Name: Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen
ISBN: 9781101871935

Dexter Palmer

From the highly acclaimed author of Version Control comes a stunning, powerfully evocative new novel based on a true story--in 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, a local surgeon realizes that nothing in his experience as a village physician has prepared him to deal with a situation as disturbing as this.this.

A Novel

Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen

Nica

he found himself wondering if Zachary wanted to become a surgeon not merely because he wanted to do good, but because he wanted to witness the evil done to human bodies by disease, chance, or the willful malice of others. But the Lord uses all people for his instruments.

he thought all that professed love of man's unique ability to reason was an excuse to smuggle atheism into the public discourse

"Beware the sentiment that a man's thoughts alone are enough to let him understand the world"

"It is a fraudulent idea, the product of the devil himself, who wishes us to cover our own eyes rather than behold the wondrous sight of the Lord."

When I look out at you, I cannot help but envy your innocence. For those of us who are no longer young, who've become jaded by the sight of ten thousand sunsets, is it not the rarest of pleasures to find oneself once again on the edge of the unknown? To truly encounter the new?

"But is it not true that not all is worth knowing? Are there not many mysteries best left as such? Are there not certain truths that live in the black spaces of your mind that you would claw out of your own head if you could?

a principal influence on the shape of a newborn child was the state of mind of its mother during the months of her pregnancy

"Every woman is a wonder," Fox said, "and every woman carries within her the capacity to be the conduit for one of God's miracles. For what else is the birth of a human being but the sure confirmation of God's grace and power? But a woman who does not take care of her own mind during the time of her pregnancy, who does not fully accept the role with which God has chosen to favor her, presents a danger; not merely to herself, or to her offspring, but to the public.

the public's burden, even as they are outcast from society; they are forbidden to darken the doors of those of us who are not malformed, and yet they have no homes of their own.

"If it were fully true that the bodies of children are shaped by their mother's minds, what about the children of mothers who are more innocent than most? Shouldn't the daughters of sinless women sport angel's wings, or possess eyes that sparkle in darkness?"

If all of us believed in her, would not her existence be a matter of fact, and not a fraud?

"The truth of the matter. Is it a thing that exists outside of our minds, wanting for us to perceive it and know it as true? Or is truth a thing that collectively resides within the minds of all men, a matter of consensus, subject to debate, subject to alteration? The world outside our minds neither true nor false, but merely there?"

our world has some secret horror that I cannot fathom if so, controlling the minds of men though it is impossible to perceive with our senses alone.

Leave the patient's mind to the patient; leave the king's beliefs to the king, and leave God's thoughts to God.

"Fire's not the only means of heat that families resort to in winter."

"October is when women pay the bill for January's warmth."

"It is easy enough for a man to follow God's precepts in days of clear skies and sunlight."

"A man is most likely to strive to enter heaven if he feels he already has one foot through its gates. But in times of darkness, the fear of damnation is a more useful means of keeping the flock on its proper path than the promise of salvation. Summer days call for the carrot; winter days warrant the stick."

At times, it seemed to Zachary as if his father's God was constituted entirely of the commands that he had given, or that he had created humans solely in order to give himself beings over which he could exercise control.

if Crispin's God made humans in order to have subjects, John's made humans in order to be surprised by their actions, or perhaps bemused. John seemed surprisingly comfortable with not knowing, in a way that Zachary's father did not; John seemed paradoxically secure in his uncertainty, while his father would have seen the display of such uncertainty as a sign of weakness, an absence of faith.

What did Zachary himself think of God? His thoughts were difficult to articulate to himself. Even the mere idea of "believing in God" was, he thought but was afraid to say, strange; though he was surely not an atheist, the word God held no meaning for him in the way that words did for things he could see or touch, like chairs, or knives, or chamber pots. But the adults with whom he spent his life all seemed to "believe," even if the God in which they placed their belief seemed to wear a different face for every person, no two completely alike: to one man, a giver of rules; to another, a capricious and inscrutable judge; to still another, a distant observer of mankind's foibles and grasping attempts to make sense of the world. 

all of them probably thought that they all believed in the same God, who had the same shape in the minds of others as he did in their own. What sort of God could that be, who appeared in different guises to every person, but who had no presence here in the world, except in tales of long-ago miracles? Why, if he wanted to ensure that his followers would believe in him with certainty, would he not manifest in some manner that all could we see with their own eyes, and agree on what they saw? What benefit could God gain from concealment, or from secrecy?

Women preferred to keep their mysteries and rituals to themselves; men preferred not to trouble their minds with them.

"Witnessing the delivery of a newborn terrifies men."

It can be as difficult to watch as a death. All our lives we see that features that differentiate women's bodies from our own as sources of pleasure; then, in the moment of birth, their true purposes are revealed. A human head emerges from the place that once served as a sheath for your yard. It is one thing to know it in theory; another thing entirely to see it. And so we speak of the process of birth in the language of miracle and mystery, to avoid confronting the fact that women's bodies are profoundly different from ours, and are not our own.

"One must be prepared for the degree of equanimity required of a woman to be immeasurable, beyond belief."

I'm a queen with a mouth full of blood. And they're going to silence me. They're going to make a home inside me. They're going to crush me. They're going to kill me. Every night. Night after night.

You don't feel ready, but trust me—you never will until after you make the first deliberate cut, and you see with your own eyes that wounding a person is often the first necessary step toward healing him. Then your mind will become calm, and all your fears will vanish.

I am a most uncommon man, and so I must suffer a life filled with most uncommon incidents.

Avaricious, perhaps, but avarice is powerless without an ambition to match it.

Though those most often given to speak of conspiracy are also the most likely to try to dream it into being.

There is no rarer and more precious comfort than this: when a man who is the sole possessor of a truth, and who feels himself misunderstood by all the world, looks into another man's eyes and finds, at last, that another believes what he believes, and he is no longer alone.

Charmaine

Crafted of one peculiar hoax with miracles in between and philosophy on human nature itself. A rabbit queen, indeed.

Narah Quinn

I will be releasing a full review of this (in line with the publisher requests) in the future. 

What I will say is that if you enjoy historical fiction books, and things a little strange and wonderful. this book does not disappoint! 

Definitely give it a read!

In 1726, in the town of Godalming, England, a woman confounded the nation's medical community by giving birth to seventeen rabbits. This astonishing true story is the basis for Dexter Palmer's stunning, powerfully evocative new novel. Surgeon's apprentice Zachary Walsh knows that his master, John Howard, prides himself on his rationality. But John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event be­comes a regular occurrence, John and Zach­ary realize that nothing in their experience as rural physicians has prepared them to deal with a situation like this--strange, troubling, and possibly miraculous. John contacts sev­eral of London's finest surgeons, three of whom soon arrive in Godalming to observe, argue, and perhaps use the case to cultivate their own fame. When King George I learns of Mary's plight, she and her doctors are summoned to London, where Zachary experiences a world far removed from his small-town ex­istence and is exposed to some of the dark­est corners of the human soul. All the while Mary lies in bed, as doubts begin to blossom among her caretakers and a growing group of onlookers waits with impatience for an­other birth, another miracle.

Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen A Novel

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