After the last Apple Fair, we never had any luck in the town,’ one elderly woman told me. ‘It was her fault, the Apple Queen. If she’d married her man, everything would have gone on as it always had. But she went away. They both did...' [loc. 937]
Several incomers arrive in the small, isolated Scottish seaside town of Appleton. Ashley is a teenager intrigued by her grandmother's stories; Kathleen is the new librarian; widowed Nell wants to restore the town's famous orchards. All three women are American: there is also Mario, a Sicilian teenager working in his cousin's chip shop after a failed love affair, and refusing to accept his exile.
The three women are all drawn to the same mysterious man, Ronan: each of them learns a different part of the town's defining myth, the Apple Queen and the golden apple which she traditionally shares with her lover, granting their hearts' desires. The absconsion of the last Apple Queen is blamed for the town's decline: but could there be a new Apple Queen who'll reverse Appleton's fortunes and bring prosperity again?
After the town is cut off from the rest of the country by a landslip, inexplicable events begin to occur. Perhaps local folklorist Graeme, with his theories about the peninsula once having been an island, is not as wrong-headed as he sounds ...
I felt the novel suffered from having too many viewpoint characters: in particular, Mario seemed wholly unnecessary to the story, and though his sense of isolation and alienation was well-portrayed, it didn't add anything. (Also, how on earth did he manage to miss the fact that he was on the west coast of Scotland? Do they not have sunsets there?)
I did like the subtle hints at the town's history and nature, and the juxtaposition of myth and economic stagnation. The myth entangles the three female protagonists in a complex and nuanced story with shifting themes and indeterminate endings. The endings bestowed upon each woman are satisfying, but I do think the novel could have been more tightly structured.
Read for the 'Inspired by Folklore' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge.
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