Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, a wonderful new book by Dubravka Ugresic, one of the original "Five Croatian Witches"—about to be published here by Canongate, this is a postmodern version of the old myth of the flesh-eating Slavic witch who lives on the border between life and death in a house held up by chicken's legs, which Ugresic uses as a jumping off place to consider women and aging:

            "You don't see them at first.  Then suddenly a random detail snags your attention like a stray mouse: an old lady's handbag, a stocking slipping down a leg, bunching up on a bulging ankle, crocheted gloves on the hands, a little old-fashioned hat perched on the head, sparse grey hair like a blue sheen....

            "At first they're invisible.  And then all at once you begin to spot them.  They shuffle around the world like armies of elderly angels.  One of them peers into your face.  She glares at you, her eyes wide, her gaze a faded blue, and voices her request with a proud and condescending tone.  She is asking for your help, she needs to cross the street but she cannot do it alone, or needs to clamber up into a tram but her knees have buckled, or needs to find a street and house number but she's forgotten her spectacles...You feel a pang of sympathy for the old lady, you are moved, you do a good deed, swept by the thrill of gallantry.  It is precisely at this moment that you should dig in your heels, resist the siren call, make an effort to lower the temperature of your heart.  Remember, their tears do not mean the same thing as yours do.  Becaue if you relent, give in, exchange a few more words, you will be in their thrall.  You will slide into a world that you had no intention of entering, because your time has not yet come, your hour, for God's sake, has not come."