The Final Confession of Mabel Stark - Hardcover

Hough, Robert

3.92

1,838 ratings by Goodreads

9780679310914: The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679310916 ISBN 13: 9780679310914

Publisher: Random House Canada, 2001

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Mabel Stark was the greatest female tiger trainer in history. In the 1910s and 20s, when circus was the most popular entertainment in America, she was the biggest attraction for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.Mabel was five-feet tall, brazen, suicidally courageous, obsessed with tigers and sexually eccentric. In The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, Robert Hough has used the documents of her life to explore the mysteries of her heart. His vibrant and moving fictional autobiography starts in 1968. Mabel is just turning eighty and is about to lose her job. Faced with the loss of her cats, she looks back on her life, her escapades and her tragedies, her love affairs with tigers and men. She also confronts her darkest secret, her guilt at committing, 'the worst thing one person can do to another.' Now, with the end of her life in sight, there is one thing above all else she needs to do. Mabel Stark wants to confess. Exuberant and inventive, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark transports its readers to an age before cinema and television, when circus performers were superstars. It is a delightful novel and an unputdownable biography of a gloriously idiosyncratic life.

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About the Author:

Robert Hough lives in Toronto and his non-fiction and fiction pieces have appeared in many Canadian journals, including Saturday Night and Canadian Fiction. This is his first book and it has just won the Trillium Award.

From Publishers Weekly:

This ribald, rough-hewn debut novel by a prize-winning Canadian writer is based on the flamboyant career of Mabel Stark, arguably the greatest (certainly the greatest female) tiger trainer of all time. Recounted as Stark is turning 80 in 1968, the faux memoir follows her path to superstardom through the 1910s and '20s as she learns to tame tigers and men, and finally tours with the famous Ringling Brothers Circus. Stark, born Mary Haynie, is a teenage Louisville, Ky., nurse, when she is committed to a mental hospital after rebelling against her brutish husband's insensitivity. Aided by a smitten psychiatrist, she escapes to Tennessee, where she becomes Little Egypt, a headliner belly dancer with the Great Parker Carnival. Another marriage and another gig as a "cooch dancer" follow, until she is rescued at the age of 23 by Al G. Barnes, a carny pal, lately owner of a small circus. When the show's animal trainer falls for her, he teaches her how to work with tigers and a new career is launched. Famous for the act in which she wrestles Rajah, a 500-pound Bengal tiger she's raised from a cub, she is also known for her brazenness, multiple marriages ("My men. Whew. Had a slew of them") and black leather jumpsuit. Rich in the atmosphere of circus life, this graphic, slangy fictional reminiscence also offers some surprising, deft metafictional touches.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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