I had no idea Paul Kearney was so talented an author. This book is so well written that I was drawn along through the story effortlessly. The author has written a book that is so evocative of a time in England that one smells the smoke and feels the cold of the winter landscape. This is intelligent thoughtful writing.
The book is told by Anna a child on the cusp of womanhood. Although told from the child's point of view, this is not a book for children. I do not mean to imply a sexual theme but one of experience. Adults will appreciate the girl's description of adult troubles and concerns; loss and regret recognized in passing references.
The fantasy aspect is so well done that it does not warp the fabric of this reality wrought by Kearney. It is so well done that it seems to take a minor role in the converging stories about shattered families. With that being said, it is not a sad book or a depressing book. It is a book that strikes a chord deep in one that respects the passage of time and that understands the passing of beliefs may be the true marker of change. ( )

I've given this 5 stars for its writing, which is lovely, but I do have ambivalent feelings about it. Not enough to stop me recommending it, albeit with caveats - in fact, I'll be interested to see what other people think. One of the reasons I liked it so much is that the author, Paul Kearney, is obviously crazy about mythology, and loves to feel the weight of myth behind everyday life.

You can read my entire review at https://geraniumcatsbookshelf.blogspot.com
**contain spoilers** ( )

This was an extraordinary read: a real shapeshifter of a book. It began like a children’s story, full of the innocent fancies of an isolated little girl, but then morphed into an eerie fantasy full of symbolism and old magic. The most frustrating thing about the whole novel is that its final pages introduce a whole new potential canvas and then, with so many questions unanswered, and so much backstory unexplained, it simply finishes. I assumed that it must surely be the first part of a series but, so far, I haven’t found any mention of a planned sequel. And so I’ve been left feeling strangely short-changed because, for the most part, this is a genuinely gripping world and so much more could have been said...

For the rest of the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/01/03/the-wolf-in-the-attic-paul-kearney/ ( )

Anna is a heart-rendingly lonely little girl. A Greek refugee in 1920's Oxford, her memories of a warm and sunny, loving home seem almost like fantasies of a lost paradise. Now, everything is cold and grey. Her father has retreated into desperate, fervid political meetings with other Greek expats - and the bottle. Removed from public school because of bullying, Anna has just her tutor, and the doll whose friendship she knows is purely imaginary. Free to wander the streets (and the woods) unsupervised, Anna stumbles across a terrifying scene of violence - and encounters a family of strange and rustic travellers. These seeming Gypsies attract her with the foreign-ness they share with her (one young man in particular holds a dangerous attraction), but their culture may be older - and odder - than she could guess. Has Anna met her salvation - or her doom?

This novel is the first I've read from Kearney, and it will not be the last. This is so, so good. The language is just beautiful, and I fell in love with Anna's character: her precocious love of mythology, her imagination, her independence, and her dreams. Her situation is so well fleshed out that it could easily have stood on its own as a novel that was just a character study about the refugee experience. At first, I thought it might be simply a mainstream historical novel, as I embarked upon reading this while knowing little about the book, and nothing about the author. However, then Kearney weaves in his supernatural element, and it is just superb. Maybe the title gives it away just a bit, but this is absolutely the best werewolf novel I have read in quite some time!

The one thing I do have to say, is that a blurb I saw makes much of CS Lewis and Tolkien appearing in this book. Well, they do, but I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't read the blurb, and I doubt many other readers would have either. While I recognize the author's wish to give a nod to those greats who inspired some of the themes and setting of this story, I didn't feel that their appearance was necessary, especially because the way they're presented, you expect them to play some intrinsic part in the tale - and they don't.

Regardless - 5 stars for this one.

Many thanks to Solaris and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own. ( )

This is a truly beautiful book, beautifully written, with a deeply human message at its core.

It would be easy to say it is set in Oxford in 1929, but the setting is far more complex than that. While the city is present and vivid on the page, and even the country around it is vibrant of the winter’s life and mysteries, what really is at the heart of this book is something that goes beyond it. A place called the Old World, where doors get opened on New Years Eve connecting the before and the after, there ‘here’ and the ‘beyond’. It’s a place where a little girl may meet the Devil in the heart of the wood and defeat him.
I truly loved the way historical Oxford merges with a place of legend that is a part of the city and its people, so much so that it feels perfectly normal and logic that the two cities mix together.

Anna is a fantastic protagonist. Eleven years old, a refugee from the war in Greece, she’s a candid but also very mature observer and then actor of what happens in the nights between the 1920s and the 1930s.
There’s a constant feeling of ‘changing’ and ‘becoming’. Luca, one of the main characters, is a shapeshifter, nor completely human or wolf and still both of them. Anna herself, who came to England when she was five, is deeply aware of her people’s history (her history), but she also feels part of the culture she grew up in. I really like the way Anna’s dual identity is treated, not as a problem, but as something that simply is and sometimes needs to be address.
The story – the plot – plays with the idea of the changing, the passing, all the time. The middle months of winter, when the year ends and starts. The passing from a decade to the other. Anna becoming a woman as she has her first period, but also as she learns to tell the truth from the lie.
Remembrance is also a very strong theme, because there is no evolution, no ‘becoming’ without memory. And so the theme of loss is also central to the story.

Kearny weaves all these ideas in a story that offers so much to ponder, but is also sweet enough, even in its harshest moments, to drew the reader in. I cared for these characters and what happened to them, because beyond the fantastical adventure (beyond that storyteller’s door) their feelings and their fears and hopes a very relatable.

And finally, as a Tolkien fan, I loved the echoes of Tolkine’s work in the story. There are many recognizable episodes so skilfully woven into the story that I never doubted they belonged here, and still I could clearly see their origin in Tolkien’s work.
Tolkien even appears as a character, as does C.S. Lewis who has a very important impact on Anna’s growing arc. As it’s true for all the rest, these two men merge in the fabric of the story seamlessly and meaningfully.

There’s a lot to like in this book. A truly beautiful one.
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