With this review of a wonderfully seasonal book, Awfully Big Review pauses for a while. Thank you for reading our 2013 reviews - and we will be back with more on the First of January 2014. A happy holiday to you all!
Meanwhile, from Adele Geras . . .
Meanwhile, from Adele Geras . . .
THE COMPANY OF GHOSTS
by Berlie Doherty
A new novel from Berlie
Doherty is always something to look forward to and yet again I have to offer a
disclaimer. This writer, like so many of those I review on this website, is a
friend of mine and I’m sorry about that, but if I had to avoid books by people I
know, I’d be very hamstrung in the matter of reviewing and would scarcely ever
be able to do it. As it is, showing good new books to readers who might
otherwise miss them is something I regard as one of my main functions as a
critic.
This is a ghost story
and I love ghost stories, so I seized on it when it came through my door.
Doherty has opted for a particular kind of tale. There are no big old houses
here with creaking doors; no graveyards, no rattling chains and indeed most of
the accoutrements of the traditional story are absent and instead we have an
idyllic (in many ways) island off the Scottish coast and a teenager marooned
there all by herself.
Ellie is running away
from an unpleasant situation at home when she accepts an invitation from Morag,
whom she scarcely knows, to spend some time on the island. This place is
deserted. Morag’s family spend holidays there in a very basic dwelling and
there’s a disused lighthouse but apart from that, nothing. It’s reached by boat,
and that is an erratic sort of service, down to the availability of a local
fisherman. Circumstances combine to
leave Ellie alone there for what she thinks will be only a short time but which,
terrifiyingly, extends and extends until we realize, gradually, that through
various accidents, no one is going to come and rescue her. She is on her own,
having to cope, desperately scared at times and trying to be sensible and brave
in really scary circumstances.
This would be bad enough, but of course, we know from the title that Ellie is not alone…..there is the ghost. The way Doherty introduces this spectre, the way the supernatural is interwoven with the natural is both spine chilling and lyrical. She specializes in wonderful descriptions of nature and in this case, because our heroine is an artistic child, of her paintings as well. Ellie writes letters to her father, who, in her opinion, has deserted her family to go off to Cornwall on his own leaving her mother to marry someone else and these letters, interspersed with what’s happening on the mainland to George, Morag’s brother, who, through no fault of his own, has failed to arrange Ellie’s rescue, both ease the tension on the island and also rachet it up a few notches as the novel progresses.
The story of the ghost
turns out to be a love story, and towards the end, we sense that Ellie’s
narrative, too may be moving in that direction….
This is a book full of moments of really creepy suspense and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants something both unusual and romantic and set in a landscape which is at the same time threatening and very beautiful. It’s a well-written, intriguing and often genuinely scary story, just right for Christmas.
Publisher: Andersen
Press
Price: £6.99
(pbk)
ISBN:
9781849397292
Reviewer: Adèle Geras
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2 comments:
Sounds just right for this time of year, Adele! A Solstice treat. Thank you!
Absolutely agree, Adele - it's a lovely book, beautifully written.
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