#Carol Lovekin

[theblurbwitchproject]

Ghostbird by Carol Lovekin

Published: March 17, 2016 Publisher: Honno Press

The Author

In her own words Carol Lovekin writes “stories that touch on the Welsh Gothic and its most powerful motif: the ghost. They concern the nature of magic and how it threads through the fabric of our lives. I explore possibilities: the fine line between the everyday and the time-shifting world of enchantment. My books are also firmly rooted in reality. I write about family relationships: how people, women in particular, respond to loss and how they survive. I set my stories in Wales, where I’ve lived for several decades: a place whose legends and landscapes inform my writing.”

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The Story

Nothing hurts like not knowing who you are. Nobody will tell Cadi anything about her father and her sister. Her mother Violet believes she can only cope with the past by never talking about it. Lili, Cadi’s aunt, is stuck in the middle, bound by a promise she shouldn’t have made. But this summer, Cadi is determined to find out the truth.

In a world of hauntings and magic, in a village where it rains throughout August, as Cadi starts on her search, the secrets and the ghosts begin to wake up. None of the Hopkins women will be able to escape them.

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The Vibe: small welsh village, gossipy locals, magical realism, everyday magic, family secrets, small town, LGBTQ+ subplot

The Style: beautiful prose, standalone, multiple POVs, character driven, coming of age

Trigger Warnings: child neglect, child death, suicide, depression

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The Review

From the very first page Ghostbird captured my imagination. The prose is so beautifully crafted that it felt special from the start. As I said my my last review, I’m always looking for the next Practical Magic, and this novel is the closest to Alice Hoffman’s gorgeous writing style that I’ve yet come across. I highlighted so many quotes during my read through that it was hard to choose just three to include in this review.

The plot revolves around Cadi, a fourteen year old girl who desperately wants a deeper understanding of her past, and primarily of her father and sister who both died in circumstances that her mother refuses to disclose. Violet, Cadi’s mother, is very clearly depressed and a rather cold woman, so Cadi spends a lot of time at the house next door where her aunt Lilli, her father’s sister, lives in a gorgeous witchy cottage that has been in their family for generations. Violet has forbidden Lilli from sharing any details about the family history with Cadi, which all comes to a head over the course of the story. Living in a small Welsh village where gossip is rife doesn’t help matters; Cadi knows that everyone else is privy to her business and is further alienated by this fact. Lovekin’s prose envelopes us in this world, at times both magical and aching with loneliness.

“The rain whispered against the window. A shiver ran down Cadi’s back, and for a second she saw her ghost-face in the glass. This time it was made of meadowsweet and lavender, and a solitary tea towel left hanging on the washing line.”

There are a number of references to character’s reflections in the story, a device which I found added to the introspective tone with a somewhat magical touch. Cadi feels like part of herself is missing; she doesn’t really know who she is, and frequently examines herself as a ghostly form in windows and screens, part-girl, part-background. She can’t be a fully realised person until she understands why her mother is so cold, how her father died and what happened to her sister.

Cadi’s aunt Lilli (short for Lilwen) desperately wants to help her niece understand her families’ past, but holds true to the promise she made to her sister in law and doesn’t spill the beans. Lilli is the witchiest character in the story, and also the most likeable. (Honestly, I found myself enjoying her subplot more than the main storyline.) Amongst Lilli’s overgrown witches’ garden, in Cadi’s lonely bedroom, and the mysterious lake that she is drawn to, the family history begins to unfold.

Lovekin really captures small internal moments that we all experience beautifully; “Light like bee pollen caught in the fine hairs on her bare arm.” I seriously can’t explain how gorgeous her prose is. She also utilises a literary device that I can’t help but love by making use of weather and nature to punctuate dramatic moments or plot points. Frequent unseen bird calls, and a silent barn owl (or ghost-bird), increase the mystery as Cadi begins seeing a ghostly little girl in and around her house.

“A place this old must surely be a few parts magic, and who knew what ancient charms clung to the brickwork? Old wisdom attached itself, collected in puddles, slipped under eaves and down chimneys. Wild magic loitered in lanes, cunning as magpies. If it danced by the door, the village knew the wisest move was to drop the latch. Myths were entwined with reality as tightly as the honeysuckle around the cottage doors.

