LoveReading Says
Step into another world, just on the edge of existence, a fairy tale if you will, but somehow sharper, more vivid, and quite startling as it draws on folklore and oh so human qualities and reactions. On a remote island called Neverness exists a village, we hear the story of the villagers, separate, together, living with and alongside a spellbinding natural world.
The author Zoe Gilbert was the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award and this is her debut novel. Each chapter is a story in its own right, yet each leads to the next and the next to make one complete tale. This is a book that tested, pushed and pulled me, as it speared my attention and hurled it aloft.
I felt, really felt so many emotions, from deep aching sadness, to bounding wonder, through to discovering warm love in unexpected places. Zoe Gilbert has created a place apart, simple, wild, and stunningly beautifully yet be warned, it has a ferocious bite. If you look, really focus straight ahead, then take your thoughts to the corner of your eye and feel there, just behind you, you may just see a glimpse of Neverness.
Or you could settle down, and allow Zoe Gilbert to guide you into a breathtaking world. Folk is one of my picks of the month and I have fallen rather deeply in love with it!
About Folk
A captivating, magical and haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination, from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award The remote island village of Neverness is a world far from our time and place. The air hangs rich with the coconut-scent of gorse and the salty bite of the sea. Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline.
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Fantasy
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Zoe Gilbert Press Reviews
An extraordinary debut novel ... It feels both ancient - drawing on deep seams of myth and folklore - and strikingly contemporary, pushing at the edges of what we mean when we call a book a novel. In Folk, Zoe Gilbert has made a thing of strange and enduring beauty -- Alex Preston - Financial Times
Folk is a special book: immersive and dripping with life, each story a spell, an allegory, a dark, smoky poem divined from the landscape of our ancient kingdom ... It reads like a dream that, once visited, is difficult to leave behind -- Ben Myers - Guardian
Genuinely original, disturbing, beautiful and gripping ... Folk can be read as a map of the British mythic imagination: of the river under the river. Starkly original and expertly written, it draws you, like a faerie song, into a kingdom from which you may never escape, and may not want to - New Statesman
Dazzling and unsettling, much like the best and darkest of fairy tales - Times Literary Supplement
A dark, often discomforting debut ... Gilbert's sensuous prose conjures fantastical figures including a man born with a wing for an arm, and a girl who's abducted by a water bull ... Bewitching -- The Best New Fiction - Mail on Sunday
Folk is absolutely stunning. I loved it. With gorgeous, incantatory prose, it submerges you in a mysterious and utterly compelling world. Its illumination lingers long after you close the book - Madeline Miller, Orange Prize-winning author of The Song of Achilles
I was thoroughly absorbed. Zoe Gilbert's invented folk-world is sensuous and dangerous and thick with magic - Tessa Hadley, author of The Past
That rare thing: genuinely unique. It's part-myth, part-allegory, wholly wonderful -- The Best Fiction of 2018 - Observer
A captivating mythical, magical and haunting debut which draws on fascinating folklore -- Ten Debut Novels to Watch Out For - i
Wild, domestic, powered by elements both natural and weird, Folk hauls us into a past where there's room for magic and for mystery. Give in and go there - Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels
An utterly tantalising new voice. With Folk, Gilbert casts a powerful spell, creating a world on the page that feels as old as the hills and yet exquisitely alive ... To read Folk is to find oneself rapt - Alison MacLeod, author of All the Beloved Ghosts
There are themes of desire and longing, loss and mourning, and the rites of passage that must be undertaken to reach adulthood ... Folk has a powerful sense of mythology, reminiscent of Angela Carter -- Hannah Beckerman - Observer
As delightful and as dark as the collected Brothers Grimm. The village of Neverness is misted with secrets and sticky with magic. But as mystical as their circumstances might be the villagers are neither Cinderellas nor wicked-witches ... These tender portraits are, perhaps, Zoe Gilbert's greatest act of conjuring - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You
Brilliant. It's visceral and savage, but the savagery always comes with a light touch ... The stories all have a beautiful fairytale quality that makes them look like they were spun out of one of Neverness's half-magic mists. It's a gorgeous, uneasy siren of a book - Natasha Pulley, bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
The tales in Folk by Zoe Gilbert could have been ripped straight from the darkest pages of the Brothers Grimm. These intertwined fairy-tale-inspired stories are heavy with symbolism, lyrical and hypnotic - Good Housekeeping
A haunting portrait of a community steeped in folklore. Gilbert is a fine storyteller, and this is skilful, potent writing - K J Orr, author of Light Box
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