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A review by markyon
The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris
4.0
You may have noticed a recent trend of books of myths and legends retold for a modern audience. For example, there’s Neil Gaiman’s Norse Tales, treading similar ground to Joanne’s version of the Asgard-ian myths. I can also think of Stephen Fry’s Mythos, retelling of the Greek myths and Anthony Horowitz’s Legends series which cherry-picked myths for a young adult readership.
There are also those stories that seem to echo old-school fairy stories but in a grown-up setting. The obvious example is the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a very different proposition to the ones told to children, but more recently books such as Naomi Novik’s award-winning books Uprooted and Spinning Silver seem perhaps to be more like The Blue Salt Road. Here, after recently telling us tales of Nordic myth and Travelling Folk, Joanne tells us a folklore style story of Scottish fisher-folk.
The Blue Salt Road is inspired by Celtic myth (and the so-called traditional Child Ballads), as a story of humans and selkies. Selkies are seals but, like the folk stories of mermaids, can transform into human form.
In this story of island folk, for many years the humans and the selkie have kept a respectful distance between themselves. Flora McCraiceann, a young maiden of the islands, is determined to better herself and escape her predictable life planned out for her. To do this, she inveigles a selkie to be her boyfriend. Once pregnant, she captures the selkie’s skin he discards on transforming to a human and locks it away in a cedar chest. The legend says that once separated from its skin, the selkie cannot return to seal-form and loses memories of its previous life, instead left as a confused and subdued human.
Flora and the selkie marry, and the selkie tries to make the best of its human life as one of the Folk, though always confused by the attraction of the sea and the call of its creatures.
Before the baby is born, the selkie’s father-in-law, determined to help this strange young man settle into his family life, takes him on the village’s next whaling trip. The hunt is gruesome and distressing. Confused by his thoughts and dreams, the selkie is unable to fulfil his role and kill a whale, and is soon regarded by the rest of the crew as ‘a clocker’, a symbol of bad luck.
Once abandoned by the crew, the selkie discovers the truth about his own past, and returns to the village to revenge his deception and take revenge on those that had trapped him so, as well as take his child away from those who had treated him so badly. The last part of the book tells us what happens and deals with the consequences of the character’s actions.
The Blue Salt Road is the sort of story that you can imagine being passed on from generation to generation. It feels timeless, the sort of tale that you can imagine being told around a campfire in the frozen North, a story passed on through word of mouth to today and that stays memorable ‘in the telling’. The style seems right, in that the language is old style descriptive rather than the modern contemporary language of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s science fiction Petaybee series, which has similar origins.
The Blue Salt Road is a story of a harsh and even brutal lifestyle and is definitely an adult telling of a folk tale, or at least young adult. There is some brief mention of sex and some of the hunting details are quite graphic and not for the faint-hearted. For much of the story the perspective is firmly on the sea creature’s side, with humans often being devious and callous by comparison with the gentle and considerate denizens of the deep.
The illustrations by Bonnie Helen Hawkins (who also did the illustrations for 2017's A Pocketful of Crows) are pencil drawings scattered throughout the novella and are sensitive to the tale. To be frank, in my opinion the story is strong enough to not need them, but I must admit that they do add to the overall feel of the book as a nice physical object. This would make a nice accompanying item to A Pocketful of Crows on a person's bookshelf.
And at just over two hundred pages it’s also a book easily read in one sitting.
In summary, The Blue Salt Road is an old-school folktale of magic, love and betrayal that you can read and enjoy, without it outstaying its welcome. The skill of the writer is that for such a relatively short tale it is engaging and will stay with you after you have finished reading it. And if you don’t come out of it feeling a degree of sympathy for seals and whales, I’ll be surprised….
There are also those stories that seem to echo old-school fairy stories but in a grown-up setting. The obvious example is the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a very different proposition to the ones told to children, but more recently books such as Naomi Novik’s award-winning books Uprooted and Spinning Silver seem perhaps to be more like The Blue Salt Road. Here, after recently telling us tales of Nordic myth and Travelling Folk, Joanne tells us a folklore style story of Scottish fisher-folk.
The Blue Salt Road is inspired by Celtic myth (and the so-called traditional Child Ballads), as a story of humans and selkies. Selkies are seals but, like the folk stories of mermaids, can transform into human form.
In this story of island folk, for many years the humans and the selkie have kept a respectful distance between themselves. Flora McCraiceann, a young maiden of the islands, is determined to better herself and escape her predictable life planned out for her. To do this, she inveigles a selkie to be her boyfriend. Once pregnant, she captures the selkie’s skin he discards on transforming to a human and locks it away in a cedar chest. The legend says that once separated from its skin, the selkie cannot return to seal-form and loses memories of its previous life, instead left as a confused and subdued human.
Flora and the selkie marry, and the selkie tries to make the best of its human life as one of the Folk, though always confused by the attraction of the sea and the call of its creatures.
Before the baby is born, the selkie’s father-in-law, determined to help this strange young man settle into his family life, takes him on the village’s next whaling trip. The hunt is gruesome and distressing. Confused by his thoughts and dreams, the selkie is unable to fulfil his role and kill a whale, and is soon regarded by the rest of the crew as ‘a clocker’, a symbol of bad luck.
Once abandoned by the crew, the selkie discovers the truth about his own past, and returns to the village to revenge his deception and take revenge on those that had trapped him so, as well as take his child away from those who had treated him so badly. The last part of the book tells us what happens and deals with the consequences of the character’s actions.
The Blue Salt Road is the sort of story that you can imagine being passed on from generation to generation. It feels timeless, the sort of tale that you can imagine being told around a campfire in the frozen North, a story passed on through word of mouth to today and that stays memorable ‘in the telling’. The style seems right, in that the language is old style descriptive rather than the modern contemporary language of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s science fiction Petaybee series, which has similar origins.
The Blue Salt Road is a story of a harsh and even brutal lifestyle and is definitely an adult telling of a folk tale, or at least young adult. There is some brief mention of sex and some of the hunting details are quite graphic and not for the faint-hearted. For much of the story the perspective is firmly on the sea creature’s side, with humans often being devious and callous by comparison with the gentle and considerate denizens of the deep.
The illustrations by Bonnie Helen Hawkins (who also did the illustrations for 2017's A Pocketful of Crows) are pencil drawings scattered throughout the novella and are sensitive to the tale. To be frank, in my opinion the story is strong enough to not need them, but I must admit that they do add to the overall feel of the book as a nice physical object. This would make a nice accompanying item to A Pocketful of Crows on a person's bookshelf.
And at just over two hundred pages it’s also a book easily read in one sitting.
In summary, The Blue Salt Road is an old-school folktale of magic, love and betrayal that you can read and enjoy, without it outstaying its welcome. The skill of the writer is that for such a relatively short tale it is engaging and will stay with you after you have finished reading it. And if you don’t come out of it feeling a degree of sympathy for seals and whales, I’ll be surprised….