The Brides of Rollrock Island, a review

It's always interesting to me when I discover an author I've never heard of, only to discover that they are probably quite well known in some other country. Has that ever happened to you? If not, let me tell you about Margo Lanagan.

Margo Lanagan is an Australian author with a list of awards to her name longer than my arm. She is not only an award-winning author, she has also been an awards judge. For those of us here in the states, she has won four World Fantasy awards, a Nebula, and a Hugo. There are numerous other awards I could list, but a lot of them come from other countries and might be less familiar to us. It's also interesting to note that she's had work translated into 19 languages. She's done and won a lot. Margo Lanagan is no slouch in the writing world.

The story I keep hearing about, when looking into her career, is Tender Morsels, and a short story collection called Black Juice. In fact, if you go looking about, the book I'm reviewing doesn't come up much. Which is a real shame, because it is excellent.

The Brides of Rollrock Island appeared in my hands a few years ago. I honestly don't remember how I found it. But it left an indeliable mark on me. It's one of those books I continued to think about long after I finished reading it. Little glimmers of the island, and moments with the characters stuck with me like memories from my own life. They felt just as real. That's maybe the best thing about The Brides of Rollrock Island. It feels as if you are hearing a true story, something passed down to you, worn smooth around the edges, until the fantastical elements seem comfortably normal. Then, when the details rise up off the page, you are truly shocked by them. I know I was, anyway.

What is it about? Well, in a word...selkies. Selkies happen to be one of my favorite mythological creatures. If you don't know, a selkie is a seal that can turn into a woman. While in woman form, she sheds her seal coat. In the old stories, fishermen found them, and hid their coats so that they could not return to the sea and abandon them. But the women were always looking for them, hoping to return to their homes beneath the waves. It's sort of tragic and romantic and mysterious, and I was always captivated by the very idea. This book takes all of that tragedy and romance and mystery, and brings about a story that I really love.

It is an emotional book. Be warned! The first time I read it, I cried. The second time, knowing what was coming, I winced. The story follows a few people, in sequence, to tell the tale of the seal-women and the town on Rollrock Island. The whole town is affected, and each man, woman, and child as well. It tells of how these selkies change the whole island over a couple of generations. It isn't a happy story, but it is a captivating one.

One of the things I found delicious about this book was the way in which you must confront the roles of men and women, husbands and wives. What do they each expect from each other, what do they need, and what do they take? It's woven through every passage. I believe that what you believe about these topics will greatly effect how you feel about the events in the book. I suspect that there are some readers who will find it endlessly infuriating. Some, like myself, might take it with introspection. Others might for the first time see some of the injustices that naturally happen within these roles. Are these "injustices" unavoidable? The book does not draw a conclusion. Only, it shows that time must keep marching on despite them.

For me, the most tender of characters is Daniel Mallett. His mother is a selkie, and his father a land-man. While he loves her immensely, even from a young age he's aware of her constant sorrow and depression. The boys of the island collective refer to them as "the mams," and they all seem to be aware of their sadness, their longing for the sea. And yet, his selkie mother clearly loves him as well. Right or wrong isn't much of a factor, only what is.

While I'm not sure what ultimate conclusion a reader might draw from the book, I think the conclusion I came to is that many injustices and difficulties can be healed through generations. Where one man fails, his son might succeed. Where one woman is wronged, her daughter or granddaughter might be upheld. It is hard to be in the generation that failed, but maybe it is necessary for the future to build on. An interesting idea, and a hard one. I find this book to balance the interesting and hard well.

As always, I try to include content warnings, and this one has some. The seal-women rise out of their seal skins nude, and there is some description of that. Likewise, some readers might find the treatment of the seal-women disturbing. No violence to them occurs, but there is a question of consent that is never clearly answered. This book is definitely written for an adult audience, and I wouldn't recommend sharing this one even with your older teenagers without at least reading it first yourself.

In addition to the questionable treatment of women, which is undoubtedly a theme of the book, there is witchcraft. The women are pulled from the seal bodies by a witch woman. While there isn't much detail about how she does things, I know that some readers do not want to read about witchcraft in any shape or form. If that's you, this is not the book for you.

My final warning is that this book contains a suicide. It is tragedy the whole of the town experiences, shocking in its portrayal. If you or the person you are buying for struggles with suicidal ideation, this is not the book for them.

Warnings aside, I felt that the author handled these difficult topics with the respect it deserved. While it is definitely a fantasy novel, it reads like general fiction. I'm not sure you could say a book about women rising up out of seals could truly be "magical realism," but maybe. The entire story feels as if it really happened, as if it is a true account. I am maybe the most impressed with that. I slipped into the world of the story without realizing I'd left my own, because the writing is so convincing and seamless.

As always, I have my copy of The Brides of Rollrock Island for sale on my website. You can find it here.

If you would like to support this blog in a different way, you can also find it available for sale through pangobooks.com If you use my code, first-time users get a small discount (and I get a little credit to my account, which I will use to buy more weird, old books!).

The code is: WEIRDOLDBOOKS