If you like your stories to be spooky and atmospheric, then this one’s for you. Elisa Lodato knows how to create enough of an atmosphere that you can literally imagine the mist hovering over a dark, rugged landscape.
Blurb:
She came to write, but the island has its own story . . .
Off the windswept coast of Scotland lies Finish Island, rugged and remote. Once a home, it now stands abandoned, a place of dark history and deep memory, a place that holds its stories close. Unable to write since her daughter’s death, it’s here that Seren comes to work, hoping that the solitude and silence will inspire her next novel.
But the island holds memories of its own, restless and unwilling to stay buried. As unsettling occurrences become even more bizarre and frightening, Seren starts seeing uncanny resonances between her past and the island’s history. There is something on this island, something ancient and unforgiving. Will Seren discover its secrets, before it’s too late?
My Review:
Seren is adrift. Her entire life is at a grinding halt. She’s a sister-less sister, a child-less mother, a story-less author. She feels that everything and everyone that anchored her has now left her and she has nothing to cling to. After a shocking tragedy, her husband left and now has a new wife and an entirely new life. Seren feels both lonely and alone.
When her publisher approaches her with a proposition to write a story with a supernatural theme, she realizes that she has no choice but to accept. She’s desperate for the money, and perhaps this is what she needs to finally get her writing mojo back. She knows that the project will not be an easy one: it will require a return to the place where she tragically lost her sister and daughter. But maybe it will give her a sense of closure that will enable her to move on, and the familiarity of the island of Finish might lend her some security in the memories it will bring of better times.
So she prepares to set off for a few months on Finish (a fictional island in the Outer Hebrides), a place that abounds with local myths and legends about the people who used to inhabit the area and why they no longer do. She will live in the ‘bothy’, which comes from the Gaelic term ‘bothan’ meaning a hut, where there will be no running water, or electricity (although there’s a generator). She’ll only have limited time there, before weather conditions will not be fit for her to live in, and she’ll be forced to return to the mainland.
The word ‘basic’ is a generous description of how she’ll be living! (The author bases this actual bothy on the real stone bothy on the island of Mingulay.) It will just be Seren and her writing. Or so she thinks … because as soon as she arrives, she realizes that the spirit of Finish is most definitely not at rest and that it clearly wants to communicate with her.
Seren is not a likeable character, and not easy for a reader to connect with. She has zero ability to make any sort of conscious decision and seems to be buoyed along, moment to moment, often leading to some atrocious outcomes. I wouldn’t call her lack of decision-making, ‘flexibility’, but rather a result of being crushed by the hand that life has dealt her, resulting in a feeling that she can only follow wherever she’s led, by whatever happens next. She’s complex and multi-layered, with circumstances having created high walls between her and the world around her.
The island of Finish is a character all on its own – a wonderful microcosm of a world! Reading the author’s note at the end of the book gave an amazing insight into her writing process and her reasons for creating a fictional island on which to base her story (surrounding it with places nearby that actually do exist). She also gave additional background information about a few other bits that she’d added in and where she got them from, which I loved reading about. I love it when the author shares stuff like this – it adds so much more depth to what would otherwise just be another story.
This isn’t an easy read, but if you recognize the rich history and heritage of the area and can forgive a flawed, complex character, then you will appreciate this book.
Thank you to Compulsive Readers for the Blog Tour.
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