Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsStrange, engaging, beautiful in many ways - but just too much of all this, and for too long
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 March 2013
This dreamy, myth inhabiting imaginative novel set on some offshore remote island, (seems to be Scottish, with the Selkie myth playing a large part) at some point in modern times, intrigues and disappoints in almost equal measure
It follows the stories of two young women, Mary, in her teens, a native islander who speaks the island's curious dialect, and Morgan, imprisoned (like Rapunzel, like Sleeping Beauty, even like Cinderella) for reasons of protection and or exploitation. Morgan has come from the mainland, from where, for reasons revealed during the course of the book,her family has fled
The matriarchy on the island have magical and often fiercely punitive. powers. An aura of secrecy is knitted into the stories, told separately.
The island is home to vengeful and justice demanding trees, herbs with powers known to the matriarchs, who work to pagan laws of their own. Disappearing children, mothers and daughters, and strange trading visitations from tall hatted men, like some Victorian capitalist overseers, come and go. Their trade is in foods (fish, out, other foodstuffs in) and the craft labours of the women (embroidered work) out, but there are also other, darker, trades.
Richards writes beautifully, but in the end, I felt was overdoing her subject matter, and I began to long for the tautness of myth and fairy tale, where narrative drive is more pared down, and anything which pads out the journey is stripped away. There were just a few too many revisitings of occurrences which were too small, too alike. If you are learning nothing new or deeper about character, if the narrative drive is not proceeding, and if all which is going on is 'atmosphere', without this too being deepened, and expanded, then there is repetition which is needless.
I'm afraid that though much of this was wonderful, it was also exhausting, because it felt as if it was stagnating. In the end, sadly, I felt I had lost interest and engagement with Mary, Morgan, the mystery and the islanders and was muttering, sotto voce, oh just get ON with it!