I don't remember writing this. Magic seems to be making its way into this book. Or maybe it started with magic, because there is a worse possibility than all of this. I'm not being haunted by a book... [loc. 2963]
Wilder's father inherits a cottage on the coast of Maine, and the family spend the summer there. Whistler Bay is idyllic, though there's an unsettling local mystery: the Dagger Man, who photographs sleeping children. And over the years, a number of women -- lone swimmers -- have gone missing: but that's just the tides, the treacherous ocean. Wilder meets Harper, with her British accent and her witchy rituals, and Nat, who has a difficult relationship with his father. The three become close: they visit a sea cave and whisper secrets to the god that Nat says dwells beneath the water. One day, though, there's an accident: Nat is injured, and a serial killer is unmasked.
Years later, Wilder returns to Whistler Bay to write his account of the events of that summer, and his college friendship (or perhaps love affair) with Sky, who betrayed him and stole the manuscript of his first attempt to explore what happened to the three of them. He's still trying to make sense of everything, trying to construct a story about fathers and sons, or about Harper and Sky, or about his own sense of loss. But is it his story to tell?
This is a layered and labyrinthine novel about stories -- who tells them, how they're told, whose they are -- and identity. I've now read it three times (once is definitely not enough) and am still making new connections, hearing new echoes, recognising new threads weaving through the novel. Wilder, Nat and (especially) Harper are compelling characters, and their emotional tangle needs, and deserves, a lot of unravelling. And Sky... Sky is something else.
I think this might be my favourite of Ward's novels -- Rawblood, Little Eve, The Last House on Needless Street and Sundial -- and I am beginning to see patterns: stories that veer in unexpected directions, endings that can be seen as happy if one squints, surviving trauma and the scars it leaves, unreliable narrators with distinctive voices. And who is more untrustworthy than a novelist?
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review: UK publication date is 20 APR 2023.
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