The Second Elizabeth

Fiction. The story begins when Elizabeth encounters Beth, her new neighbor and coworker, whose resilience and originality awaken a memory of a younger self. THE SECOND ELIZABETH is a densely poetic meditation on love and language, Virginia and virginity, loss and longing, trauma and recovery. In lush, obsessive text the novel reveals the bonds of female experience, the politics of naming, and the sensuality of nature. As in her novel I, SCORPION (2000) Lillis uses the device of a double to great effect, to describe the nuances and contradictions of a woman's experience. "Karen E. Lillis writes with a cadence and a rhythm that are hypnotic...[The Second Elizabeth] celebrates what my theologian father called `the mystery in the ordinary" Eckhard Gerdes, Journal of Experimental Fiction.