One of my favourite features of Ghostbird was Lovekin’s use of Welsh phrases, like “cariad bach”, which translates as “little love”. I live pretty close to Wales myself but have very little knowledge of the language, so it was nice to learn some new words and phrases. I’m also obsessed with some of the Welsh names she included: Morwenna, Gwenllian, Pomona, Lilwen? So cute!

My one negative critique was Violet, and to a lesser extent Cadi’s, attitudes.  They both got a little grating as the book went on. Now, I get where Cadi is coming from and she is only 14 years old, but Violet is at points almost irredeemably selfish and overly dramatic. I actually don’t think I’ve disliked a book character more, and that’s saying something. I understand that her past was difficult, but many of the trigger warnings for this book revolve around Violet, and her terrible treatment of her daughter. I feel that the frequent arguments around Cadi wanting to understand her past and Violet refusing to tell her got a bit repetetive, but that was my only real issue with an otherwise beautiful story. I won’t reveal any more of the plot here; it wouldn’t do the book justice. All I can say is, if you like the sound of gentle meadowsweet scents and awaking to a bedroom covered in myserious feathers and leaves, this novel is for you.

“From the first day of August until the last, it rained at least once a day in the village. When the sun broke through, people caught their breath, marvelled at the glimmer turning raindrops to treasure.”

Lovekin’s writing is very special and this novel was a delight to read. I found myself scrolling her Goodreads profile and adding pretty much every other novel she’s written to my TBR list. If any of them are as magically written as Ghostbird, it will be well worth giving them a try.

Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

[Goodreads]

[garadinervi]

«Rampike», Vol. 19, No. 1, 'Visual Poetics', Edited by Karl Jirgens, Windsor, 2010 [UWindsor Institutional Repository, University of Windsor, Windsor. room 3o2 books, Ottawa]

Contributions by Fernando Aguiar, Reed Altemus, Héloise Audy, Sohail Azad, Vittore Baroni, derek beaulieu, John M. Bennett, Carla Bertola, Bill Bissett, Julien Blaine, Darren Bonnici, Christian Burgaud, Ryosuke Cohen, Tentatively A. Convenience, Judith Copithorne, Frank Davey, Sérgio Monteio De Almeida, Marcello Diotallevi, Paul Dutton, Julie Faubert, Jesse Ferguson, Jean-Claude Gagnon, Fabrizio Garghetti, Kim Goldberg, James Gray, Elke Grundmann, Miguel Jiminez, Karl Jirgens, Richard Kostelanetz, C. H. Kwock, Helen Lovekin, Ruggero Maggi, Donato Mancini, Vincent McHugh, Henning Mittendorf, Gustave Morin, Ed Niedzielski, Mogens Otto Nielsen, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Clemente Padín, Li Po, Susana Reisman, Aubrey Reeves, Gerry Shikatani, Carol Stetser, Giovanni Strada, W. Mark Sutherland, Dane A. W. Swan, Nico Vassilakis, Michael Winkler

Cover Art by Kero [Sohail Azad]

[bookjotter6865]

WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021: The Shortlist

WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021: The Shortlist

Hosted once again by Literature Wales The twelve English-language titles shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year Awards 2021 were revealed on the BBC Radio Wales Arts Show earlier this month. The prize, which has four categories in each language – Poetry, Fiction, Creative Non-fiction and Children & Young People – with a collective prize fund of £14,000, celebrates outstanding literary talent…

[rathertoofondofbooks]

My Favourite Novels of 2020!

My Favourite Novels of 2020!

Today I’m sharing my favourite novels that I read in 2020! This has been such a strange year and books have at times given me solace and escape but then at other times (such as the last three months) I’ve barely been able to read anything at all. It means my favourite books of the year really are stand out books that have kept me sane this year. In the end I read 215 books over the course of 2020…

[rozmorris]

Ready for the red pen - how to prepare for comments on your book manuscript

Ready for the red pen – how to prepare for comments on your book manuscript

I am at a nail-biting time. I’ve just sent the manuscript of my third novel, Ever Rest, to its first critical readers in the outside world. Soon I’ll receive their notes.

