Each story begins with love and ends with death, whether of young lovers, parents and children, or brothers and sisters. Sedgwick takes us backwards, first by sixty-year intervals and then by leaps of centuries, in seven short stories centering on a remote northern island and the potent, drug-laden flower that blooms there. But it’s the earthy, the romantic, and the ghostly-rather than the cerebral-that make this book such a complete work of art. The dark deceptiveness of words themselves underlies the island’s shift from “bloody” to “blessed” (as the narrator says in a philological moment, tracing the word’s evolution from Old to Modern English). It’s only in reading through all seven that we begin to understand the prehistoric ritual that brings bloody death and forbidden love to “Blessed Island.” In each of these stories-set in 2073, 2011, 1944, 1902, 1848, the Viking period of the tenth century, and “time unknown”-Sedgwick’s prose is taut, careful, and chilling, as it moves through the bright, gentle language of love and the island’s beauty to the abrupt, deliberate sacrifice that ends each section. Although fans of the author’s Revolver (Roaring Brook, 2010) will likely flock to this book to relish more of Sedgwick’s stark, suspenseful writing, new readers might find that there are more questions left unanswered than are resolved.- Evelyn Khoo Schwartz, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC Each of these vignettes seem rich enough to be worthy of a novel of its own, and readers might almost wish they could pause in each fascinating, detailed moment rather than be swept through time-and the novel-on the current of a cursed love. The many characters are vividly real and distinct from one another, despite making only brief appearances. The plot is reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (Sceptre, 2004), with its themes of love and reincarnation, as well as of the cult-movie-turned-book Robin Hardy’s Wicker Man (Crown, 1978), with its setting of remote and sinister island inhabitants. Whether it is a 21st-century archaeologist, a World War II pilot, or a Viking king, there are subtle but tell-tale signs of the threads that bind them together over the centuries-the echoes of particular names and phrases, the persistence of a mysterious dragon orchid, and other seemingly innocuous moments that all hint at the dark mystery at the center of this lyrical yet horrifying tale. Beginning in July 2073, Sedgwick’s new novel makes its way backward through time, drawing readers into seven stories from different eras.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |