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A decent first novel with occasional nice reaches of prose has flowed from the pen (so to speak) of author, teacher, and filmmaker Simon Sylvester. THE VISITORS is set on the diminished, modern environs of Bancree Island, with its two employers and one bar; it is narrated through the persona of a wry, world-weary seventeen-year-old girl, Flora.
Dramatis personae: Selkies, the souls of drowned sailors; John and Ailsa Dobie, newcomers, father and daughter, right standoffish; Flora Cannan, seventeen-year-old girl, lonely inhabitant of Bancree Island, and student at the school on the mainland; her mother and step-father, Catherine and Ronnie; their new baby; Lachlan Crane, bully, rapist, scion of the big man on the island who owns the local distillery; M.I. Mutchler, mysterious author of a book about selkies who has lived everywhere, yet seems to be nowhere; Izzy the beachcomber, dirty, unkempt, social reject who lives in a pile of flotsam scavenged on the beach, also a traditional shenachie; Tiny Robson, busty school bully who makes Flora's and Ailsa's lives miserable; Anders Tommasson, boisterous adopted "uncle" to Flo, full of life, jokes, and wild adventures, carrier of a hidden sadness, a well-drawn and larger-than-life character.
Flo's history teacher assigns her students to write essays about myths. Students are instructed to bring their myth up to modern times. Flora, choosing the myth of the selkies, drowned souls clothed in seals' habiliments, finds a book on selkies in a rummage sale and begins her research into this myth that lives everywhere there were Vikings. Flo's life at home is spare: her mom and stepfather are busy with their new baby; jobs are scarce and the lives on the island seem fragile at best, at the mercy of the old man who runs the distillery and the weather. Flo's project, plus some new (but very stand-offish) neighbors offer a bit of spark to an otherwise pale existence.
The plot thickens when men, mostly those on the edges of island society, begin disappearing. Flora meets her new neighbor's daughter, who is her age. They do some underage drinking, and narrowly escape the very sinister attentions of Lachlan Crane. Flo begins visiting the island shennachie, who has a few selkie tales to tell her. The tales are of selkie women, snatched from the sea by human men when the seal-souls shed their seal skins. Forcibly married to the human men, selkie women plot their escape. In captivity, all they think of is the sea. Once they are gone, all their husbands think of is their lost beauty.
This novel is full of people who yearn and who must learn to live with that yearning or let it consume them. The plot moves slowly sometimes. Yearning probably does that to one. In addition, there is a scene in which Flora and her step-father visit Anders' house. Alfred Hitchcock could have written the scene, complete with creaky floorboards and birds in the upstairs rooms. Dear Mr. Sylvester, I wanted to say…dear, dear Mr. Sylvester…but do read it. It is a fine first novel.
§ Cathy Downs is Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, January 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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