The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip

The Bell at Sealey Head
by Patricia A. McKillip
Ace Books, 2008
277 pages

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. Judd knew that about himself: just the sight of Ridley Dow's books unpacked and stacked in corners, on the desk and dresser, made him discontented and greedy. Here he was; there they were. Why were he and they not together somewhere private, they falling gently open under his fingers, he exploring their mysteries, they luring him, enthralling him, captivating him with every turn of phrase, every revealing page?

A short time ago, Aarti discussed the practice of "skimming" through books for one of her Sunday Salon posts. I do skim, several different ways and for several different reasons, but one of the bad skimming habits I have is when I'm so caught up in a book I have been known to skim through sections to get to the end so I can see what happens faster. This is probably just fine, as long as I re-read the book in question a second time to catch everything I missed. In some cases, I skim so badly I can't even remember what the book is about, through no fault of the book's. Such was the case with The Bell at Sealey Head.

I have such a hard time reviewing these books. I can't be objective, I can barely be intelligent; these books don't lend themselves to my kinds of reviews because they are complex and different and nuanced and beautiful and hard to talk about without feeling either trite or completely inadequate. I think I have mentioned my love for Patricia McKillip's writing before. Multiple times. So I probably don't need to spend a lot of time expostulating here. I had thought, as I was reviewing The Bards of Bone Plain, that perhaps I didn't remember The Bell at Sealey Head because it wasn't as good. This was an incorrect hypothesis. The book is excellent, but I must have read it so fast that none of it stuck. Embarrassing.

Here we have a book that explores some favourite themes of McKillip's: books and stories and storytelling and the power they hold, the lust for power and how destructive it can be, the lure of the sea, the lovely things to be found in the life of the everyday folk who often get passed over in fantasy stories, the passage of time, the parallel worlds that are sometimes accessible and sometimes not. Set in the small harbour town of Sealey Head, at its heart this book is a mystery as much as it is a fantasy: what and where is the bell that rings every sundown in the town, and what is happening at Aislinn House, the grand old manor on the hill?

The story is told from the perspectives of Judd Cauley, the innkeeper; Gwyneth Blair, the merchant's daughter, and Emma Wood, a young maid at Aislinn House, as well as Ysabo, a princess trapped in ritual in the magical other Aislinn House. Each has their own private worries and dreams, and each play a role in the solving of the mystery, though the actual solving of the whole is left to Ridley Dow, a mysterious travelling scholar who comes to stay at Judd's inn.

As in any old mystery there are clues left about the narratives for the reader to pick up, and as I read I started to remember a few things, so I started looking a little harder at details and discovered that they did, indeed, point me in the right direction once I knew what to look for.

The pace is slow, the effect cumulative, and the payoff is satisfying. I was left at the end of the book feeling rather bereft; what could I possibly read next that wasn't going to pale in comparison? (The answer to that: go a completely different direction. It worked.) In fact, I think The Bell at Sealey Head is actually one of McKillip's more straightforward books, and might be a good place for a person who has never read her work to start.

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip

The Bards of Bone Plain

by Patricia A. McKillip

Ace, 2010

329 pages

So, here is the review of the book I read in its entirety on bedrest. I have owned this book since it came out last year, McKillip being one of two authors on my autobuy list. Ondaatje is the other; I suspect it will take me as long to get to The Cat's Table, though it's sitting here beside me right now. As with all authors I love, I often resist reading the newest thing. It's an odd psychological block. What if it's not as good as the other stuff she's written? What if she doesn't publish anything ever again and this is the last new McKillip I will ever get to read? (Ignore the fact that there's still some McKillip backlist I have yet to get to.) Generally neither of these are particularly good reasons for not reading a book. It should go without saying that this review is unlikely to be particularly objective...

I'm happy to report that this was an excellent choice for reading, and it was also excellent good fortune that I had it in my purse when I was whisked off to the hospital, otherwise I would have been bored to tears before fishy was able to come home and pick reading material up for me (which, to his credit, he did; the latest Garden Making magazine, another gardening magazine, the Kobo and Wilkie Collins all came along after I was safely ensconced in bed).

It was also exactly what I have come to expect from McKillip: a gentle, beautiful story of wild, unpredictable and beautiful magic, and the people that magic touches, tinged with a sweet melancholy. I think, overall, this is a better book than The Bell at Sealey Head, her last release, which I quite enjoyed but seemed a little... forgettable? Good excuse to read it again, I guess. But The Bards of Bone Plain is a solid story, interestingly and carefully told.

The plot is twofold: the first plot involves three characters revolving around each other. Zoe and Phelan are senior students at the bardic school; Beatrice is the youngest daughter of the king, and an aspiring archaeologist working with Phelan's mercurial father Jonah. There isn't a lot more to this plot than watching Phelan unravel the mystery of his father, really, and the answer comes to us much faster than it comes to Phelan; if there is a flaw with this book that I can point to easily, it would be that. I knew what Phelan didn't in the first few chapters, and I'm not sure whether or not it took away an element of ... curiosity, maybe, that might have made for more engaged reading. That said, as with my favourite McKillips, it's not the end itself that makes this story worth reading; it's the journey.

The second plot revolves around another bard, the legendary (in Phelan's day) Nairn. We see his story through snippets of historical documents, ballads and poems, and then we read the true story, what really happened, in chapters that alternate with the first plot's chapters. It's an interesting, if not original, exercise in recognizing that real human beings lie behind legends. And then, of course, the two plots cross in a surprisingly tense confrontation at the end -- surprisingly, I think, because there's not really a true villain, and the stakes are only really high for a few of the characters, not for the fate of many or the world. And yet I was invested in what happened.