I’ve been through this process many times, obviously. I know roughly what to expect – both from my own experience and my experience mentoring and editing. It’s inevitable that:

some parts will be overcooked

some will be…

[cherylmmbookblog]

#BlogTour Wild Spinning Girls by Carol Lovekin

Today it’s also a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Wild Spinning Girls by Carol Lovekin.

About the Author

arol Lovekin is the author of three novels published by Honno, the Welsh Women’s Press. She writes about mother/daughter relationships, family dynamics & her stories are rooted in the Welsh landscape. They touch on the Welsh Gothic & its most powerful motif: the ghost.

Her first novel,…

[cfpercy]

GHOSTBIRD BY CAROL LOVEKIN

(Review originally published at The Wales Arts Review: http://www.walesartsreview.org/ghostbird-by-carol-lovekin/)

Math and Gwydion took the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet and from these conjured up the loveliest and most beautiful girl anyone had seen; they baptised her with the form of baptism that was used then, and named her Blodeuwedd.

‘Math, Son of Mathonwy’

The Mabinogion

In a small welsh village where in August it rains every day, there’s a house named Ty Aderyn: the house of birds. Built by a local man for his lover, the house has been home to generations of the Hopkins family, whose women are ‘beautiful and generous, black-haired, with eyes the colour of harebells and desire.’ Near Ty Aderyn is a lake where, fourteen years ago, a tragedy took place: in the split second her father’s attention is taken away, little Dora Hopkins drowns, devastating the Hopkins family and fundamentally changing the life of her unborn sister, Cadi.

Fourteen years later, Cadi Hopkins is a girl who feels everyone knows her story but her; she knows her sister Dora drowned and her father Telio died in a car accident before she was born but has no idea what they were like as people; Violet, her troubled and emotionally distant mother, feels the best way to deal with the past is by not dealing with it; Lily, Telio’s sister, is sympathetic to Cadi’s plight but bound by a promise to Violet she knows she should never have made. But this summer, Cadi is determined to find out the truth. And she’d better hurry: out at the lake, a ghost is stirring.

In Ghostbird, Carol Lovekin has created a beautifully emotional story about the importance of forgiveness, wrapped up in a loose retelling of the story of Blodeuwedd (the above quote is also used as the book’s epigraph). If, like me, you’re not familiar with the Mabinogion, this needn’t worry, for it’s motifs, rather than the story’s framework, Lovekin uses to put forward her ideas. Birds, for instance, are a prominent motif, in particular, owls, the bird Blodeuwedd is cursed to remain as and what the ghost slowly metamorphoses into: what is a punishment in one becomes a symbol of freedom in the other. Dora’s full name is revealed to be Isadora Bloddeuwedd, one name chosen by Violet, the other by Telio, their order of placement, their very choosing, a symbol of the conflict between them. The name Bloddeuwedd itself means ‘flower face’ and one of the signs of the ghost’s presence is the cloying scent of meadowsweet.

One of the things I must commend Lovekin for is the portrayal of her male characters; with more feminist, or more female centric, retellings of folk and fairy tales there is a tendency to render them as two dimensionally as the women before them or as pantomime villains, which, for me, doesn’t so much redress the balance as just swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. Lovekin does not fall into this trap. Her male characters are not perfect, yes, but have positive traits to counterbalance their flaws. They are, in other words, fully rounded people.

That being said however, this story belongs to the Hopkins women: Cadi, Violet and Lily. Cadi is a character who you never fail to sympathise with, even when circumstances force her to behave childishly, as information she has a need and right to know is kept from her. Violet is more problematic: daughter of a woman who withheld any motherly love, lonely woman who married a man whom she wasn’t right for nor he her, and mother unable and unwilling to let go of the grief for the daughter she lost in order to form a relationship with the daughter she has. You’ll frequently find yourself torn between the desire to give her a hug and to give her a good shake, often in the space of the same page. It is through Violet that the story’s major theme plays out, which is, in a similar vein to Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, that in order to move forward, past hurts must eventually either be forgiven or forgotten, even if little has been or can be done to rectify them. If Cadi and Violet are opposite extremes, then Lily provides the balance, sympathizing with Cadi, knowing she has a right to what is being,kept secret but reluctant to break her promise of silence to Violet, no matter how ill-conceived she knows it may have been, trying instead to talk Cadi and Violet into a dialogue, with varying degrees of success.

