Finnegan’s Field by Angela Slatter
My rating: 4/5 cats
“You’re such rich meat; why would we ever give you up?”
this story takes the traditional changeling tale and transplants it into an irish enclave in australia, which is like taking a ghost story and dropping it into a shark tank – now you’re screwed by nature and the supernatural. sorry, buddy!
In Irish lore, when children go under the hill, they don’t come out again.
Ever.
When children go under the hill, they stay where they’re put.
Forever.
When children go under the hill, parents, though they pray and search, don’t truly think to see them anymore.
Never.
and yet here, a nine-year-old girl named madrigal goes missing, and does return, three years later, looking much the same. but a mother knows their child, and even accounting for three years of ‘away,’ she knows that there is something both more and less than her daughter occupying that body.
and that would all unfold in the way it does in a typical changeling story, but this one follows a different path. not quite into a shark tank, but not entirely dissimilar, either.
it’s got a great hook, and one i haven’t personally encountered in fairytale/folklore retellings before. but i do always appreciate the stance in horror and dark fantasy that, when it comes to the monsters scratching at our gates, we are at least half-complicit in inviting them there in the first place.
it’s a little bit fairytale, a little bit mystery, a little bit family drama, a little bit elegy. it’s got great tone and atmosphere – this sorrowing ominous mood that pervades the piece, but it’s also quite brutal and graphic.
the story plays with this balance between lulling poetic language, flow, and imagery, bringing the irish traditions into the mix:
“Your kind takes your heritage with you, surely as a scent. Other cultures, after a time, blend in with their new environments, but the Irish never really do. They’re always identifiable, no matter how many generations between them and the misty green, no matter how thin the blood becomes; they don’t forget what runs in their veins, that Brigid and Morrígu are their true mothers. You carry it just as you carry your grief; even when you celebrate, you know that sadness will follow as surely as your shadow trails behind you.” It panted, slumped against the chair. “And just as you bring that with you, so you bring your ghosts, too, and your demons. They trail upon your heels no matter where you roam in the world.” Then, defiantly, it added, “You’re such rich meat; why would we ever give you up?”
and pure wild viciousness
View Spoiler »but a viciousness not without sympathy. from me, anyway.
View Spoiler »i definitely enjoyed it more the second time i read it, and i will read more from this author, since erica and miriam have thumbs-upped some of her other work.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/01/13/finnega…
