Friday, March 10, 2017

What is Peternelle van Arsdale reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Peternelle van Arsdale, author of The Beast Is an Animal.

Her entry begins:
I don’t know why, but when I started Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye years ago, I didn’t get past the first quarter. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it—I did. It may have been the usual excuse, which is that I had so much reading for work that I couldn’t read for pleasure. In any case, I picked it up again recently, because I love Margaret Atwood and I felt ashamed of myself for not having finished that novel the first time. It has now established itself on a short list of my favorite books of all time. Sentence by sentence I have never felt such ...[read on]
About The Beast Is an Animal, from the publisher:
A girl with a secret talent must save her village from the encroaching darkness in this haunting and deeply satisfying tale.

Alys was seven when the soul eaters came to her village.

These soul eaters, twin sisters who were abandoned by their father and slowly morphed into something not quite human, devour human souls. Alys, and all the other children, were spared—and they were sent to live in a neighboring village. There the devout people created a strict world where good and evil are as fundamental as the nursery rhymes children sing. Fear of the soul eaters—and of the Beast they believe guides them—rule village life. But the Beast is not what they think it is. And neither is Alys.

Inside, Alys feels connected to the soul eaters, and maybe even to the Beast itself. As she grows from a child to a teenager, she longs for the freedom of the forest. And she has a gift she can tell no one, for fear they will call her a witch. When disaster strikes, Alys finds herself on a journey to heal herself and her world. A journey that will take her through the darkest parts of the forest, where danger threatens her from the outside—and from within her own heart and soul.
Visit Peternelle van Arsdale's website.

Writers Read: Peternelle van Arsdale.

--Marshal Zeringue