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The Brides of Rollrock Island
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Product Description
Review
There is something about the way Margo Lanagan writes that seems to hold magic...The Brides of Rollrock Island, everything I could hope for, in a book. Beautiful. --Jackiemorris.co.uk
Powerful, beautiful, dangerous, unsettling, truthful, earthy, challenging, poetic, wonderful, absorbing. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's heartstoppingly gorgeous. 5 stars. --The Bookbag
Atmospheric, moving and rich in detail. --Fluttering Butterflies
A gorgeous piece of work, perhaps less startling and visceral than Tender Morsels, but in many ways a richer and more complex novel.
--LOCUS
`Lanagan's prose is always a joy ... she shows writing of the highest order: subtle, powerful, poetic'. --Marcus Sedgwick, The Guardian, February 11, 2012
Nothing is predictable in this astonishing novel, which expands on classic tales about selkie brides with unsettling imaginative thoroughness. --The Times, 4th Feb 2012
Lanagan's prose is always a joy; it's often surprising and yet always familiar, for she is confident swimming in the archetypes of folklore and fairy-tale. As she paints images for us of Daniel's brief life under the waves as a seal, she shows writing of the highest order: subtle, powerful, poetic. --The Guardian, 11th Feb 2012
This earthy novel is unsettling and dangerous. It dissects everything that love can be; joyous and tender but equally cruel, painful and totally all-encompassing.
--Sugarscape, 14th Feb 2012
Powerful, beautiful, dangerous, unsettling, truthful, earthy, challenging, poetic, wonderful, absorbing. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's heartstoppingly gorgeous. 5 stars. --The Bookbag
Atmospheric, moving and rich in detail. --Fluttering Butterflies
A gorgeous piece of work, perhaps less startling and visceral than Tender Morsels, but in many ways a richer and more complex novel.
--LOCUS
`Lanagan's prose is always a joy ... she shows writing of the highest order: subtle, powerful, poetic'. --Marcus Sedgwick, The Guardian, February 11, 2012
Nothing is predictable in this astonishing novel, which expands on classic tales about selkie brides with unsettling imaginative thoroughness. --The Times, 4th Feb 2012
Lanagan's prose is always a joy; it's often surprising and yet always familiar, for she is confident swimming in the archetypes of folklore and fairy-tale. As she paints images for us of Daniel's brief life under the waves as a seal, she shows writing of the highest order: subtle, powerful, poetic. --The Guardian, 11th Feb 2012
This earthy novel is unsettling and dangerous. It dissects everything that love can be; joyous and tender but equally cruel, painful and totally all-encompassing.
--Sugarscape, 14th Feb 2012
Book Description
A mesmerizing tale of sea magic from the author of Tender Morsels.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Novel, unique and a cracking new offering,
By Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog "Falcata T... - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
This review is from: The Brides of Rollrock Island (Hardcover)
I love a book that takes me on a journey and that's something that Margo Lanagan always does in her own special way. Here we get all the attributes that have made her a known author wrapped up with the ancient myths about the selkie bride. It is clever, it has some magical sleight of hand alongside twisting the readers expectations. Add to this great prose, top notch characters and an overall arc that makes you believe in the concept that Margo is selling, makes this a cracking start to a new series.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly enchanting, spellbinding novel,
By Kate (Oxford, Oxon United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Brides of Rollrock Island (Hardcover)
Margo Lanagan's Brides of Rollrock Island began its life as one story among several in the collection Sea-Hearts. Now it is expanded and the results are wondrous. With the most beautiful prose, Margo Lanagan transports us to an island, a little timeless, on which men live with their silky-haired, large-eyed wives. There are no daughters, just boys, all of whom love their graceful mams, and this relationship between the men of the island and their enchanting women gives life to the heart of this novel.The men of the island have turned their backs on the local red-haired fiery, spirited women. Instead, Misskaella, the island's sea-witch, has offered each of them the gift of naming the women that she can draw out from their seal skins. The price is great, huge debt ensues, but the prize is a non-questioning and loving wife who, deprived of her locked away sealskin, is unable to leave the land and her man. These women have to suffer the double pain of losing their seal children and their human daughters. Their husbands are too enraptured to help but their sons are a different matter. The Brides of Rollrock Island is told by a succession of different narrators, covering two or three generations and regularly referring backwards. The most dominant figure on the island is Misskaella who has ensnared the husbands and terrified the sons. But this menacing witch who knits seaweed on the beach has her own story and this forms a substantial part of the tale. This is one of the true strengths of the novel. The witch we see later on, ugly and predatory, was once a young girl we empathised with, the smallest daughter among many in a family that loved her. But from the moment that she discovered that she could charm seals from the seas, she couldn't live a normal life again. We see both - the young and the old - and that brings another very human dimension to a tale of witches, seals and enthralled men. The island is timeless. There is little reference to events or things that could date it. It could also be anywhere. The red-haired women on the mainland know about the men on the island - it doesn't seem much of a secret - and the sons are accepted as being part land part sea. While some men stay true to the red-haired women, the majority have no power to resist at all. The problem is, though, that Misskaella has warned them all of the high price they must pay, and this doesn't necessarily refer to money. The language of The Brides of Rollrock Island is beautiful. The stories are distinct but flow from one to the other. The selkies are enchanting but the human women are full of life. There are moments of wonder here - the boys swimming through the sea, forgetting their human lives, to name just one. Despite the heartache, the worry and the loss, one abiding feeling to emerge from The Brides of Rollrock Island is the power for love.
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