'He keeps you starved, half-dead with exhaustion, always vying for his attention. That place is the very edge of the world, Evelyn, and you have been taken to the edge of what a person can stand, or be.' [loc. 1461]
The novel begins in 1921, when Jamie MacRaith, delivering a side of beef to the reclusive inhabitants of the Scottish isle of Altnaharra, discovers a horrific scene of mass murder among the standing stones. The only survivor, horribly mutilated, is Dinah.
Or perhaps it begins four years earlier, when Jamie MacRaith's schoolmaster father is murdered. That is certainly when Chief Inspector Christopher Black becomes aware of, and obsessed by, Altnaharra.
Life in Altnaharra revolves around Uncle -- the self-styled Adder -- who founded the community and to whom was revealed the great snake who dwells in the ocean, ready to rise up and consume the Impure. Uncle brought two women, Alice and Nora, to the isle, and there are four children, foundlings given a home: Dinah, Evelyn, Abel and Elizabeth. All share in the mystic benison which Uncle bestows: but only Evelyn is able, as Uncle is, to see through the eyes of birds and beasts, and perceive hidden truths about the people she meets.
The story switches between 1917 and 1921, Evelyn and Dinah, with some later scenes from Dinah's viewpoint. Evelyn, when not training the snake Hercules to accept her blood, is fond of sneaking away to read Kingdom Animalia: Dinah is more interested in sneaking away to meet Jamie MacRaith. It's obvious early on that the girls' accounts don't mesh, but who is to be believed?
This is an eerie and beautiful novel that reminds me, in tone if not theme, of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The stormy Scottish coast and its perils; the absence of the young men who've 'gone to be eaten by War'; the hallucinatory rituals and customs of Altnaharra, and the incongruity of the travelling circus. The differing stories, the lies and truths, the whispered secrets all fell into place like gruesome clockwork at the climax of the story, and the conclusion was remarkably satisfactory and not in the least sugar-coated. I also learnt some interesting things about botany, and about how snakebites sound.
No comments:
Post a Comment