Another thing I must commend Lovekin for is her portrayal of same sex relationships: during the course of the story, Lily falls in love with another woman in the village – and that’s it: it isn’t swept under the carpet nor does it take over the narrative, it’s just one of the many elements in the novel’s tapestry, treated as completely normal, and it’s beautiful.

[smorgasbordinvitation]

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily - Wednesday 10th March 2021 - #Interview Judith Barrow, #Reviews D.L. Finn, #History Pat Furstenberg

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily – Wednesday 10th March 2021 – #Interview Judith Barrow, #Reviews D.L. Finn, #History Pat Furstenberg

A small selection of posts I have enjoyed in the last few days and I hope that you will head over to enjoy in full… thanks Sally. The first post is from Judith Barrow who  interviews fellow Honno author Carol Lovekin.. a terrific interview which I am sure you will enjoy. A few Moments With Carol Lovekin Hello, dear reader, and welcome. Like you, I am a guest; invited by Judith to appear on her…

[sallygcronin]

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily - Wednesday 10th March 2021 - #Interview Judith Barrow, #Reviews D.L. Finn, #History Pat Furstenberg

Smorgasbord Blogger Daily – Wednesday 10th March 2021 – #Interview Judith Barrow, #Reviews D.L. Finn, #History Pat Furstenberg

A small selection of posts I have enjoyed in the last few days and I hope that you will head over to enjoy in full… thanks Sally. The first post is from Judith Barrow who  interviews fellow Honno author Carol Lovekin.. a terrific interview which I am sure you will enjoy. A few Moments With Carol Lovekin Hello, dear reader, and welcome. Like you, I am a guest; invited by Judith to appear on her…

[oldpoet56]

Myth and magic in darkest Wales: Ghostbird [Review] — BookerTalk Ghostbird by Carol Lovekin One thing guaranteed to turn me off a book is the presence of a ghost.

[garadinervi]

«Rampike», Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Issue: 'Vortext', Edited by Karl Jirgens, Sault Sainte Marie, 2004 [UWindsor Institutional Repository, University of Windsor, Windsor. room 3o2 books, Ottawa]

Contributions by Helen Lovekin, Spencer Selby, Philippe Sollers, Carla Bertola, Opal Nations, Norman Lock, Fausto Bedoya, John Donlan, Andrea Nicki, Frank Davey, Michael Basinski, Paul Dutton, Richard Kostelanetz, Fernando Aguiar, Reed Altemus, Vittore Baroni, Carla Bertola, Christian Burgaud, Harold E. Adler, Johnnyboy Productions, Carol Stetser, Gerry Shikatani, Kenneth Doren, Gary Barwin, Monty Cantsin, W. M. Sutherland; Vintage interview with bill bissett, and an Essay on bp Nichol by Paul Dutton

Cover Art by Nicholas Frederick Peter

[jenmedsbookreviews]

Today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome the lovely Anne Williams of Being Anne to Jen Med’s to help me spread a little more #booklove. We’ll be taking a look at all Anne’s bookish confessions, just as soon as we’ve learned a little more about Anne.

About Anne

When I first set up this blog, I really agonised over what to call it. I wanted it to be more than “just a book blog”, but I still need to work on that one. Maybe one day – but then again maybe not. I’m enjoying myself too much with the books.

My name is Anne (as you’ve probably guessed…) and I live in the beautiful market town of Wetherby in West Yorkshire. I haven’t always lived here though – I’m originally from a village near Bangor in North Wales, and still regularly visit family there.  I worked as a civil servant (DWP) for more years than I care to remember, in my later years working in project and change management, and in marketing and communications.

