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Cargando... The Stolen Child (2017)por Lisa Carey
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Lovely narrator. Great accent. A wild story. Beautiful sense of place. Glad to read this after having visited Blasket Island. I could easily visualize the scenes. Wonderful characters. Magic that felt rooted in the earth. ( ) A middling story which attempts to delve into mysticism and ends up being yet another escapist tale drawing upon Celtic lore and unspoken agendas. This was one of my many reads of 2019 during knee replacement recovery. While it was escapist and required nothing from me other than the ability to read, the story remains not particularly memorable, the characters equally lacklustre, and the writing without that poignant resonance. Perfect for recovery, the beach, or a winter's read. But if you're looking for something engaging, this is not it. Because I once lived on the western coast of Ireland, and because author Lisa Cary moved to the island of Inishbofin, off Ireland's west coast to research her first book, I've been following her career for many years. I've loved each of her four Irish themed novels, and eagerly awaited the February 7th release of her latest, The Stolen Child. It is a story much like Ireland herself: deceptive in its riddled nuances, more than the sum of its parts. The soul of the story creeps up on you. It takes patience and willingness to allow the magic to take hold, and when it does, it is not by possession. The Stolen Child spins the kind of magic that lulls at the core of your being; affects your consciousness, waits for you to piece it together until you understand. There is little overt in this languid novel, which, again, is much like Ireland. It is a desperate story through and through, yet in the hands of author Lisa Carey, it resonates with mythical beauty, gives you a sense of timelessness, and holds you fast by its earthy, brass tacks. In pitch-perfect language, Carey wields dialogue specific to the west coast of Ireland’s desolate environs. It is an understated language, upside down to outsiders, but once your ear attunes, you are affronted by the superfluousness of other tongues. All primary characters in The Stolen Child are women. They live cut-off from the mainland of Ireland’s west coast, twelve miles out, upon rocky, wind-swept, St. Brigid’s Island, during the one year time frame of May, 1959 to May, 1960. It is a timeframe fraught with the looming inevitability of the islanders’ evacuation from their homeland, with its generational customs and ties, to the stark reality of life on the mainland, with its glaring and soulless “mod-cons.” Most of the characters are conflicted about leaving the island, save for the sinister Emer, who has her own selfish agenda, centered upon her only child Niall. Her sister, Rose, is the sunny, earth-mother, unflappable sort, who only sees the buried good in Emer, whereas everyone one else on the island shuns her, for her malefic, dark ways, which they intuit as dark art. Emer has one foot on the island and the other in the recesses of the fairies’ manipulative underworld. It is the American “blow-in,” Brigid, the woman with a complicated past, who has her own ties to the island from her banished mother, that cracks the carapace of Emer’s guarded and angry countenance. Together, the pair explore an illicit relationship, but when it snaps back, Emer retaliates with a force that effects the entire island and twists her worst fears into fate. The Stolen Child is magnificently crafted, for it is a sweeping story set on a cloistered island, which has nothing to recommend it save for its quays, its view, and its eponymous holy-well. This is a novel rife with character study that is quintessentially Irish, yet applicable far afield. In themes of motherhood, hope, desperation, and hopelessness, the characters take what little they have and wrestle it into making do. It is the power of steel intention that drives this story, and the reader receives it from all conceivable angles. I recommend The Stolen Child to all who love Ireland, to all who love an exceptional, creative story, and to all who love language used at its finest. All praise to the author Lisa Carey. I eagerly await the next book. I really enjoyed this book centered around two women in a remote Irish island in the late 1950s. I'm a big fan of Ireland and Celtic myth, and loved both the story of life on those islands and the interweaving of fairy lore and magic and the saint/goddess Brigid into the tale. I wasn't expecting as many faery/magic/magical realism elements as I found, and loved them all the more for the surprise. I thought the writing was excellent and the slow unfolding of the characters' back stories intermixed with the present day of the story really added to how the tale unfolded. The characters and their wishes and goals and lives were complex and well-rounded. As a lesbian, I liked the relationship between two women that emerged, in a way that felt true for the characters involved and the time and place, but was also remarkable to my modern eye for its complete lack of a sense of queer identity. As you might imagine, life on a remote Irish island was not easy. Trigger warning for some domestic violence and sexual violence. If that's not a deal-breaker, it's highly recommended.
*Starred Review* "Magical realism of the best kind, utterly devoid of whimsy." Distinciones
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: From the author of the critically acclaimed The Mermaids Singing comes a haunting, luminous novel set on an enchanted island off the west coast of Ireland where magic, faith, and superstition pervade the inhabitants' lives and tangled relationships??perfect for fans of Eowyn Ivey, Sarah Waters, and Angela Carter. May 1959. From one side of St. Brigid's Island, the mountains of Connemara can be glimpsed on the distant mainland; from the other, the Atlantic stretches as far as the eye can see. This remote settlement, without electricity or even a harbor, has scarcely altered since its namesake saint set up a convent of stone huts centuries ago. Those who live there, including sisters Rose and Emer, are hardy and resourceful, dependent on the sea and each other for survival. Despite the island's natural beauty, it is a place that people move away from, not to??until an outspoken American, also named Brigid, arrives to claim her late uncle's cottage. Brigid has come for more than an inheritance. She's seeking a secret holy well that's rumored to grant miracles. Emer, as scarred and wary as Rose is friendly and beautiful, has good reason to believe in inexplicable powers. Despite her own strange abilities??or perhaps because of them??Emer fears that she won't be able to save her young son, Niall, from a growing threat. Yet Brigid has a gift too, even more remarkable than Emer's. As months pass and Brigid carves out a place on the island and in the sisters' lives, a complicated web of betrayal, fear, and desire culminates in one shocking night that will change the island, and its inhabitants, forever. Steeped in Irish history and lore, The Stolen Child is a mesmerizing descent into old world beliefs, and a captivating exploration of desire, myth, motherhood, and love in all its forms. "Steeped in dark Irish mythology, The Stolen Child is a piercing exploration of regret and desire, longing and love. It is a gorgeously written, inventive, and compelling novel."??Ayelet Waldma No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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