Find Him! - (Modern Library Torchbearers) by Elaine Kraf (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An uncanny novel which provides keen insight on patriarchal violence and female identity by the author of feminist cult classic The Princess of 72nd Street

Understand my beginning with Oliver. You will see that my love for him is not a romantic fantasy. Every bit of this love was formed from the reality of primary needs--ingestion, excretion, simple pleasure and pain.

Our narrator's name and origins are unknown. The man she lives with, Oliver, who serves as both her caregiver and her captor, told her she came to him from another star. Though she arrived a grown woman, she did not yet have the ability to speak or count. Oliver had to teach her how to properly chew her food and clean herself. Though isolated from our world, he did his best to care for his charge and, she insists, always felt the need to develop her into more than she was.

Now, she blends into our society, though she is different, wearing a blue blouse and gray suit and reading incessantly. The problem is, she can't find Oliver. She goes back to their beginning to examine their relationship, a strange mix of father, lover, abuser, teacher. And then there is the question of Edith, a mysterious woman who has been writing to Oliver, and whose presence seems to haunt them both.

Originally published in 1977 and woven from fragments of nightmare and fantasy alike, Find Him! is a paragon of Elaine Kraf's iconoclastic style.

About the Author

Elaine Kraf (1936-2013) was a writer and painter. She was the author of four published works of fiction: I Am Clarence (1969), The House of Madelaine (1971), Find Him! (1977), and The Princess of 72nd Street (1979)--as well as several unpublished novels, plays, and poetry collections. She was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts awards, a 1971 fellowship at the Broad Loaf Writers' Conference, and a 1977 residency at Yaddo. She was born and lived in New York City.