The Gloaming | Kirsty Logan
"But loving something did not mean wanting to leap into it and let it drown you."
This book has been on my shelf for two years, I believe. In any case, long enough for me to forget why I had bought it in the first place. I remember being really excited for it when I ordered it and yet, over time, I became cautious of its pretty cover. What if the story is bad. The mermaid that seemed so enchanting when I first saw them now appeared daunting, suggesting a childish, very YA story. Still, as I am unemployed and broke due to the crazy times we're living in, I am unable to buy more books and am obliged to actually read the ones I already have. This is one such book.
This is a story of grief. The Ross family was started by a boxer and a ballerina. Peter and Signe moved their children Islay and Mara to a small, unnamed island in northern Scotland where many strange things are at work. There they buy a big, crumbling house with a plan of renovating it. They also have another child, a boy named Barra, that they call Bee. He seems to be the apple of everyone's eye and his sisters spend all their time amusing him. And as their last child, both Peter and Signe look at him as the epitome of perfection. It seems the whole family is delighting in him. And yet, Signe is getting tired of living so long in an unfinished house, though Peter is always doing something. But whenever a thing is fixed another gets broken, as if the house doesn't want to changed and made truly habitable.
What starts the story is tragedy. Mara wakes early one morning and sees that Bee is missing, her bed empty. She searches through the house, the yard and finally goes to the beach. To her horror she sees his small head on the sea, battling the waves. Though she tries to get to him she is too late. As she gets to the shore she notices that he is not breathing and runs for her parents.
Grief grips the whole family after the event and they all distance from each other. I found it really poignant how individuals faced the tragedy and processed their sorrow. Signe wouldn't entertain the thought that Bee is dead. She took to doing up the house, somehow hoping Bee would come back when she was the perfect mother in the perfect home. Peter went behind his wife, undoing her work because he saw his son's death as the island's retribution for changing things - if he restored the house to its original state the island would give hi his son back. Islay left the island, knowing that if she'd stayed she'd be nothing more than the sister of a lost boy. Mara withdrew, still the reminder of that ugly morning branded on her skin in the form of a scar she sustained by being cut along her cheek while swimming.
Time passes. Mara roams the island after work, lost in her thoughts, and one day stumbles on a bus full of books. Here she spends a lot of her time and loses herself in the words and distant worlds. The books with deaths are her favorite because, unlike in real life, she can start the book from the beginning and each death is undone, it's not permanent. And then one day, she meets the person who will change the course of her life. Pearl is originally from the island but lives far away. She works as a mermaid (yes, that's what the cover refers to), performing in a traveling show as an underwater acrobat. With no family or any real connection, she travels the world and only comes back to the island every few years.
Mara is enchanted by Pearl. Her life seems so glamorous, she is doing what she loves and is able to leave the island. The two get close and eventually begin a relationship. The urge to leave grips Mara and she eventually calls Islay to come back and take care of their parents for a while, as she deserves a chance to find something of her own, too. There is a resentment there between the sisters, but they manage to accommodate each other.
"Beauty is boring. The best lives leave a mark."
In all this time, slow bits of the island lore are revealed. The inhabitants start turning to stone as they approach death's door, they get slower, lose track of time, their bones creak like boulders when they move and stony dust falls from their skin. When they feel their time is near they climb a cliff, only to become statues as a form of death. The land and the water that make island are ever at odds, pulling and pushing, striving for balance, yet it comes with a price - the lands wants permanence, the water wants change. Many tales are shared, those of selkie-wives and mermaids, the Ross girls are raised on a steady diet of fairy tales and their mother never really tells then what real life is like, what to expect out in the world.
This certainly is a strange novel. The prose is lyrical and it truly feels as if you're reading some magic, enchanted text, long forgotten and buried in the annals of time. The plot could be happening in our time, of fifty years ago, or maybe a hundred. The sleepy island is so outside the usual flow of time that it is hard to judge. The chapters are titles after Gaelic words, as well as ballet and boxing terms, which also serves to give it an otherworldly feel. It's like a fairytale that you think might have actually happened, and yet there are too many magical components for comfort. The story slips from past to present, memories are tangled with the everyday life, so that everything feels dreamy and enveloped in a fine mist.
I truly got more that I expected from this book. It is a gentle, whimsical and still brutal exploration of grief, of moving on when you think all hope is lost and everything beautiful in this world has gone away. It tells of coping with guilt and of trying to move on and live after losing someone dear. It deals with self-acceptance and forgiveness, of real love and the love in fairytales. It's a tale of growing up and being a child who believes in fairytales still, clinging to that last bit of magic, hoping for an effortless conclusion to your life. It may not be everyone's cup of tea - and it did take me a while to get into it - but it is such a strangely moving work of fiction that I think you cannot remain unaffected by it.
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