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Folk by Zoe Gilbert EPUB
Dark, magical and unsettling, Folk is a debut of breathtaking imagination which introduces the remote, unforgiving island of Neverness and its singular inhabitants.
Take a torch, the last to be lit, and follow the jostle of fat, spitting lights as the men and women of Neverness spread out along the gorse edge. Every year they gather while the girls shoot their arrows and the boys hunt them out. The air is riddled with spiteful shadows - the wounds and fears and furies of a village year. The gorse burning will smoke them out, cleanse the air for another season's turning.
On a remote and unforgiving island lies a village unlike any other. In Neverness a girl might be snatched by a water bull and dragged to his dark lair, and Jack Frost can take his chilling revenge on a jealous sister. A babe is born with a wing for an arm, and children ask their fortunes of an oracle ox.
The beliefs and rituals of the islanders conjure their own dark spirits, flying with the red kites at night or stalking lustful boys through the gorse maze. While the villagers live out their own tales, magic always lurks, blighting and blessing lives in equal measure.
Folk is a dark, sinuous and unforgettable debut which takes place over the course of one generation of islanders. As each chapter unfolds, the folklore of Neverness is as tangible as its rocky shore, its deep woods and its gorse-prickled headland. In this world remote from our time and place, the tales of the islanders interweave and overlap, cloaked in threat, twisting fates and changing lives.
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