The Stone Door, by Leonora Carrington; NYRB Classics, 2025.
In this surrealist novel, full of images from alchemy and astrology and occult lore, two people try to find each other, but sometimes can’t even find themselves. The stone door of the title is both a barrier and a passage. Very different in tone from Carrington’s novel The Hearing Trumpet, and not a light read. Stories within dreams within manuscripts within stories, with characters slipping across boundaries and transforming into others. Carrington challenges conventional notions of narrative, language, gender, and self. This is a book I could read many times and get something new from it each time. It has a werewolf, which is always a plus.