TOP DOLL

(Hardback)

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Description

When reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for 50 years, the elusive Clark spoke to few--in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all.

Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA.

Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and ultimately, what it means to be human.

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Praise for An Aviary of Small Birds:

'A beautiful, painful, pitch-perfect debut . . . McCarthy Woolf's tuning fork always rings true.' Kate Kellaway, Guardian

'I loved Karen McCarthy Woolf's technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak.' Maggie Gee, The Observer

'[McCarthy Woolf has] a powerful command of form and rhythm.'

Praise for Seasonal Disturbances:

'[A] strange, but brilliant selection of poems . . . McCarthy Woolf takes us to a place and leaves us to sit with this tide, and let the water wash over us.' Bridget Minamore, Poetry School

'An unclassifiable book, revolutionary in its engagement with form, stunning in its intersectional politics, and an extraordinary achievement . . . It will break you, in a good way.' Poetry School Books of the Year 2017

'Witty, provocative and lyrically accomplished.' Poetry London

'A masterclass in structure.' Magma Poetry

Author Bio

Karen McCarthy Woolf was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.

She was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. Karen's radio credits include Night Shift, a reworking of Homer's Odyssey for R4 Book of the Week; Miss Birdie's Letter, a music/poetry travelogue for R3 Between the Ears; and a collaborative adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando which was a BBC Drama of the Week. She is currently working at the Promise Institute for International Human Rights Law as a Fulbright Scholar, co-presenting R4's Poetry Please, lecturing in China and collaborating with various techno music producers for events across London. Top Doll is her debut novel.