The Stagtress

THE STAGTRESS by Kathleen Bryson is a holy book, a syncretic novel of scientific, pagan, xtian, gnostic, and folkloric imagery. It’s about a little girl who starts to grow stag antlers. Kathleen Bryson, the novelist/artist/evolutionary anthropologist who wrote this ecstatically gender-fluid masterpiece, also painted the trippy cover art and another couple dozen illustrations within. The book occurs this way: Once upon a spacetime, in a medieval forest still shuddering from the Black Death, little Florentine busily grows her own set of stag antlers as she comes of age, then falls in love, and then - Once upon a spacetime, on grimy North London streets, blackened helicopters buzzing overhead, amnesiac Jack undergoes toughlove kokology to recall his old life, and then - Once upon a spacetime, across a bombed-out future desert, Martin hikes naked with only his walking-stick for company, and then -