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From the bestselling author of The Boy Who Drew Monsters and The Stolen Child comes a modern take on the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth-A Suspenseful tale of romance and enchantment
In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toyshop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toyshop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside.
The next morning Theo wakes up to discover his wife is missing. Under police suspicion and frantic at her disappearance, he obsessively searches the streets of the Old City. Meanwhile, Kay has been transformed into a puppet, and is now a prisoner of the back room of the Quatre Mains, trapped with an odd assemblage of puppets from all over the world who can only come alive between the hours of midnight and dawn. The only way she can return to the human world is if Theo can find her and recognize her in her new form. So begins the dual odyssey of Keith Donohue's The Motion of Puppets: of a husband determined to find his wife, and of a woman trapped in a magical world where her life is not her own.
In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toyshop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toyshop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside.
The next morning Theo wakes up to discover his wife is missing. Under police suspicion and frantic at her disappearance, he obsessively searches the streets of the Old City. Meanwhile, Kay has been transformed into a puppet, and is now a prisoner of the back room of the Quatre Mains, trapped with an odd assemblage of puppets from all over the world who can only come alive between the hours of midnight and dawn. The only way she can return to the human world is if Theo can find her and recognize her in her new form. So begins the dual odyssey of Keith Donohue's The Motion of Puppets: of a husband determined to find his wife, and of a woman trapped in a magical world where her life is not her own.
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Reviews
"At once old and new, borrowed and original, The Motion of Puppets disdains both genre and mainstream expectations to turn readers' attention to the permeable boundary between life and its mimicry."
The Washington Post
"Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's Coraline…Underneath all the changes, [Donohue's] story has the emotional depth, the love and grief of the old myth, only transposed to the sad, leaves-falling October Country of the mind."
The Wall Street Journal
"[Donohue's] intricately plotted narrative blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. While a love story at heart, this inventive tale is suspenseful and absorbing. You will never look at a toy store the same way again."
Real Simple