Martha Moody

Out of print. Published 1995.

Reviews for Martha Moody

"Susan Stinson's deceptively svelte-seeming story is a lush comic masterpiece: a totally convincing celebration of the combined erotic power of untrammelled female flesh, forbidden sex and unleashed words." - Mail on Sunday, London

"Martha Moody, is a rich and complicated novel, nearly edible in its sensuous physicality." Sojourner

"...Stinson's follow-up to the utterly fantastic Fat Girl Dances with Rocks is so bloody good it made me want to run naked through a meadow..." - Time Out, London

"...here we have a story of love spurned, uncommonly well told, in language that is rich and strange, erotic and fanciful. Set against the backdrop of Western frontier life, it's a powerful tale of seeming betrayal, and the value of friendships between women. The best book yet from The Women's Press." Gay Times, London

"Stinson's celebration of the love and friendship of women deserves a larger audience than one made up of only lesbian feminists." Booklist

"One of Stinson's triumphs is to make Amanda's fairy-tale success as a writer seem completely plausible amid the vivid depiction of the grime and hard work of her life as first a farmer's wife, then a single woman struggling to survive on the small homestead." Margot Livesey, Scotland On Sunday

"...remarkable story...Amanda's fictional Martha is a wild and magical creature who churns clouds into butter with her magnificent thights and flies on the back of a fabulous winged cow." Bay Area Reporter

"Susan Stinson writes as though she means every word to be tasted, savoured." Women's Library Newsletter

"...a jewel...Martha Moody is magnificent. She is unashamedly fat and she is beautiful, dignified and desirable. She will take her place in modern literature as a truly marvellous role model for large women. Never before have I encountered the large body depicted with such beauty." Shelley Bovey, Yes Magazine, UK

Selected Works

Fiction
Venus of Chalk
This book unravels what you think you know about women and men, the freakish and the normal, shame and salvation -- then mends it anew into a most surprising story. -Alison Bechdel
Martha Moody
I can think of no-one who writes with more love, passion, and precision about the pleasures of the body and the pleasures of the soul, and that nebulous intersection of body and soul. -Elizabeth McCracken
Fat Girl Dances with Rocks
Susan Stinson's first novel is full of big, beautiful language and her main character, Char, is one of the best teenaged heroines I've ever met. -Judith Katz
Excerpt from a novel-in-progress
Spider In a Tree
About Jonathan Edwards, the famous preacher, his family and slaves, during their years in Northampton throughout the Great Awakening.