The Monstrous and the Marvelous

"We need writers to look at difficult issues in a sophisticated manner. Ducornet has done this. She is a mirror of our innermost selves and she gives us back to outselves. Despairing, hopeful, active, contemplative, fractured but surviving, playful, even happy sometimes (in our cash), whole."—The Nation

"Ducornet playfully investigates works of literature, art, and film that create ruptures in our sense of normality. . . . [She] shows how the road of excess indeed leads to the palace of wisdom. Most important, however, her ability to transfix and communicate her sense of wonder becomes wondrous in itself, making these essays read with the same quirky delight as her fiction."—Rain Taxi

"Rikki Ducornet is a writer fascinated by the ways the concrete and illusory can be interwoven. [In this] quietly resplendent book of essays . . . she manages to create her own cabinet of marvels as she infects her readers with the sweet venom of language." —Bart Schneider, The Ruminator