The Green Man
Review
'It was Christmas
and Kinlochbervie had a festive atmosphere about it.
Decorations and fir trees decked out with tinsel stood in
windows, lighting the dull afternoon with flashes of
cheerful Technicolor brilliance, and the door to the
Compass was adorned with a massive wreath. The smell of
burning wood was in the air, as the wind tugged at the
ribbons of smoke issuing from most of the chimneys. I
walked past the Compass, and my nose was assaulted by the
wonderful odor of roasting chestnuts, something I had not
smelled in years. It conjured many images of Christmases
past, and as I walked to the first of the shops on my list,
I was whistling a merry carol.' -- Richard Brennan in Swim
the Moon
OK, I have to start off this review by noting that I am
quite jaded when it comes to fiction at this point. As
editor of Green Man, I have the opportunity to sample at no
financial cost hundreds of novels and collections a year.
This apparent blessing is more of a curse as it means that
it really, really takes a lot to catch and hold my
attention. I can read thirty, forty, even a hundred pages
into a novel and decide it's not worth finishing.
Paul Brandon's Swim the Moon was good enough to keep me
turning page after page. It's both a great mystery -- yes,
a mystery -- and incredibly well-written! This is Paul
Brandon's first novel, and I'm eagerly awaiting the release
of his second novel, The Wild Reel, which hopefully will be
released soon.
Six years ago fiddler Richard Brennan left Scotland for
Australia following the death of his wife by drowning; he
could not cope with the memories and his overwhelming
grief. Now, he takes a nonstop trip from his new home in
Australia back to Scotland to attend his father's funeral.
By a not-so-nice coincidence, his father, an architect,
drowned just like Richard's wife did. What Richard doesn't
(yet) know is that drownings are very, very common in his
family over the past several centuries.
To escape his sorrow, and his decided puzzlement about
being back in Scotland, Richard plays his fiddle in gigs in
the nearby pubs. (It seems that Richard has played with
many well-known Celtic bands.) Still feeling very alone, he
begins to believe that he is losing his mind when Ailish
appears ecstatically dancing and singing under the seaside
moonlight.
Richard joins her music with his fiddle, but soon loses his
heart and soul to this woman who has flaming red hair,
always wears the same dress, and goes barefoot in the deep
of winter. Need I mention that she speaks only a
long-forgotten form of Scots Gaelic? (She learns English
rather quickly.) And that she appears to come from the sea?
Could she be ... Nah, that would be telling!
What Brandon has written is fantasy that has vivid imagery
very rarely seen in a novel, whether he is describing the
descriptions of Ailish, Richard playing music, or life
along the northern Scottish coast. Richard is believable as
an individual nearly driven mad by the memories of what was
and visions of what might be. The only minor complaint I
have is that the dialogue in swim the moon can be rather,
err, awkward at times. And Richard is somewhat oblivious to
the true nature of our country lass -- not surprising given
the truly great sex they have! And, as Emma Bull noted in
Bone Dance ("I cursed him in my heart. 'Um, what day is
it?' With the infinite patience of someone used to dealing
with drunks, musicians, and techies, he replied,
'Sunday.'") musicians can be rather dense!
Minor quibbles aside, this is a truly great novel, and one
of the best debuts I've read in a long, long time. It's
safe to say that the author, like his fellow Celtic
musician Charles de Lint, is well-versed in every aspect of
being a musician. It's a fairly rare trait -- only a
handful of writers, including Emma Bull in The War for the
Oaks and George R.R. Martin in The Armageddon Rag, have
pulled it off. As I said at the beginning of this review, I
am eagerly awaiting his second novel, The Wild Reel. So get
yourself a copy of this novel, sit back in a comfortable
chair, and be prepared to be there for quite a while. Drop
me a line after you finish it -- it's worth discussing!
Cat Eldridge.
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Review
Amazon.com
Rating: Five stars (out of five)
A rare treat,
September 16, 2001
Six years ago Richard Brennan fled
Scotland following the death of his wife because he could
not cope with the memories and his subsequent grief. Now,
he takes an all day and night flight home from Australia to
attend his father's funeral. Ironically, his father, an
architect, drowned just like Richard's spouse did.
To escape his latest sorrow that his current residence
reminds him of with every nook and cranny, and his
bewilderment about fate, Richard plays his fiddle in gigs
in the nearby pubs. Still feeling alone, he wonders if he
finally is losing his mind when Ailish appears ecstatically
dancing and singing under the seaside moonlight. Richard
joins her music with his fiddle, but soon loses his heart
and soul to this siren of the sea.
SWIM THE MOON is a beautiful fantasy that provides imagery
rarely seen in a novel whether it is Ailish or Richard's
music, or the Northern Scottish coast. Richard is a
haunting individual tormented by his love-hate for the sea
that holds the mysteries of his family and his new love
Ailish. Though some of the dialogue seems stilted, perhaps
because the story line is so beautifully written, Paul
Brandon's debut tale is a throwback to the bards of yore
when poetry painted landscapes of the soul.
© Harriet Klausner, reproduced with permission.
Locus
"This seems to be
the month for fantasy characters plagued by nightmares. Le
Guin's minor mage, the beleaguered denizens of Shilston
Upcot, and now the protagonist of first novelist Paul
Brandon's Swim the Moon. The primary setting is a remote
seacoast in the farthest reaches of Britain, and narrator
Richard Brennan is haunted by memories of his dead wife,
but we're not in Earthsea or Old Talbotshire anymore. His
world is our own.
Well, almost our own, and the more fantastical elements
develop slowly and subtly. Richard is a Scottish fiddler
who had some professional success playing with Celtic
bands, but the death of his wife drove him into a kind of
self-imposed exile down in Australia - which seems like
another planet compared to his native land. His father's
death brings him back to Scotland for what he thinks is a
brief final visit, but something calls him to renounce his
new life and return to the old, for good or ill.
