As the story opens Avery is sixteen, and has been desperately trying to find her way back to her grandmother for the past four years, without success. This meant tearing her away from her grandmother and the life she knew and loved for her first twelve years, as – for reasons which don’t become clear until the dramatic, painful dénouement – Avery has lived with her grandmother since birth, and loves her dearly. What’s worse is she has forced Avery to come and live with her. The mantle of the Roe witch passes from mother to daughter roughly every forty years or so, but at the outset of the book we learn that Avery’s mother, who should have taken over as the witch several years before, has – for reasons which seem inexplicable to Avery – turned her back on her calling, and is living with her husband and his children in the town of New Bishop, a major whaling port.
The witch needs the island to live, for the Roe witch can never set foot off Prince Island. The islanders need the witch to keep the weather fair, to keep their boats safe, and to keep their men returning home, hale and hearty, after every whaling season. The island has always had a witch, and she is always a Roe one cannot exist without the other. The book is narrated by Avery Roe, who is the granddaughter of the current witch of Prince Island. It’s a complex and satisfying book, for all its romantic aspects, and I don’t mind telling you at the outset that it’s one I really enjoyed. It made me think about motherhood, and how it feels to be a mother, to be a daughter, to feel hemmed in by the protective instincts which seek to keep you safe in a troubled world, and how frustrating it is when what you want (or think you want, which amounts to much the same thing) seems not to tally with what your circumstances dictate that you will have. It made me think about the nature of sacrifice, what the word ‘love’ even means, and how many different aspects there are to this seemingly simple state of being.
Whatever it was, I’m hugely glad I took the chance on it. I’m still not sure what this indefinable ‘something’ is: the voice, maybe.
Clearly, I saw something different in this book, something different enough to make me intrigued enough to buy it.
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