With thanks to Netgalley and the author.

The gloaming is a book about family, grief and living on a small remote Scottish island, and of course the wildness of the sea and the power it can hold on people.

A great read overall, which I enjoyed.

The Gloaming - Kirsty Logan

Mara, Islay and Bree are the children in a charmed life, an I Capture The Castle feel where the big draughty house they live in is filled with love and magic. Their parents, a ballerina and boxer, need nothing more than each other.

The chapters are from everyone’s point of view, which I thought was interesting as there are multiple narrators - not something that happens often as it can get confusing. Each chapter is signalled with a word - in Scots, a term from ballet or boxing. This helps as you know that the ballet chapters are Signe’s while the boxing ones are for Peter.

The island they live on is unique in that death is by calcification, or rather, the signal for death is that you begin to turn to stone. That might be the cause or the outcome, who knows. At first I thought that was terribly romantic, when your time has come you process up a cliff to be cast in stone as a statue, among your friends and family. As I read on, with a narrative laced with grief and fairytales, I changed my mind and thought it was a dreadful fate.

That’s indicative of the plot - points and arcs start being romantic and end with the realisation that the people in the stories are trapped, backed into a corner or in a cage of someone else’s making. A boxer with dementia, a ballerina with long term achilles damage, in a tumbledown mansion where nothing works and the effort you pour in one window leaves out of another. It sounds bleak, but I loved it.

An examination of existentialism through selkie and mermaid fairytales, bursting with allegories and full of interesting characters. There’s a point where one character is seen through her love’s eyes and described as glowing, as perfect, as accomplished. That same character is described by a stranger completely differently, as a normal, everyday young woman. Is it better to see through a rose tinted lens, or to face the world and all of it’s hardships?

The characters are people with hopes and dreams, as well as being siblings, parents, colleagues, lovers. As with most stories like this, the island is a character itself, expressing emotions via the weather patterns which whip the sea into a frenzy.

I recommend this to anyone looking for a story which describes the real world through examining fantastic and magical devices - rentable hearts so yours don’t get broken, discovered libraries and turning to stone when your time comes. It reminded me of Ali Smith’s Winter, Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle and something of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter.

I read Kirsty Logan's The Gracekeepers in 2015 and absolutely loved it, from the world-building, to the characters, and to the mix between hard reality and fairy tales. Since then I've been reading Logan's short stories and falling ever more in love with her writing. But I found myself kind of hesitant to start The Gloaming. What if I didn't like it the same way? I should not have worried, Logan has absolutely blown me away again. Thanks to Random House UK and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Kirsty Logan has the talent to create worlds in which magic and reality walk hand in hand, like lovers. While many authors attempt it, it hardly ever feels as seamless as it does in The Gloaming. Technically we have a story of a family, of grief, of an isolated island, and of a hotel vanity project. But we also have a ballerina and a boxer in love, children who hatch from eggs, stone statues, and mermaids. Deep grief can be interrupted by the sight of a still and calm loch. A mermaid can bring respite to those who fear the sea. A storm can settle the score. Home can change you, but you can also change home. It is hard to explain exactly where the beauty of The Gloaming comes from, but I do believe its title is perfectly chosen. The "gloam", as Logan explains, is the time that follows sunset immediately, where the memory of light still lingers and where the utter darkness can be comforting. It is a time that must be passed through, despite its beauty. It must come to an end for the sun to shine again. There is so much beauty in The Gloaming, in the depths its willing to explore and the highs it shares with the reader, but just as its characters need to move forward, so do we as readers need to move through this novel and take it to heart.

