Beneath A Thousand Skies

Good afternoon,

Today I’m back with review for Selkie Moon by Kelly Jarvis which crossed my path via a SFINCS 3 review, and immediately grabbed my attention – as I am always going to pick up a selkie tale.

I have to admit I am a little conflicted over Selkie Moon. On one hand, I adored this little gem of a book. Jarvis absolutely nailed the feeling of a folklore tale, and it was so easy in to imagine sitting around a bonfire on the beach and hearing Isla or even her mother sitting there and telling the tale to us, especially with the emotional depth of the book. The writing was beautiful, absolutely capturing so much of what I love about Scotland and the wildness of the sea and coast – and quite honestly, I would have been happy with a book of just them at the beach and in the waves; and I like that the writing felt a little more pared down when it came to the everyday modern life of the family, not completely, but it generated that feeling of magic losing a little bit of its spark as it crossed the boundary of reality.

I’m also always on board for a selkie tale that weaves traditional elements of that folklore with something new and different, and recently we have been blessed with a few. In Selkie Moon it is a wonderful blending of the traditional, old folklore with the realities of modern life and relationships, the wilderness of the ocean and the wild coast is within reach, but so to are the demands and expectations of modern life and civilisation. And I love that we get to see the battle between the two through Isla and a slightly lesser extent Callan, just because we spend less time with him; and that very much blurred the lines of nature and nurture. Two children raised by the same family, with the same divides and pulls, and yet the one that pulled away the most towards the modern was the one who found the wild again.

The character work was interesting. Isla as our POV is the one we get to know most intimately, a child of two worlds trying to bridge them both. Jarvis, I felt captured perfectly the push and pull of a child trying to keep her family together without fully understanding all the forces pulling them apart and together, and the jagged edges that come from that, as well as the strain on relationships – as well as the impact of modern life, and teenager wants and pushing of boundaries. I did feel a little like the restlessness at the end felt a little like it was disconnected from the middle of her story, albeit coming full circle to the Isla of the beginning; but I did like how Jarvis dealt with her relationship with her mother and that she was guided to the answers rather than shoved.

Her parents were different… and I think Jarvis does something very clever with them and again playing into that role of Isla as the island in the middle. We have the father, who there were several occasions when I would like to have pushed him into the deep, the storyteller, the anchor refusing to let them drift out to sea, but also a man who loves his family albeit not always in the best way. But we also see a man who thinks that he has his hand on the tiller of the family and relationship; only for that to be turned into a wonderful twist later in the story. The mother is a fascinating character, she has the least amount of lines, communicating in other ways – which was such a lovely way of depicting a selkie and that wild connection, and was such a gentle, subtle rebellion against the pull of modernity. Again that same twist that unravels some of the father’s beliefs, makes you sit and go back through the mother’s role and actions and see them in a different light; and is just such a nice twist on the traditional tale.

However, it is also the parents’ relationship that gives me some hesitation, and also the father’s actions towards Callan. Now these are aspects and elements that often seem tied to selkie stories, buried in the idea of a fisherman entrapping a selkie by stealing her skin and forcing her to stay. But in Selkie Moon that takes on a physical element at times that goes too far; and unfortunately, due to the length of the book, it doesn’t feel like they get a proper resolution. Partly this is due to the fact that we are following Isla, and her path takes her on different currents; and the twist mentioned above does cast a different light on their relationship. But, it felt like there were unresolved threads, and even with the ending, and the almost retrospective angle, it didn’t offer the resolution that these characters deserved – particularly Isla’s mother; and I would love to have seen more of Callan and how his path led to where he was at the end. It felt like we took a shortcut to the ending and missed out something that would have rounded out the journey, and it just left the ending feeling a little flatter than it should.

Overall, the positive aspects of Selkie Moon absolutely win out. Jarvis has created a beautiful, emotionally charged book here, that takes the traditional selkie story and looks at it under a new lens. The writing is wonderful, and this is probably a story that I will return to again and again just because of that. I feel like with a slightly longer format, the issues I had would have resolved, and over all this was still a great novella.