By Susan Fletcher
Published 2012
You’ll know by now that I usually listen to books if at all possible, but this book is not available on Audible, so I read it on Kindle. I am so glad they don’t do this in audio book format. I think it would lose so much. It is 470 pages of sheer, beautiful writing.
This is a story about stories, handed down through the generations from Father to son, from mother to daughter. It’s a story about the inhabitants of a fictitious island of sea-farers and sheep farmers, lighthouse keepers and their families. A tiny population of people who know everything about the island and everybody’s lives.
This book is about the grief of the islanders after they lose one of their own; how they are held in a repeating pattern of downward, self-sabotaging spirals, a penance for surviving Tom’s death. They repeat the myths and legends and fairy tales until they forget that they made them up to make others feel better. They start to believe in the seals with human hearts and the whales that keep a watch on them and the half-man, half-fish that comes to shore and grows legs and brings hope and happiness to the island then leaves on the next ‘sly tide’.
Then a man washes up on the beach and everything changes. He brings with him change which affects all the islanders. They want to believe and they need to believe and if the legend is true, they have to let him go.
This author has a strange writing style and she obeys few of the rules of good grammar, but the prose flows like lyrics to a song or the very best of poems and you are caught up and dragged along like a feather on the tide. Such is the power of her words. The only speech marks in the entire book are those she mentions in chapter 19: “…I knew they slept like speech marks and I knew they slept well”. Instead of quotation marks, she italicises every spoken word and every thought. She leaves prepositions hanging and sentences are oddly constructed. It dodges around without warning between first and third person narrative, but it is wholly understandable and readable and paints a million pictures with its words.
I think this would have lost so much if someone had narrated this for audio, although I feel sad for people who are unable to hold a book and read it as they are missing so very much. After reading it, even though I live minutes from a beach, I felt I knew their coastline so well. I knew the people and where they lived like I’d been on the island myself. The author has the sea in her veins and she knows the life they live there. It is a tale so well written that I didn’t want it to end.
This book is full of woe and sadness, joy and hope, love of all kinds, grief, loss and anger. This author knows people and can get into the hearts of the characters in this book.
I would thoroughly recommend you read this book, and I’ll be looking for more of hers soon.
I gave it 10/10 💚💚💚 and the ladies that read it also rated it very highly. It came out with a 9.5/10 average. Thank you to Jan for hosting in her beautiful new house. Next month we are going to discuss Rob Rinder's 'The Trial', and will be meeting at Edna's house.
Happy reading!
Sarah S x
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King
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