Song of the Selkie
A Novel
by Claire R. McDougall
This isn't really about Selkies, though the story of a Selkie is told within. This is about three sisters. Eddie, Lailas, and Frances. The story is told through Francesc point of view.
It had a good start and lagged only a bit. The story was interesting. Frances is quite the snob. That was her character though and the author wrote that well.
The author writing about the nieces body was really not okay. Frances really pointed out too many times that this kid had a developing body. Frances is also racist. Once the Chapter in Cabo came about it was uncomfortable. I get that she's an academic, set herself apart through academics. That's fine. But some of the things written about the gardener living in a hut(what an assumption), "brown skinned Mexicans", and more, there was no indication that she was racist before. It was just odd to throw that in, when it wasn't a theme or previously established character trait. There should be a content warning.
I finished the book because, I can't leave a review unless I do. The book wrapped up nicely. The road to the end had pretty good pacing. It just wasn't as interesting as the first third of the book promised it would be. It was just predictable.
Description
Some Secrets Only the Sea Can Fathom
In the Scottish folktale of the Selkie, a seal woman climbs out of the sea by dark to strip off her outer layers and dance on the shore. Overcome by her beauty, a man hides her skin so she will be forced to stay on land with him. But the Selkie woman is gripped by a powerful longing, spending her days with her face turned towards the sea.
In Song of the Selkie, each of the three McFarland sisters follows suit, journeying from her “captive” self back to her wild more authentic nature. The youngest sister, Frances, has eschewed the life of the body in pursuit of status as a professor in an Ivy League college in America. On the brink of securing tenure, she goes back to Scotland where she is forced to confront a part of herself that has all this time been in a death slumber. By contrast, her sister Lala, the “sexy one,” moves from man to man, in an endless quest for the creative person she always thought she could be. And the oldest sister, Eddie, bides her time among the fishermen she serves in the local pub, drawn by some inexplicable force back to the small island of Roansay from which their dead mother hailed.
When the three sisters converge in their childhood home on the pagan festival of Hogmanay, all manner of demons from the past are set to let loose.
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I received this egalley from NetGalley and Sibylline Press was under no obligation to give a review. All opinions are my own.