What can I say? I loved this book in the same way I've loved everything else I've read by McKillip over the years (Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Song for the Basilisk notwithstanding; I liked them both well enough, but didn't get sucked into their world in the same way. I'll be trying Song again, though, because I think that was more a mood thing than a book thing.) It had some familiar elements; I hesitate to say it, because the characters were interesting as individuals, but some of them might be viewed as extremely similar other characters she's written... but I like that in her work, for some reason, where it might really irritate me in another author's. And the world was a new one for her: elements of historical medieval-type fantasy, with elements of technology slipped in. The princess drives a car, a relatively new technology to her world, and there are steam-powered trams, and gaslights. This book is also about change, and history, and the progression of society over years. It's a little light on the examination of that, but it's a theme slipped in nonetheless.

And the writing. The writing, of course, is the key to my love of McKillips' work. It is beautiful, lyrical, leaving enough unexplained to give the whole story a hint of mystery and wonder, but detailed enough to paint the whole scene vividly in my mind. As a slight aside, I should mention that I think the marriage of McKillip's novels with Kinuko Craft's cover images is sheer brilliance; they compliment each other perfectly, and both the writing and the cover images give me the same gleeful, floaty, fairy-tale feeling.

I of course recommend this book to fans of McKillip; I'm not sure it's the best place to start with her writing if you haven't read anything by her before (I'd suggest Riddle-Master or The Changeling Sea for that) but it's a lovely gentle fantasy tale about a father and a son, and magic and the past, worth reading and worth reading again.

look what I did!

I'm participating in Aarti's wonderful series, With Reverent Hands. Go see! If you've never been to B O O K L U S T before, you're in for a treat. It's one of my very favourite book blogs. Go for my Patricia McKillip lurve and stay for Aarti's insights and excellent reading choices.

By the way, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you will know about that book already. But I say some new stuff about it!

The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

After finishing Beguilement I was planning to start Des Kennedy's book An Ecology of Enchantment: A Year in the Life of a Garden, which in return for my mother borrowing my Mary Russel books by Laurie R. King, I snagged from her TBR pile. However, Beguilement put me in the mood for more fantasy, and one I was familiar with and loved. I think, a little bit, I was looking for that little extra something that I missed with Beguilement.

There are many wonderful things about Patricia McKillip's writing. I've heard it described as dark, but I can't imagine how; to me, it's full of light and wonder. There's no doubt that it's bittersweet. Nothing in a McKillip novel is ever perfectly, simply wonderful, other than the writing itself. But she strikes a perfect balance between sorrow and joy, and awe and fear.

In The Changeling Sea, we meet Periwinkle, a young woman whose parents have been stolen by the sea. Her father's fishing boat came back without him one day, and her mother has not been the same since: she stares out at the sea all day, every day, managing to care for herself just enough, and not at all for her daughter, because she is looking for the kingdom beneath the sea. So Peri is furious with the sea, and hexes it.

It doesn't sound like much, but this story is so rich that there's so much to enjoy.

I don't often think of McKillip's dialogue as being what attracts me to her writing so strongly, but she certainly writes dialogue extremely well. I've not encountered another writer who can make things that are unsaid as important as the things that are said in the same way McKillip can.

Here's one of my favourite moments from any book I've ever read:

There was a sudden crash. The inn door, with someone clinging to it, had blown open under a vigorous puff of spring wind. Peri looked up to see a stranger lose his balance on her tide. He danced upright a moment, and she noticed finally the blazing thunderheads and the bright blue sky beyond him. Then he tossed his arms and fell, slid down the hall to kick over her bucket before he washed to a halt under her astonished face.

They stared at one another, nose to nose. The stranger lay prone, panting slightly. Peri, wordless, sat back on her knees, her brush, suspended, dripping on the stranger's hair.

The stranger smiled after a moment. He was a small, dark-haired, wiry young man with skin the light polished brown of a hazelnut. His eyes were very odd: a vivid blue-green-gray, like stones glittering different colours under the sun. He turned on his side on the wet floor and cupped his chin in his palm.

"Who are you?"

"Peri." She was so suprised that her voice nearly jumped out of her.

"Periwinkle? Like the flower?" he asked.

"Is there a flower?" His eyes kept making her want to look at the put a color to them. But they eluded definition.

"Oh yes," the stranger said. "A lovely blue flower."

"I thought they were only snails."

"Why," the stranger asked gravely, "would you be named after a snail?"

"Because I didn't know there were flowers," Peri said fuzzily.

Reading this story again, I remember why I loved it the first time, and why I love it more every time I read it. I might get something new out of it each time, too, although I don't think I'd have to, to keep loving it. It's a very short little story, a novella, at only 137 pages. 137 pages packed with imagery and what is, at heart, a story that McKillip is very good at telling -- a story of two worlds that have brushed each other just a little bit, and the consequences of that happening. This is a theme she has worked with multiple times in many novels, some more explicitly than others, and I don't mind a bit.

I love how carefully crafted this book is. I know that the shorter the story is, the tighter it has to be to work well. McKillip manages a story that is so careful, full of detail, and well-done that there is no forebludgeoning, but at the end of the story there is not a single piece out of place, other than the pieces meant to be left out of place. That makes reading it again a treat because now I can look for the little things that I absorbed without understanding the first time, and understand where they fit. Unlike some books where knowing the ending makes the rest of the book somewhat boring to read, the re-reading is just better every time with this one. Which is why, I suspect, this is and remains one of my favourite books. As always, the ending brings with it a pang of sadness, not at the story itself, but that it's over.