Diving Belles

June 11, 2012
Each story in Wood’s debut collection is set on the misty, craggy coast of Cornwall, England, where the author grew up. Aching and mystical, these tales speak of husbands turned to mermen who haunt nearby shipwrecks, as in the title story; plundering ghosts of thieving sailors in “Lights in Other People’s Houses”; fairies who emerge with the application of magical eye cream in “Of Mothers and Little People”; and a moor where “There were hundreds of bones, heaped and leaning like the beams and joints of an abandoned mansion,” in “The Giant’s Boneyard.” Wood never pokes fun at her subjects, no matter how outlandish, treating their lives, loves, and tragedies with respect in landscapes ripe with magical realism. The isolated characters are mired in loneliness, and while transformation is a recurrent theme, few stories offer resolution. Instead, Wood brings into focus what hovers at the edge of reality, pulling those phantoms front and center. Rich with folklore, steeped in the sounds and scents of the ever-present sea, these stories flicker and disappear before reason kicks in, much like the creatures of legend that inhabit them. These are distinctively grown-up fairy tales that recreate a sense of wonder and imagination without the moral endings of their childhood counterparts, but, like them, linger in the imagination. Agent: Elizabeth Sheinkman, Curtis Brown.

August 1, 2012
A dozen strange and original stories inject the magical, sinister and downright peculiar into the everyday. Talking magpies, husband-stealing mermaids, women who turn periodically to stone: English writer Wood's debut collection is full of mysteries and inexplicable occurrences in domestic lives. The application of eye cream in "Of Mothers and Little People" reveals to a daughter a wholly different reason for her mother's behavior. "Notes from the House Spirits" gives voice to the inanimate and brings a strange perspective to human habitation. In "Lights in Other People's Houses," a ghostly shipwrecker arrives during a drought, filling an apartment with sand, pebbles and creeping damp. The sea is never far away in these narratives, sometimes as landscape--there's a Cornish flavor to the book--at others central to events, as in the title story, which takes an abandoned wife down deep to the ocean floor. Wood's tales often feature single females--unmarried women, deserted wives, perhaps the most memorable being Mrs. Tivoli in "Blue Moon," who changes into a hare. Weaker stories are desultory or a bit obvious, and there's an overreliance on vague endings, but at her strongest, Wood captures something fresh, fantastical and eloquent. Occasionally just fey, elsewhere convincingly unworldly, these stories express a distinctive voice and a gently beguiling imagination.

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August 1, 2012
An otherworldly magic courses through the stories that comprise Wood's whimsical debut. The collection is set in Cornwall, and the characters who populate the stories live side by side with mythological creatures. In the title story, an elderly woman descends into the sea in a diving bell in hopes of recovering her husband, seduced away from her long ago by a mermaid. A woman who is in the process of turning into stone for a spell reluctantly goes house hunting with her ex-boyfriend. After trying her mother's eye cream, a young woman discovers the hidden meaning behind some of her mother's gestures and realizes just how off her interpretations were. A 12-year-old would-be giant wonders whether he'll ever grow to his full potential as he roams a moor filled with oversize bones. A couple who has just moved into a new apartment is visited by a wrecker, who rifles through their most personal possessions. Lovers of fairy tales and Celtic lore will take pleasure in immersing themselves in the rich, magical world Wood's tales inhabit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)