Angieville

When I'm opening up a new Meg Rosoff novel I literally never know what to expect. In a good way. She never tells the same story twice. She does generally center her stories around a character who feels ambivalent, anxious, or sometimes downright disenchanted with his or her world. She explores themes both serious and disturbing and her resolutions are bittersweet at best. And yet I love her writing. She's an auto-buy for me and has been ever since I first read How I Live Now and thought I would come apart at the beauty of that book. Readers who love one of her books and long for more of the same with her other books will most likely be disappointed as they are all wildly different tales, the lovely writing being one of the only things they share. But how rare and fine a thing it is to have an author you can always count on but can never quite pin down. Early on the morning of her wedding day, Pell Ridley sneaks out of the home she's lived in all her life, swipes her dowry...

Here is the cover for Meg Rosoff 's forthcoming 2009 novel The Bride's Farewell, due out from Viking in August. Sort of gothic and whimsical, isn't it? Love the title font. From the publisher: In 1850s England, a young woman named Pell runs away from home on horseback the day she is supposed to marry her childhood sweetheart. Pell is from a poor preacher’s family; made poorer by the ever-increasing number of mouths to feed. Pell understands horses better than she understands people, so she sets off for Salisbury Fair, where horse trading takes place, in the hope that she can find work and buy herself some time while she decides what to do next. As she rides further and further from home, Pell’s emotional ties to her parents, to her many siblings, and to the fiancé only become strengthened and eventually alter the course of her travels. The Bride's Farewell is a beautifully told novel about learning how to live, how to be human, and how to love.