The Girl With Glass Feet : a Novel

The Washington Post - Elizabeth Hand The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg has traced myriad examples of mutilated feet across centuries and cultures, from ancient Greece to ancient China. He believes the motif represents an archetype of what he calls "mythical and ritualistic lameness." The British novelist Ali Shaw has created a memorable addition to this fabulist pantheon in his gorgeous first novel?Shaw acknowledges the influence of writers like Andersen, Kafka and Borges (Shaw's menagerie of perfectly detailed, marvelous creatures could have stepped from the pages of The Book of Imaginary Beings). But it's Andersen's melancholy tales, steeped in loss and a brooding sense of fatedness, that shimmer around the edges of The Girl With Glass Feet.