The narrative tetralogy of Esther Tusquets is a daringly innovative series of female novels of development which suggests through narrative structure, voice, and style a distinctive psychic make-up and developmental path for woman. Drawing on American and French feminist theory, this study views the cycle as an unconscious pilgrimage in search of the lost primal mother, a quest rendered formally through the circular, repetitive pattern of the texts and the musical, oneiric prose style which reproduces the endless prolongation and flow of female desire. As the texts go over and over the same psychic issues, Tusquets' fictional personae laboriously spiral upwards to ever higher levels of maturity and self-knowledge. While recording her protagonists' struggle to grow and adapt to the world in which they live, the narrative also challenges the belief systems of patriarchal society through the inscription of an alternative model which dissolves the barriers among diverse modes of sexuality and affirms love in all its forms as the supreme value of life. «Written in an evocative, highly lyrical prose, 'The Apple of Earthly Love' reads Esther Tusquets' fiction as an extended tale of female development stemming from the central experience of love and marriage. Ichiishi traces the repercussions of the originary mother/daughter bond through the entire life cycle of Tusquets' protagonists. Her study upsets many of the worn-out precepts of Anglo-American feminism by upholding the erotic experience as a fundamental source of self-validation for women. It is a truly superb book, and one that is sure to renew both feminist criticism and the study of contemporary Spanish women's writing.» (Adriana Méndez Rodenas, The University of Iowa) «Barbara F. Ichiishi's monographic study...is a worthy contribution to Tusquets' scholarship.» (Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, Revista de Estudios Hispanicas) The Author: Barbara Franklin Ichiishi earned her Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Iowa. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate in French of Mount Holyoke College, she subsequently received an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She has published articles on Latin American and Spanish women's narrative, as well as an English translation of the historical drama 'Monsieur Toussaint' by Edouard Glissant. Used Book in Good Condition