Reminiscent of Grace Liggett’s novel “The Grace Year” and Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline”, this novel gives the reader an insular society, one entirely cut off from the outside world. The weather never changes, staying temperate and mild year round, day in and day out. Nobody goes elsewhere to live and strangers enter rarely and never stay. The outside world is simply referred to as “elsewhere”, a nebulous Neverland that excites mild curiosity, dismissal and unease in equal measure.
It is a sheltered world with the inhabitants unknowing of how their tiny enclave came to be, whether this town was constructed by their ancestors or merely a deserted haven their forebears stumbled upon and settled. For the most part, they seem dully contented with their place in the vaporous veils. Questions about their town or the outside world don’t arise.
But children wonder. The wondering is explored as games, symbols of the central enigma. As the ring around the rosy game was a reflection of the Black Death of the 14th century, their gambols revolve around mysterious disappearances of women who become mothers. The friendship between the children Vera and Ana are so close they create their own pastimes and alternate personas to go with them. Their intimacy holds an almost painful intensity, their natures contrasting and complementing each other. It’s the kind of constant closeness that is suggestive of romance, a teaser the author leans into heavily.
Vera’s inner monologue suggests a wisdom and maturity beyond that of a child. She is quietly observant, not only of her friend Ana but of the tightly-knit community she inhabits. She witnesses how often and casually people touch each other, how mothers regard their children, how people eye the women as they wonder who will vanish next.
Watchfulness poses an integral part of this unnamed community. People observe each other. They monitor mothers. They note behaviors and, after the disappearances, ruthlessly dissect what these mothers did or didn’t do to warrant being taken. Everyone eyes the outsider Ruth, tries to draw her attention, is fascinated by her every move, gesture, comment.
Anyone who reads books like this knows there’s something sinister going on, a secret or dreadful ritual being enacted just beyond eyesight. This cloud paradise seems idyllic, yet filled with an underlying threat. Who or what is behind the disappearances? How are the disappearances accomplished? Why is no one curious? If motherhood is so prized, why does no one investigate when their wives, sisters, nieces, cousins and mothers vanish without warning? Simultaneously fearful and accepting, the townsfolk both dread their mothers disappearing (as manifested in the obsessive taking of photographs—another kind of surveillance) and are resigned to its inevitability. It’s as if the disappearances were simultaneously like deaths in our world and the Rapture…a condition both mundane and miraculous.
The cover, with people gathered around a roaring outdoor bonfire, is lovely, limned in festive color. But what are they burning? Why such a massive fire during daylight hours? Is it like the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert or the shocking denouement of Robin Hardy’s “The Wicker Man”? In spite of the innocence of the town’s inhabitants, this cloudy realm lays a damp chill over the frame.
It is a sheltered world with the inhabitants unknowing of how their tiny enclave came to be, whether this town was constructed by their ancestors or merely a deserted haven their forebears stumbled upon and settled. For the most part, they seem dully contented with their place in the vaporous veils. Questions about their town or the outside world don’t arise.
But children wonder. The wondering is explored as games, symbols of the central enigma. As the ring around the rosy game was a reflection of the Black Death of the 14th century, their gambols revolve around mysterious disappearances of women who become mothers. The friendship between the children Vera and Ana are so close they create their own pastimes and alternate personas to go with them. Their intimacy holds an almost painful intensity, their natures contrasting and complementing each other. It’s the kind of constant closeness that is suggestive of romance, a teaser the author leans into heavily.
Vera’s inner monologue suggests a wisdom and maturity beyond that of a child. She is quietly observant, not only of her friend Ana but of the tightly-knit community she inhabits. She witnesses how often and casually people touch each other, how mothers regard their children, how people eye the women as they wonder who will vanish next.
Watchfulness poses an integral part of this unnamed community. People observe each other. They monitor mothers. They note behaviors and, after the disappearances, ruthlessly dissect what these mothers did or didn’t do to warrant being taken. Everyone eyes the outsider Ruth, tries to draw her attention, is fascinated by her every move, gesture, comment.
Anyone who reads books like this knows there’s something sinister going on, a secret or dreadful ritual being enacted just beyond eyesight. This cloud paradise seems idyllic, yet filled with an underlying threat. Who or what is behind the disappearances? How are the disappearances accomplished? Why is no one curious? If motherhood is so prized, why does no one investigate when their wives, sisters, nieces, cousins and mothers vanish without warning? Simultaneously fearful and accepting, the townsfolk both dread their mothers disappearing (as manifested in the obsessive taking of photographs—another kind of surveillance) and are resigned to its inevitability. It’s as if the disappearances were simultaneously like deaths in our world and the Rapture…a condition both mundane and miraculous.
The cover, with people gathered around a roaring outdoor bonfire, is lovely, limned in festive color. But what are they burning? Why such a massive fire during daylight hours? Is it like the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert or the shocking denouement of Robin Hardy’s “The Wicker Man”? In spite of the innocence of the town’s inhabitants, this cloudy realm lays a damp chill over the frame.