This book is really something special and reading it has proved total addiction as the author plays expertly with my emotions often leading me down the path of utter shock. What at first glance might seem a pleasant tale about the inhabitants of Rathlin island welcoming Mr Marconi and is magical wireless telegraphy soon turns into an altogether sinister affair.
Nuala Byrne living alone on the island (having been deserted by her family when they moved to Newfoundland) is content to wed Ned McQuaid, the Tailor even though he is 30 years her senior. She is however attracted to the fact that he is a man of some means and living in a well built house. When Gabriele Donati arrives on Rathlin to help oversee and utilise this new technology Nuala finds herself strangely attracted to him and now has time to reflect that maybe her marriage to the Tailor was a mistake. To say much more about the plot would spoil the hidden surprises, and the decisions that Nuala Byrne is about to make will alter her life and have a lasting impact on many of the inhabitants.
After a truly exceptional opening prologue the first part of the book shows an island slowing acknowledging and accepting the genius that is Marconi. This idyll is soon to be shattered by an evil act and the unravelling of the mind of a pretty young girl. Bernie McGill has the ability to retain a strong hold on the reader and there is no doubt that she is in total control, at times offering false security only to have this eroded by the evil that men do. There is some wonderful prose...."I was to lie quietly in the dark on my wedding night, it advised, and await my husband's arrival. I was to desist from moving around too much until the act of consummation was complete."...."It'll double as a christening robe when the time comes, she said winking at me. That's if the Tailor has any juice left in him."....."The tremble that grows and passes between us is like the first test notes of the fiddle, the song warming in the singer's throat, the drumming on the skin of the bodhran, till we find a rhythm that suits us both"......"He looks like a painted wooden puppet whose strings have all been cut. He looks like all the movement have left him."
Many thanks to good people of netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written. Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment