A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is a fictionalised portrait of Frida Kahlo. It explores the artist’s devastating accident and her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, a story of passion, grief and transcendence. Partly a poetic depiction of a woman in flight from the hollowness of childlessness, the burning of betrayal and the constraints of physical pain, A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is also a love letter to the earth and a celebration of the rebellion which protects it – from Frida’s own politics to the present-day Zapatistas. It is a hymn to the revolutionary fire at the heart of art.

 

A Love Letter from a Stray Moon uses Kahlo as a cipher for the experiences of the women - including the author - who identify with her. Much more than the portrait of an artist, this is a vision that resonates with grief, rebellion and transcendence. It is the story of many different women chanelled through the journey of one.

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Reviews and Endorsements​

 

'A wonderful book.  It's like a dress that Kahlo invented for herself and wore.' 

- John Berger

 

‘Rich, honed and intense, a fierce, compelling homage’

- The Age, Australia

 

‘An interesting, enchanting author… the most beautiful, beautiful book’

– Phillip Adams Late Night Live, ABC

 

‘A rapturous, crazy and gorgeous poem to art and to the human spirit. It is a text that trembles and shudders with life and melds form with emotion in the most organic way… breathtaking in its tremulous beauty… a profound reflection on universal concerns… 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.’

– Alice Nelson, The West Australian

 

'Jay Griffiths' A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is a stunning allegory about love, art, and revolution. She makes every word, every scene, in this passionate narrative count. It's brilliant work.'

- Barry Lopez

 

‘Frida Kahlo’s life and work were indivisible, and with a power worthy of her subject Jay Griffiths has found a way of writing Kahlo's broken, prolific life. Through Griffiths we hear the voice of Frida Kahlo herself, as if she were speaking directly to us. It’s like reading poetry inside a great biographical novel. 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

 

‘Vivid as a bloom in the jungle, visionary as a flight over a desert, a love song to life on earth.’

- Joan London

 

‘The book is both narrative and prose poem to revolution, uncensored minds and life lived as art. Griffiths’s fearless, untamed writing style is equal in measure to Kahlo’s brushstrokes. Griffiths’s writing is utterly original.’

– Northern Rivers Echo

 

‘A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is a rich and extraordinary vision. It’s unrestrained; it’s as if Jay Griffiths had decided to put everything she knew and felt into this passionate poem of admiration and love for the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. There’s something entirely tropical about the uncompromising richness and intensity of the story, and yet it is a story, there is a strong narrative pulse. There are few people who can write stories like this, though. Jay Griffiths is a fearless adventurer with words and images. I salute her courage and the splendour of this vision.’

- Philip Pullman

 

‘I found in Griffiths writing a crafted freedom that feels made from the mist of dreams and a very real emerging dawn. Imagine being held in the open hand of moonlight and carried through a dream into day.  This is what it is like to read A Love Letter from a Stray Moon. It is a book for men to read on women and for women to read on men.  I am transported and transformed; I feel lucky to have read it and it leaves me in awe.’

- Lemn Sissay

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‘An unbridled, infectious feistiness… an ode to living fiercely and bravely… hypnotic and intoxicating. A Love Letter from a Stray Moon exercises a playfulness with language, a determination to broaden its capacities and to increase it malleability… Griffiths’ brave pushing of linguistic boundaries… Griffiths’ vision is indisputably grand… a significant achievement’

– Elizabeth Bryer, Kill Your Darlings

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