantella

Book excerpt: A Feminist classic paperback re-release. This is a remarkable work. It's learned and frivolous, female not feminine, silly and serious. The quality of the prose achieves a kind of concerto-like poetry where the many instruments of differing tones assist the reader to know who is who. Remember the Tarantella is a novel with twenty-six characters each represented by a letter of the alphabet with the vowels as central characters. The 'tarantella' of the title is not the mating dance, but the ruse of the women who did not want to be burnt as witches. At the reputed bite of the spider, they went into some kind of mania and danced themselves into the sea to drown instead. Released to acclaim in 1987, Remember The Tarantella was heralded as a great work of feminist fi ction. Released as an eBook in 2010, this classic will now be re-released in paperback.