A Love Letter From A Stray Moon

I am Frida, and I am not Frida.
I am the moon, hollowed out by remorse.
I am many women, I answer to many names.
My prayer is from the forests of Mexico, from the molten heart of the earth.
Fly closer, fly nearer to me.

In this fictional tour de force Jay Griffiths, author of the acclaimed Wild, creates a portrait of the artist Frida Kahlo—her devastating accident and her love for Diego Rivera—that is also a celebration of the spirit of poetry and the art of rebellion.

Spellbinding and luminous, A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is a unique work about passion, grief and transcendence.

From Jay Griffiths:

‘What is it like, the private, invisible grief of childlessness? How is art a consolation of love? What is it which fires creativity? How does rebellion speak in masks? And how might the earth look, from the point of view of the moon?

In answer to these questions, this book is partly a fictionalised portrait of Frida Kahlo, her devastating accident and her love for Diego Rivera. Also, it is about her grief at being unable to have children, but is written to portray how art is another kind of motherhood. The book is also about the poetry of rebellion, from Frida’s own politics to the present-day Zapatistas and the revolutionary fire at the heart of art. It is also written as if from the perspective of the moon, looking with both love and grief at the torn world, and it is about the passion of the human spirit born native to earth.’

Listen to Jay’s interview with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.

Praise for A Love Letter From A Stray Moon:

Griffiths' novel itself reminds us what it is to be a human being, born native to the earth, on fire with the joy of the universe and full of grief for our broken world. It is a love song to life, to art and to the human spirit. Read review in full.

West Australian

A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is an extraordinarily beautiful and sustained prose poem, a call for engagement with the world, and a powerful and astonishing feat of literary and retroactive telepathy.

Niall Griffiths

Jay Griffiths is a fearless adventurer with words and images. I salute her courage and the splendour of this vision.

Philip Pullman

I absolutely devoured this wonderfully perceptive and sensitive book. I already knew a lot about Frida Kahlo’s life but rediscovered it in these pages from the inside out.

Marie Darrieussecq