LADY ORACLE

McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1976, 1^st.  ISBN 0-7710-0815-5.  Hard cover, 345 pages.  Brick coloured cloth with gilt lettering on spine; light wear at corners and spine ends; slight flare to front board; binding sound.  Dust jacket with price intact shows edge and cover wear, short edge tears and small associated creases, tiny losses at corner and spine ends.  Black paste-downs and end papers; interior clean and unmarked.  ‘The heroine … is a young woman whose sanity is threatened by the fact that the several lives she has lived separately and secretly are coming together and will be exposed.  To avoid this she plans her own “accidental death.”  She is newly and notoriously famous as a best-selling author; her official role in life is as the shy, rather awkward wife of a perpetual radical; on the sly she writes gothic novels under a nom de plume; she is secretly having an affair with a local “con-create” poet; and she has concealed from everyone her past as a grossly overweight child … evidence of which is in a snapshot on her dresser that she claims is that of a favourite aunt.’ (from front flap)