But I’m now 61 years of age, and able to spend my time doing all the things I most enjoy: I was lucky enough to be able to take early retirement in March 2014.

My first passion has always been reading – I now enjoy spending much of my time doing just that, writing about books here on Being Anne, and discussing them with blogging and reading friends. I really enjoy doing a monthly book review slot on local community radio, Tempo FM in Wetherby, and also run the local U3A Book Group. I travel regularly to book related events – and am lucky to be invited to some of the best launches and parties!

You can follow Anne on her blog, and via Social Media

 Being Anne | Twitter | Facebook

Childhood Sweetheart Favourite book from childhood

In common with most other people, I really loved Enid Blyton. I was always a bit put off by the Famous Five though, because my namesake Anne was such a wimp – George was so much more fun. My favourite was The Adventurous Four. I see it’s now called The Adventurous Four Shipwrecked! (why, oh why?) and twins Jill and Mary have been renamed Pippa and Zoe…

First love The first book you fell in love with

I moved on from children’s books pretty quickly really, and read anything I could lay my hands on. It’s a very long time ago, so I can’t really remember my first love – but I suspect it was probably something my mum wouldn’t have entirely approved of. I think it might have been Valley Of The Dolls by Jacqueline Susann – I see it was published when I was 11…!

Biggest book crush The book character you’re totally in love with

Maybe I should probably mention Heathcliff or Mr Darcy, but it has to be Adam Hamilton-Shaw from Sheryl Browne’s Learning to Love. He has absolutely no sense of right or wrong where women are concerned, but I loved his hidden depths and sad back-story. And he’s absolutely gorgeous… certainly left me with a smile on my face…

Weirdest book crush Well… duh

Prince, the black labrador in Matt Haig’s The Last Family in England. This book is still one of my all-time favourites, while Prince does all he can to help and protect his family while adhering to the Labrador Pact. I’ve never been able to look at a labrador since without wondering what they’re thinking… (If I hadn’t chosen Prince, it would have had to be Adam in Flowers for the Dead by Barbara Copperthwaite – and that would have been really weird!)

Hardest break up The book you didn’t want to end

I think that has to be Sealskin by Su Bristow. It’s not a particularly big book, but it took me an absolute age to read – it’s so beautifully written, every word carefully chosen, and I just wanted to savour every moment. I was bereft when I finished…

The one that got away The book in your TBR or wish list that you regret not having started yet.

Heavens, there are so many! But I think I must mention The Wacky Man by Lyn G Farrell. I’ve met Lyn several times and was totally fascinated (and very moved) to hear her talking about the harrowing background, but I think it’s a book I need to pick the right time to tackle. One day…

Secret love Guilty Reading pleasure

Every so often, I do enjoy reading young adult books – just for the enjoyment, and I rarely review any on the blog. Favourites? I really enjoyed The Hunger Games (not me at all really!), but do have a particular soft spot for Michael Morpurgo and Sally Gardner. And I’m sure anyone would love the wonderful books by the late Siobhan Dowd as much as I do.

Love one, love them all Favourite series or genre

I’m going to pick out a publisher, but even that’s a difficult choice! I think – because some of the others get more exposure – that I’ll go for Honno Welsh Women���s Press. They have an unerring eye for the most wonderful books and authors (Carol Lovekin, Thorne Moore, Juliet Greenwood, Judith Barrow… and so many others I’ve loved), handle them with care, and I’ve never read a book they’ve published that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed.

Your latest squeeze Favourite read of the last 12 months

It’s been an exceptional year for books, and it’s going to be so difficult to identify a list of books of the year, let alone spotlight just one. But I will single out Not Thomas by Sara Gethin, published by Honno. I really don’t usually like reading about the ugliness of this world – I prefer my books to be an escape – but this book was simply stunning. A world of cruelty and neglect written in the voice of a five year old child, seeing it all through his eyes and from his unique perspective – a book I’d unreservedly recommend to everyone.

Blind date for a friend If you were to set a friend up with a blind date (book) which one would it be?

