The Brides of Rollrock Island (review)

Ugly young Misskaella is mocked and feared for her magic, which connects her to the seals that frequent her isolated island home and gives her the power to "persuade them to combine . . . into a manlike or a womanlike form." Impatient for love, she creates a man from a seal, but after a single magical night she releases him back to the sea; the resulting baby boy must also be given up to the sea if he is to survive. Driven by loneliness, bitterness, and a longing for power, Misskaella begins calling forth seal-women as wives for the men of the island and charging the men a steep price to hide their wives' skins so that they may never return to their underwater home. As the years pass, the men are in her debt and in thrall to their imprisoned wives, and all the human women have fled to the mainland. The haunting narration shifts from Misskaella herself to townspeople Bet and Dominic, part of the first generation affected by the coming of the seal-wives, to Daniel, part of a generation of half-selkie children who realize they must free their mothers. Lanagan fully inhabits each narrative voice, loading her densely crafted prose with visceral descriptions that emphasize the animalistic undertones of human interactions. Creepiest of all are the seal-women themselves, doll-like and passively irresistible. Brief codas by Bet's daughter Lory, the first girl to return to the island after the sea-wives leave, and Misskaella's adopted successor Trudle hint at the healing possibilities of new beginnings. Like Lanagan's previous Tender Morsels (BCCB 11/08), this eerie, evocative story breathes mesmerizing life into familiar fairy-tale constructs as it explores issues of power, agency, culpability, freedom, and love within a deceptively quiet atmosphere of intimate horror.