The Gloaming
Mar. 3rd, 2023 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearOne of my friends cites Kirsty Logan as a favourite author, so I've had this book on my wishlist for a very long time. But something about it didn't really appeal, so I never got around to actually buying a copy. Then, this week, I did a round of the nearby charity shops and picked up nine books for £15 - and this was one of them.
It's about a family that moves to a remote and slightly mysterious island, where people occasionally start turning to stone, make a journey to the top of the cliff and becomes statues. It's also about desire, loss, grief, the need to belong, misunderstandings about what it means to love - and selkies.
The prose is beautiful - but perhaps a little bit too beautiful in some ways. It's so dreamy and lyrical that, for me, it created a barrier between me and the story and the characters, making it difficult to fully connect and invest. That said, throughout the book, the odd half-sentence made me gasp (with sorrow or other emotions).
I did find the family dynamics and the different ways in which the characters were pushed and pulled together and apart affecting. And the role of the run-down house and its never-ending renovations held a poignant significance.
The tone felt uneven, though - dreamy coming-of-age to horrific tragedy to cutesy queer romance to relentless family saga - it did pretty much come together in the end in a satisfying way, but it seemed like it really didn't know what it was trying to be along the way. But perhaps that was partially the point.
So, a complicated read - I did enjoy it for the most part and I read it very quickly - but it didn't grab me enough to go out looking for more by this author.
It's about a family that moves to a remote and slightly mysterious island, where people occasionally start turning to stone, make a journey to the top of the cliff and becomes statues. It's also about desire, loss, grief, the need to belong, misunderstandings about what it means to love - and selkies.
The prose is beautiful - but perhaps a little bit too beautiful in some ways. It's so dreamy and lyrical that, for me, it created a barrier between me and the story and the characters, making it difficult to fully connect and invest. That said, throughout the book, the odd half-sentence made me gasp (with sorrow or other emotions).
I did find the family dynamics and the different ways in which the characters were pushed and pulled together and apart affecting. And the role of the run-down house and its never-ending renovations held a poignant significance.
The tone felt uneven, though - dreamy coming-of-age to horrific tragedy to cutesy queer romance to relentless family saga - it did pretty much come together in the end in a satisfying way, but it seemed like it really didn't know what it was trying to be along the way. But perhaps that was partially the point.
So, a complicated read - I did enjoy it for the most part and I read it very quickly - but it didn't grab me enough to go out looking for more by this author.