So many friends read crime and thrillers, and I’d like to introduce them to one I really enjoyed – Hostile Witness by Nell Peters. It takes a really special book to get me sprinting down the platform on arrival at Kings Cross to find a seat so I could read the last few pages. The body count has to be seen to be believed, but it’s also seriously funny – such a difficult balance to achieve. It’s a taut and tension-filled psychological thriller, but with a quite wonderful fresh and light approach of a kind I’ve honestly never seen before.

Greatest love of all Favourite book of all time.

This is such a difficult question! Just so I’m not here all night, I’m going to plump for my favourite romantic novel of the last few years – Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey. We all read for different reasons, but one of the things I love is the way you can live inside a book for as long as you’re reading it, entirely leaving the real world behind – and when this book ended, I cried my eyes out because everything about it had been so thoroughly perfect.

Thanks Anne. Some absolutely brilliant choices in there. I don’t know if I ever read the advernturous four when I was younger. I was all Famous Five and Secret Seven. Strange as I hate odd numbers now 😀

I agree with you about Sealskin. Absolutely beautiful book. So unlike anything I’d normally read but I am so glad that I read it. And I really must move Flowers For the Dead up my tbr. Noever had you pegged as a Hunger Games junkie though…

What do you think folks? Agree with Anne’s choices? Do you have an other recommendations to add to Anne’s already huge TBR pile?

Make sure to join me on Friday when author Ann Girdharry shares all of her #booklove.

Have a fabulous day all

Jen

#BookLove: Anne Williams @Williams13Anne Today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome the lovely Anne Williams of Being Anne to Jen Med's to help me spread a little more #booklove.

[rathertoofondofbooks]

Wild Spinning Girls by Carol Lovekin | @CarolLovekin @Honno @AnneCater #RandomThingsTours #WildSpinningGirls

If it wasn’t haunted before she came to live there, after she died, Ty’r Cwmwl made room for her ghost. She brought magic with her.

And the house, having held its breath for years, knew it. Ida Llewellyn loses her job and her parents in the space of a few weeks and, thrown completely off course, she sets out for the Welsh house her father has left her. Ty’r Cwmwl is not at all welcoming despite…

[rebeccamascull]

2016 down, 2017 to go...

Dear Readers - thank heavens 2016 is done and dusted! It’s been a crappy old year for a hundred reasons and I’m so glad it’s gone. New year, new opportunities and a time to look ahead and embrace the future. Before we do that, I’d like to take a quick look back at 2016 to thank all the people who have helped me during the year. You all know who you are! Friends old and new, family near and far, and all the lovely folk I’ve met through social media who keep me smiling. That includes the kind and generous readers who have read my books over the past year and written about them or rated them or otherwise shared their thoughts. Thank you so much! And a particular thank you to those reviewers who chose my 2nd novel Song of the Sea Maid as one of their favourite books of the year in 2016:

A Lover of Books:

https://aloverofbooks.wordpress.com/2016/12/27/my-top-10-books-of-2016/

Carol Lovekin:

https://carollovekinauthor.com/2016/12/18/my-top-books-of-2016/

Ela’s Books:

https://twitter.com/ElasBooks/status/808740301657538561

Shriya Kham:

https://twitter.com/Shriya_Kham/status/815540981227458561

Rosie Canning:

http://rosemarycanning.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/top-twelve-reads-of-2016.html

Thanks to those lovely readers.

Looking forward to 2017, I’ve got a new book out! Yes, on April 6th 2017, my 3rd novel will be published. THE WILD AIR is the story of a female pilot in the Edwardian era, the very early days of powered flight.

Here’s the blurb:

In Edwardian England, aeroplanes are a new, magical invention, while female pilots are rare indeed.

When shy Della Dobbs meets her mother's aunt, her life changes forever. Great Auntie Betty has come home from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, across whose windswept dunes the Wright Brothers tested their historic flying machines. Della develops a burning ambition to fly and Betty is determined to help her.

But the Great War is coming and it threatens to destroy everything - and everyone - Della loves.

ARCs are available now from Hodder & Stoughton, so if you’re a book reviewer and you like the sound of it, then do get in touch with Veronique Norton at Hodder to see about a proof. 

