Novel set in Europe, Manila and Turkey
Novel set in the wilderness near ANCHORAGE
7th January 2025
Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey, novel set in the wilderness near Anchorage.
Eowyn Ivey has a natural gift for storytelling and immersing her readers in the dramatic, beautiful and at times inhospitable landscape of Alaska. It is the same landscape that enchanted readers in The Snow Child.
Birdie is living with her young daughter Emaleen and she struggles to be a good enough mother. She is often neglectful but it isn’t wilfully so, it is just a shambolic co-existence that, on occasion, has attracted social services and ne’er do wells. And then she is approached by Arthur, a socially awkward young man, who has a very difficult and specific backstory which has affected him throughout his life. Despite warnings from those around her, she decides to throw her hat in the ring with him. She moves with Emaleen to the back of beyond, to his cabin without running water and bare floors. It is set in the heart of phenomenal natural surroundings, where predators abound and climate dictates how humans live their lives. They receive succour from Arthur’s father, who has a light plane and can fly in with provisions.
These are three people, eking out an existence, as they gradually get to know and trust each other. They are living a modern fairy tale existence, where there is just a touch of the other worldly, but soon the story descends into an all too stark reality. It is heart-rending, sad and sweet in equal measure until things take a turn.
The story is billed as a Beauty and the Beast retelling – I understand why – but for me it didn’t particularly resonate on that level, the storytelling is too immediate, individual and involving to invite echoes of another and similar story.
There are many elements in the novel which I won’t mention here but as a reader it will be easy to just avail yourself of the beautiful writing and the haunting, wonderful depiction of landscape.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (@tripfiction)
Please wait...
