‘. . . I came to love him.’
‘But did you have choice? What were you to do? Taken into Faerie at such a young age.’
‘It is the curse of the sight.’
‘It is the curse of a predator falling upon its prey – I should know all about that.' [loc. 1875]
Successful 74-year-old romance novelist Cassandra Tipp has been missing for over a year: her will specifies that her niece and nephew will inherit her fortune, but only after they have read the document that she's left for them, typed on pink paper, in her isolated mansion.
Cassandra has been estranged from her family for decades: indeed, for her whole life. She was always the bad girl, the odd one out, nothing like her 'tangerinemarzipan' sister or her fragile, kind-hearted brother. Her childhood and adolescence was a constant war with her mother, who believed Cassie's beloved friend Pepper-Man (he smelt like pepper) was imaginary. It had to be Cassie breaking flower-pots, hoarding sticks and bones, tormenting her sister.
But, as Cassie's account reveals, her relationship with Pepper-Man changed her life. The tragedies that have shattered the family -- the death of Cassie's husband Tommy, the murder-suicide of her father and brother -- did not unfold in the ways that made the headlines. And psychiatrist Dr Martin's lurid bestseller Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, which explained Cassie's stories of faerie friends and a secret child in terms of sexual abuse and mental illness, was just another story. ('Can't both stories be true?' Cassie asks Dr Martin. 'Why is it that only because one thing is true, the other thing is not? Why do we always have to decide?' [loc. 1264])
This is an unsettling read. Whichever version of the story one gives more weight to, Cassie has been groomed and abused -- either by a human predator or by an ancient, almost vampiric being who craves blood and humanity. And whichever version is 'true', Cassie is deemed culpable: even the title of the novel is an accusation.
It's hard to say, too, when and where this is set. There are no identifying details. Most of the story takes place in the small coastal town of S---ville, or in the forest nearby, or within a mystical mound in that forest. There are cars and phones -- landlines, I think -- but no computers. (Oops, one mention of 'a chunky old laptop'.) Cassie's novels -- their plots apparently inspired by faerie tea -- are typed on a typewriter. Cassie sought refuge in books as a child, but we never learn the names of those books.
Cassie's prose is magical and delicate, replete with odd detail, when she describes the faerie realm, but there's something curiously flat about her accounts of interactions with other humans. Her tale of love and abuse and vengeance, of facades and masks, is timeless. And if the faeries are real, they too are timeless: here, they are seeded from the dead, though not all humans have the strength or 'will to life' for post-mortem metamorphose. And some eschew humanity, feeding on animals or trees. There's a thread running through this novel about prey and predator, about whether a human being gives the Sunday roast a choice: and Cassie is, or has been, prey.
This is Camilla Bruce's first novel: I'll definitely look out for more of her work.
I received an Advance Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
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