Helen Dunmore

HarperCollins

0007204876

Oct 2005

Ours is a land steeped in stories. Books which unite magical secondary worlds with our real landscapes, which can be found on a map, have a special appeal. Like legends which promise ‘look carefully ‘ Arthur lies there still’ they make young readers feel initiated into secret layers of reality that grown ups are too blind and too boring to notice.
Ingo is such a book. It begins with the mermaid of Zennor, a real carving you can find in a real church in Cornwall. A Cornish legend tells how Mathew Trewhella was bewitched with love for the mermaid, and plunged into the sea with her, never to be seen again. Dunmore’s heroine, Sapphire, also lives in Cornwall, and also knows a Mathew Trewhella ‘ her father. This is the tale of his disappearance, and Sapphy’s quest to find him, which leads her deep into the amazing underwater world of Ingo.
Following her brother Conor down to the cove near their cottage, she meets Faro ‘ one of ‘the Mer’ with the body of a boy and the tail of a seal. Faro gives Sapphy her first intoxicating taste of Ingo, and soon she is in danger of becoming hooked, and disappearing off the face of the earth just like her father.
The pull of the sea has always seduced women writers. The wave of recent mermaid books (Liz Kessler’s Emily Windsnap novels, Heather Dyer’s Fish in Room 11, not to mention the shoals of glitter-coated books for younger girls) testifies that female readers are still fascinated.
They will find this book a pleasingly easy read, thanks to its clear exposition and accessible language (Dunmore making a conscious effort to explain unfamiliar vocabulary). Yet there are also subtle depths here – when Faro stares at Sapphy’s legs and calls her ‘divided’ he sums up her soul as much as her body.
This opposition between the sea and the earth is beautifully depicted. Dolphin rides versus a pet dog. Surfing the currents versus tea and cake. Sapphy’s wild imagination versus Conor’s dependable practicality.
Sapphy’s imaginings and emotions are convincingly portrayed, especially her feelings towards her family – how it feels to be the younger sibling, always following behind, the ever-present loss and longing for her father, the yearning for the company of her over-worked mother. Children will also identify with her thirst for thrills and freedom.
The story picks up great pace towards the end of the book, ensuring that readers will be left eager to pick up the next part of this engaging trilogy.

Sarah Singleton

Simon and Schuster

1904442714

Oct 2005

I did say to Michael that, for obvious reasons, I wouldn’t review fellow Simon and Schuster authors (with the exception of my test review using the excellent Sea of Trolls), but having just finished Century I feel compelled to break the rule.
Except for the single page of (unnecessary) prologue there is a beautiful lack of scene-setting or explanation in this book. We have a bitter, frozen winter’s night in a dusty and decaying mansion. We have an odd shadowy family living out the night as if it was their day. We have ghosts and shades of other lives woven into the twilight world. We have a seamless passage of time, a well-practised routine ‘ boiled egg for evening ‘breakfast’, studies with the governess Galatea, moonlit walks out across the frosted lawns, pre-dawn bedtime stories in the nursery parlour ‘ that makes the succession of nights hard to tell apart. And at the centre we have Mercy and her sister Charity, creeping through this existence like ancient mechanical toys.
Yet Mercy has seen a different ghost for once, something new in this world of the totally familiar and unchanging. A woman caught under the ice in the distillery pond.
Like the slightest feathery kiss on Sleeping Beauty’s lips, the ghost’s appearance (and then a snowdrop hidden under her pillow when nothing grows outside) nudges Mercy just enough for her to yawn and stretch and wonder at the curiousness of her existence. Where are her memories? Where is the sunlight? Where is her mother?
The quality of the writing is such that the reader has been drawn easily into the drowsy, whispering nights, fascinated and a little spooked perhaps. But don’t assume that this is a simple ghost story. Mercy’s slight rebellion, which grows and grows in momentum, sucking all her family into a new course, reveals an explanation that is complex and challenging enough to belong to Douglas Adams or Red Dwarf, with a pinch of Doctor Faustus or Mrs. Coulter thrown in. It is a further tribute to the author that even this explanation comes to us utterly believably and with almost some sort of inevitability.
A deserving prize-winner, there is little to fault in this debut novel. I did look for a final twist at the end, but perhaps I was simply being greedy.