I liked Clarke's previous novel,
Piranesi (I reviewed it here on Jan. 12, 2022), so the idea of a new book by her attracted my attention. Disappointment after disappointment followed. First, I learned the book is only sixty-three pages: so, a novella at best. But then I got a copy. Nineteen of those pages are publishing matter, or illustrations without text. Eleven pages have only a small amount of text, and in the rest of the book, the text is generously double-spaced. What remains is a mere short story, bloated by many illustrations, and further bloated by a nine page afterword by the author which is primarily a why-I-wrote-this-story-and-why-I-like-Kate-Bush confession. Yawn. The story was written as a Christmas 2022 radio broadcast. Though nowhere evident in the tale, Clarke claims in her afterword that it is set in the world of
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This means nothing. What's left is a short quasi-fairy-tale about a young nineteen year old girl who ventures into a wood at snowy midwinter with her talking animals (two dogs and a pig), and she has conversations with other animals and the wood itself. She tells them she wants a child of her own, and something mysterious happens. That's all. Shame on the publisher for putting out this money-grubbing contrivance.