So, that’s the old year and the new. I wish you all a happy, healthy and hopeful 2017, my friends. :-)

[cfpercy]

SNOW SISTERS BY CAROL LOVEKIN

(Review originally published at The Wales Arts Review: http://www.walesartsreview.org/books-snow-sisters-by-carol-live-in/)

At the end of a narrow lane in the heart of the welsh countryside lies Gull House. A tall Victorian house built originally for a wealthy local, in recent times it has belonged to the Pryce family, of whom the remaining members are Verity and Meredith. The sisters grew up in Gull House until the year Allegra, their tempestuous, perpetual happiness chasing mother, forced them all to leave; the same year Meredith inadvertently released a ghost. Now, after the death of her beloved grandmother, Verity has returned to confront her inheritance. But there’s someone missing, someone who should be by her side: Meredith.

Lovekin’s debut, Ghostbird, was a ghostly tale of family, love and magic, influenced by Welsh folklore, particularly the stories of the Mabinogion. Snow Sisters explores similar themes but borrows more from the Victorian Gothic/fairy-tale genres. This is apparent from when we’re first introduced to Gull House: a “tall Victorian” house – tilted slightly from constant buffeting from “wild, sea-born winds” and the cries of gulls echoing overhead, the haughty “ash-coloured galleons” that give the house its name – built from “weathered stone the colour of storms” and oak beams that still remembered “where they once grew”, with an architectural folly known as “Rapunzel’s tower” and “twisted blue ropes” of wisteria hanging over the garden wall. ‘Rapunzel’ initially conjures the atmosphere of a fairy tale, but, like the Lady of Shalott, towers can also be used as a means of confinement – women trapped and isolated by circumstances or otherwise. Verity then points out that, in Japanese culture, wisteria (known as the wisteria maiden) is a symbol for unrequited love and was known to Victorians as the ‘clinging tree.’ And so, our themes are set up: ghosts of the past ghosts (real & figurative) clinging to the present. Our ghost is Angharad, released by Meredith from an antique sewing box full of red flannel hearts. She has a tale to tell and she will be listened to.

Unlike the more chronologically linear narrative of Ghostbird, Snow Sisters employs not only multiple narrative viewpoints to switch between but also multiple timelines: Verity returning to the house in the present day, various characters in the past & Angharad recounting her own story. This gives the story a different dynamic where, instead of reading on to find answers to our questions, we know some partial answers and the impetus is to find out how we got there. As ever, Lovekin’s writing is beautiful and her characters are well drawn. She doesn’t worry about making them ‘likable’ or ‘sympathetic’, just real. Allegra for instance, the girls’ mother, is maddeningly irritating – a spoilt woman child who is always chasing down love and who has no self-awareness or sense of irony, but she’s a good character because she provides contrast, conflict and because her traits are recognisable. Angharad’s tale adds a note of genuine tragedy, elevating the book above mere ghost story, and you realise that one of the lingering ghosts are the historical attitudes towards women: as a Victorian woman, even one from a good family, Angharad has little autonomy and is completely at the mercy (or lack of) of those surrounding her, people who often prioritize appearances and their own selfish desires above another’s wellbeing, and the degradations she suffers are far more terrifying than her later ghostly visitations (though those are beautifully creepy and understated). It must never be forgotten that the amount of time women have had (mostly) equal rights pales in comparison to the thousands of years before that where women were essentially second-class citizens. And there are still places around the world today where that is still the case.

Sisterly love, magic and ghostly hauntings, Snow Sisters is perfect for when the skies begin to turn stormy or for when the snow is falling, and all is soft and quiet, where a whisper in the dark might be heard.

Snow Sisters is available now from Honno.

[rathertoofondofbooks]

My Favourite books of 2020... so far!

My Favourite books of 2020… so far!

Last year I decided to do a post about my favourite books of the year so far (as of 30 June) and whilst this year I haven’t read quite as many books as last year at this point I decided to still do it. It’s always lovely to have the chance to celebrate amazing books!

At the time of writing this post I’ve read 115 books and have 20 five star reads that I simply can’t narrow down any further.…