Sealskin

What an amazing story! An amazing tale of one's wrong, love, loneliness, and community. I hope that Su Bristow writes more novels. The story of Donald and Mairhi was unexpected and beautiful.

DNFed because of the rape scene at the beginning. I don't read rape romances.  I also found it tiring that the protagonist is a weirdo who cannot stand up against his mother and lets her be responsible for everything. And how can she tell so early that the woman is pregnant? Also, why does he now have to marry the selkie after seeing them dance naked. I don't know. I just don't vibe with stories like this. 

“It was the dark of the year now, the time of small, drab days and endless freezing nights, the time for sitting by the fire, mending and making and telling the old tales.”If you follow my reviews, you'd have realized that myths, folk legend and magical realism are very close to my heart. Throw a haunting story in the mix and you have possibly created my perfect read. Unfortunately, I found Sealskin to be a rather average effort.The myth of the Selkie, the seal that turns into a young woman during the night and is captured by a young sailorman, is the centre of the story which is set in the Hebrides in an unspecified time. I'd say late 19th century, judging from the descriptions. We follow Donald, a young fisherman, his mother named Birdie who aids women during the time of birth, and Mairhi, the Selkie who finds herself in the harsh and often inhospitable world of the humans. We witness the change she brings to the community. And that's about it. Does it sound a bit soulless? If it does, it is because this is the impression I had formed upon reading the last page. This is how this novel made me feel.Although the story starts strongly, with a vile action -clearly inspired by the Ancient Greek tales with the similar theme of the captivity of a nymph or a minor goddess (think the myth of Persephone and Hades)- and then there is a certain amount of anxiety over the way Mairhi is going to be treated by the villagers, the novel quickly becomes predictable. Naturally, we all know the conclusion of the myth, but even the end seemed to me anticlimactic and, frankly, absolutely inconsistent with the way Mairhi's character had been developed up to that point. Not to mention, that there is a certain, very important change of the original myth...The writing was flat, in my opinion. I wanted more. I wanted beautiful language, haunting descriptions of the landscape. We're talking about the Hebrides, one of the most unique places on Earth! You're a writer, make me “see” them in my mind, don't give me endless paragraphs on clothes, kitchens and boats. I want images worthy of dark legends and dark deeds. What I seemed to get was a community drama that felt juvenile, more like a YA read. Apart from a few pretty sentences here and there that seemed suspiciously familiar, there was no poetry in the language used. The dialogue felt awkward, simplistic in a negative way, and many times overly melodramatic, especially in Donald's case. The chapters were short, which was a blessing, but the plot somehow managed to become so repetitive that after a point, I just wanted the book to end. And this is never a good sign.The characters were nothing special or memorable. Donald was boring for the most part, Birdie seemed to “carry” the narration but she sounded like a mediocre film script, and the rest of the characters made absolutely no impression to me. Mairhi was the only one I was interested in, but I felt that she wasn't as developed as I would like her to be. In the hands of an able writer, she would have thrived.Too much lost potential in this one, I'm afraid. I cannot bring myself to give it three stars, because the myth of the Selkie should make me “feel” the story, travel to the haunting Hebrides, ponder over the fate of the poor creature. I experienced none of these while I was reading. It may be a debut, but I have read so many stellar first efforts this year that I simply cannot take this as an excuse. In the book is mentioned that Bristow's writing is “a combination of Angela Carter and Eowyn Ivey.” I think not...Not even close...One of the major disappointments of the year...*If you want to read a beautiful story about the myth of the Selkie, try [b:The Four Marys: A Quartet of Contemporary Folk Tales 23107337 The Four Marys A Quartet of Contemporary Folk Tales Jean Rafferty https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1431432399s/23107337.jpg 42655193] by Jean Rafferty, a collection of four novellas. You'll find the kind of writing I'm talking about.*If you find scenes of abuse towards women disturbing, you should proceed with caution with Sealskin. There are a few that seemed quite out of place to me, just to provide unnecessary tension which the writer wasn't able to create in a different way....