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Zoe Gilbert (1)

Autor von Folk

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2 Werke 223 Mitglieder 4 Rezensionen

Werke von Zoe Gilbert

Folk (2018) 173 Exemplare
Mischief Acts (2022) 50 Exemplare

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Geschlecht
female
Nationalität
UK

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Τhe islanders are forged out of the harsh land of Neverness. The island blesses them, nurtures them and frightens them. Their lives are hard, their hearts become even harder. A father tries to cope with a terrible secret, a girl who is considered the finest bride is in love with a boy who resists her. A young woman has to learn how to be a ‘’proper’’ housewife in an inhospitable family of brutes. A young girl needs to find her spirit to become a true fiddle player. Somehow, the Tale of Jack Frost comes our way, with magic sticks, stitches made with blessings and curses, love and ambition and a strange winter visitor knocks on our door.

The imagery created by Gilbert is extraordinary. It is vibrant, misty, even scary. You can see and smell the islands and the dialogue is more than faithful to the setting. Without sounding presumptuous, the only problem is the impression that Gilbert hadn’t really decided what Folk was going to be. A short story collection? A series of fables? A Magical Realism example? All these together with features of Folklore? Even though the combination sounds ideal, there was something in the overall writing that made everything seem disjointed and a little bit clumsy. I couldn’t bring myself to really love any of the characters and I wouldn’t include Folk in my personal squad of memorable reads.

Despite this issue, Folk is a collection I enjoyed. It is always a treat to read everything that is inspired by British Folklore and although Folk could have been better, it remains an exciting, atmospheric debut.

‘’The wind drums its song at the door all night, a beat for the devil to dance to, leaving the prints of hooves around the house. Winfrid tugs her stitches tight to keep him out. I watch my needle dive through the weft, the stab and the gire, and dream up patterns I’d never stitch, secret rhythms.’’
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AmaliaGavea | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Jun 3, 2019 |
A book or a collection of short stories? The tale of a fictitious village in a fictitious land at an unspecified time. Each chapter featuring different inhabitants with no linking plot. Most involve sex or death and an entaglement of human beings with the natural world. An exercise in mystic nature writing. Each chapter stands up well on its own but the whole book is disappointing. Starts nowhere, leads nowhere.
 
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Steve38 | 3 weitere Rezensionen | May 20, 2019 |
I know the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” but this cover is stunning and it caught my eye straight away leading me to find this little treasure of a book and what’s even better is that the book is just as stunning on the inside as it is outside.

It isn’t very often we come across a truly unique book but that is just what I found when I came across this book.

Neverness, an isolated island full of magic and folklore, where each character’s life is inextricably entwined with the island’s mythology in the forms of family traditions, long-buried secrets or ancient legends.

Every chapter is told by a different character each with their own stories that read like a collection of short stories that all interwoven. Sometimes one character is a child in one story, and then as an adult in another. Some of the earlier stories that have been read then show themselves later in other stories, as rumours in some or legends in others. With the beginning and the end of the book being connected it brings the whole magical island of Neverness and its occupants together perfectly.

Zoe Gilbert has created her own magical and often haunting world blending folklore, fairy tales and magical realism into an absolutely enchanting debut novel.

If you are a lover of mythology, fairy tales and folklore then this book is for you.

A stunning book both inside and out – simply magical!

Folk is out now in Hardback and e-book format and the paperback edition will be released on February 7, 2019.

A massive thank you to the author Zoe Gilbert, publishers Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review.

https://debbiesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/folk-by-zoe-gilbert/
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DebTat2 | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Jan 10, 2019 |
This is perhaps the most beautiful book I have read in a very long time.

Starting with the cover it's a stunning collection of the magic and mystery of every day life, a love letter to the cycles of seasons and years and time, a collection of stories about a village and its people, a place that might never have existed and yet seems as real and immediate as my own hometown. Gilbert's prose is sparkling, breathing, singing and sobbing all at once; she writes of nature and humanity like she's composing a hymn and a eulogy. The stories all flow together, connecting loose threads and untangling knots, showing children growing and grieving and learning, showing families falling apart and building together. There are deaths and births and inexplicable magic and it's all presented with such a deft caring hand, as if the book were woven on a loom rather than written in words.

The characters are memorable and real and you find yourself wrapped up in their lives, in their small griefs and triumphs, in the magic that surrounds them (and sometimes smothers them), in the natural joys that move them. The stories can exist on their own but together it's a beautiful mosaic of a place and a time that never was and still feels real and breathing and true.

A fairy-tale for grown-ups, I can't recommend this book enough
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ElleGato | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 24, 2018 |

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Werke
2
Mitglieder
223
Beliebtheit
#100,550
Bewertung
3.8
Rezensionen
4
ISBNs
31
Sprachen
2

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