Haunting and moving
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At first I thought this book was one of the many lookalike gritty accounts of Scottish life. It's actually one of the best books I've read for a long time.
The lead character, Matthew, is a boy with a difficult life. His mother is dead and his father has disappeared to South America and never contacts him. Then a charismatic, manipulative girl, Sheila, begins to torment him with her disturbing stories of having committed murder. Is she troubled or truly evil? And when Matthew's father returns with a pregnant new wife, Matthew turns to Sheila for help...
The story ends ambiguously, and we're never sure quite what was really happening. The language is breathtakingly beautiful, and the depiction of Matthew's inner world unusual and interesting. Highly recommended, if a bit morbid.
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Matthew and Sheila - good and evil?
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This is an unusual book. It is the disturbing tale of a young boy, Matthew, product of a strict, Calvinistic Scottish family. When his mother dies, Matthew leaves the isolated family home and goes to live with his housekeeper guardian. Then he meets the strange, alluring Sheila, a girl of his own age who speaks to him of murder and the supernatural. Is she evil or simply an unhappy fantasist? The thing that strikes you about this story is that it seems to be firmly rooted in the Celtic tradition - it reads like a fairy-tale (there is a haunting quality of timelessness) - and the figure of Sheila typifies the ambiguity of supernatural female figures in Celtic myth; the faerie that entices and charms her victims, the trickster, the destroyer. There is a fascinating contrast between the strongly puritanical religious background and spiritual yearnings of Matthew and the chilling amorality of Sheila. As with all Jenkins's fiction, the book offers the reader a remarkable insight into the mindset of the displaced and lonely child and into the attraction between good and evil. Above all it is the ambivalence of the characters and story, which is so challenging. As ever, Jenkins's dialogue and lyrical narrative is a pleasure to read. This story will grip you until the final disturbing chapter.
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