To Catch a Moon

Mexico City, 1955. The painter Remedios Varo sits in her kitchen with her friend, the artist Leonora Carrington. Together they let their imaginations soar beyond their canvases to create new worlds. In the surreal landscape of her imagination, Varo's creations take on a life and power of their own. A wheeled spirit of the earth kidnaps a baby star; a woman who is half owl draws herself a daughter; a juggler entrances a crowd of grey-cloaked men, a lion and a goat. The rules that govern this world bend and creak, old alliances break, and an impending apocalypse forges the most unlikely of friendships.Rym Kechacha (Dark River, British Fantasy Awards finalist 2021) spins a wild fantasy from Varo's dreamlike imaginings, a world in which the moon's daughter holds the key to mankind's fate. Populated by witches, sentient animals, and a lion made of leaves, To Catch a Moon is a bold and fearless ode to the power of Remedios Varo's timeless paintings.Rym Kechacha has created an enchanting world, filled with the magical, mysterious and mesmerising. It left me spellbound.- Elizabeth Lee, author of Cunning WomenIt's visionary. It's passionate. It's arty. It's twisty and turn-y. It's an extraordinary journey into the mind of two artists - Remedios Varo's, and Rym Kechacha's.- Francesco Dimitri, author of The Book of Hidden Things and Never the WindA surreal, mystical, celestial wonder of a book! To Catch a Moon is an inspired creation.- Oliver Langmead, author of Birds of Paradise and GlitteratiExceptional, impossibly beautiful, important.- Anna Smith Spark, author of the Empires of Dust trilogyTo say that there are owl women and witches and daughters of the moon, seamstresses and writers and painters who can call worlds into being, enchantments and sorrows, is to only scratch the surface of this extraordinary new novel by Rym Kechacha. Inspired by the work of Spanish surrealist Remedios Varo, this is a magical, melancholy story, the kind of book that makes you remember why you love reading in the first place.- Lynda E. Rucker, award-winning author of The Moon Will Look StrangeThrough Kechacha's exquisite writing, the many glamours, both dark and light, of the world of To Catch a Moon will transfer to the reader like a spell. A weird and wonderful fairy tale that pays due homage to its inspiration.- Peter Haynes, author of The Willow By Your Side