The move doesn't come easily to him. Both his mother and
his sister live in Australia now, and though he's estranged
from the mother (just as his father was before him), the
sister may be his closest tie Down Under. With a mainstream
writer's attention to details of psychology and action,
Brandon pursues the story from month to month, country to
country, until Richard finally establishes a hardscrabble
yet ascetically satisfying life in the isolated bothy where
he was born. His disturbing dreams of swimming, drowning,
darkness, might be just that - dreams, inspired by the
strange coincidence of his father's and his wife's
accidental deaths - if not for the intensity of his
emotions, and a twist of fate which will link him with a
mysterious woman oddly like his father's last love.
Richard's ''courting'' of the fey, Gaelic-speaking Ailish
is another gradual process, almost like the taming of a
feral cat, though she will prove to be no wraith. At first
he pursues other concerns as well, including an attempt to
track down a family history almost as peculiar and elusive
as Ailish herself, but as their relationship deepens, the
focus narrows until they could be the only people in the
world, lost a realm of intense passion, where music and sex
play an equal part. (Prudes and readers with a dislike of
Grand Romance be warned: this book may not be for you.)
Swim the Moon takes equal measures of realism, folklore,
nightmare, and romance, brings them to a slow boil, and
serves up a brew that has something of the power of the old
whisky which Richard and Ailish share for a Christmas
toast: ''The liquid burned over my tongue and trickled like
molten metal down my throat. It was wondrously smoky, rich
flavored and strong.... [T]hough I knew whisky didn't
really improve once in the bottle, it was the thought of
drinking something so old, so precious, that made it
wonderful.'' Give this book a taste - you may like its
flavor."
Review by Faren Miller [September 2001]
Booklist
In a haunting
first novel, Brandon takes us to the wind-swept coast of
northern Scotland, where magic and story are a way of life.
Returning to his homeland after a six-year absence, fiddle
player Richard Brennan lives a simple life in the bothy he
inherited from his father, who died under mysterious
circumstances.
Still devastated by his wife's death years before, Richard
is certain he will never love again--until he meets the
elusive and ethereally beautiful Ailish on the beach one
night.
Slowly, the long-held secrets of the tiny town of
Kinlochbervie and of the Brennan family are revealed, and
Richard learns that nothing is as it seems, that his family
has been paying the terrible price of an old curse, and
that his love for Ailish may well cost him his life . . and
his soul.
Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association.
All rights reserved
Kirkus
Several years
before the story opens, after his beloved wife Bethy
drowned in a mysterious accident, Celtic musician Richard
Brennan left Scotland for Australia, vowing never to
return. Now, though, he must attend the funeral of his
father after the latter's equally mysterious drowning.
Returning to Sandwood, in Scotland's far northwest, stirs
unwelcome memories for Richard.
He returns to Australia but, plagued by ghastly nightmares
involving water, cannot settle and is drawn back to
Sandwood and the bothy, a stone cottage with a turf roof,
where his father lived and, Richard learns, was beguiled in
the last few months of his life by a mysterious, beautiful
young woman. In the local pub, old MacKay glowers
terrifyingly and tells hair-raising stories of the local
selkies, or were-seals. Richard dreams a grisly vision of a
drowned fisherman with gold earrings-possibly his Irish
ancestor. He plays haunting music, with others and
sometimes alone on the beach. And then one night he hears
singing, and spies a tiny dancer on the sand beneath the
moon: the bewitching Ailish, who comes seemingly from
nowhere, has no past, and speaks only Gaelic.
So fluently and passionately wrought that the reader is
often able to forget that it's obvious what's going on from
the beginning.
Fans of Charles de Lint, and others who relish the
music/folklore combination, should be delighted with this
debut fantasy."
Library Journal
Six years after
his wife's accidental death, fiddler Richard Brennan
returns to Scotland from Australia for his father's funeral
and finds himself drawn once more to his homeland. When
disturbing dreams culminate in the vision of an elusive
young woman whose presence portends love and heartbreak,
Richard crosses an invisible border that carries him into
the center of a family curse and a legacy of retribution.
Brandon's first novel tells a compelling tale of one man's
encounter with a creature born from wild magic.
Recommended for most fantasy collections.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Publisher's Weekly
Editorial Reviews
By turns tender and tormented, this haunting, lyric Celtic
rhapsody on the ancient theme of selkies --seal-people who
in human form ensnare their mortal lovers-- makes a
bewitching debut novel.
A little shaky dialogue doesn't mar the beauty of this
mythic tale at all. Mysteriously drawn back to the remote
cottage in northernmost Scotland where his male ancestors
and his wife have all died by drowning, Richard Brennan
experiences nightmares of grief and guilt that counterpoint
his joy to be "home," playing fiddle in "sessions" around
the countryside. Alone in the isolated bothy (cottage)
alive with ghosts, Brennan fears for his sanity, his mind
tormented by ghastly visions of the sodden corpses of his
forefathers, but eventually his psychic wounds start to
heal. When lovely, enigmatic Ailish appears at the seaside,
dancing and singing rapturously in the silvery Scottish
moonlight, Brennan joins his music and his soul to hers.
Given how closely the author's last name resembles his
hero's, one has to wonder whether an autobiographical
element animates this eerie tale of love and loss.
Brennan's music comes wondrously alive in rhythmic prose
and elusively shifting imagery, proving that myth and
legend are inseparable parts of being a folk musician. In
the old songs, pain and delight together shape human life.
One pays for the other, as the bards know, "when sea-girls
wake us, and we drown."
Definitely a writer to watch, Brandon has a vivid, original
voice, full of poignant longing and haunting echoes.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information,
Inc.