At the heart of The Gloaming is Mara Ross, marked and changed by a family tragedy. While most of the novel focuses on her journey, and especially on her coming back to joy upon Pearl's arrival, Logan also gives room to her family. Chapters focus on her mother Signe and her ballet career and her love for her children. Others look at older sister Islay and her attempt at escaping the island. Father Peter's slow decline is shown, while Bee's extraordinary perception of things comes to bear at key moments. The family comes into view this way, both as a unit and as separate elements that have their own dreams. I adores Mara, so serious but so ready to be seduced by something grand. As The Gloaming moves back and forth in time, slippery like a memory, it weaves a tale of family and of growing up that had me occasionally close to tears, but also had me close my eyes and savour the moment. The slow and tender love between Mara and Pearl was also beautifully written, full of care but without softening the sharp edges of gifting someone your heart. Over The Gloaming there rests something of a spell that momentarily freezes you, makes you stand still to take it all in, but Logan is kind enough to release you, the reader, and her characters in the end.

It may be clear by now that I am a massive fan of Kirsty Logan's writing, hence why my initial hesitancy was so major. The Gloaming is like a thematic ancestor to The Gracekeepers. It contains the same tension between the land and the sea, the attraction of the deep dark water, a young woman only going through the motions of life, a deep foundation of myth and fairy tale. And yet they are vastly different novels, equally beautiful but telling different stories all together. Each chapter of The Gloaming has a title which is either a Scottish word, a ballet term or a boxing term, depending on who the chapter is about. There is a glossary at the back but I only looked at this at the end, to see if I had understood them correctly. These "strange" words almost feel like a little spell or an omen, setting Logan's characters on their way. I reveled in all the different elements Logan tied into her novel, whether it was Signe's deconstruction of her ballet roles, the consequences of Peter's boxing career, Islay's roaming travels, or Pearl's mysteriousness. Pearl remains something of an outsider, in that we don't get chapters from her perspective. On the one hand I would have loved to know a little more about her, but I also loved her as the outsider/selkie-figure, which features predominantly throughout the novel, whose presence highlights and contrasts the family's oddities. I can't wait to keep reading and thinking about and being inspired by Kirsty Logan's books.

The Gloaming is a beautiful novel, whose characters are utterly alive. Infused with a quiet but powerful magic, Kirsty Logan brings folklore to life and elevates life to folklore.

This is a beautiful tale that I enjoyed dipping into whenever I needed to leave reality behind for a while. I rarely read novels of this kind, but was intrigued by the cover and description and thought I'd try something different. I was pleasantly surprised by the lyrical writing and would recommend it to people with a taste for similar stories.

I've loved all of Kirsty Logan's books so far and this one was no exception with its blend of blunt reality and eerie magical realism. The island felt like a real place, steeped in its unavoidable call to the cliffs, and I loved the symbolism of the islanders turning to stone. The relationship between the sisters and one of the sisters lovers were well drawn, and the decent of the household after their loss was poignant and heartbreaking. As always, Logan's writing is beautiful and vivid. My only issue with this book was the ending, which might be a matter of taste. The reveal of the narrator didn't make much sense to me against their previous characterisation and it left the story on a strange feeling that didn't really feel satisfying. However, I still loved this book.

In The Gloaming, Kirsty Logan manages to create a magical and whimsical world that is so tethered to reality and yet so otherworldy. I love her prose and the imaginative world that she has brought to life in this novel. The story is truly touching, and I particularly loved how she handles such difficult themes as loss, death and alienation with such delicacy. I am a bit unsure how I feel about the ending, though, since it was intentionally left vague, although I do understand that deciding on one ending or the other would actually take away some of the whimsicality of the book.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is fond of evocative writing that takes your breath away, as well as to those looking for a heartbreaking tale with a short of different dose of magic.

Although I’ve heard such wonderful things about Kirsty Logan’s work, particularly The Gracekeepers, I’d never read any of her books. However, curiosity about her whimsical style of magical realism has always intrigued me so I was really pleased when NetGalley granted me access to an ARC of her new book The Gloaming.

The Gloaming follows a family who inhabit a strange remote island, surrounded by folklore and magic. Peter and Signe have raised their three children Islay, Mara and Bee to love their home, the sea and the island’s stories. After a family tragedy, it becomes apparent that the sea is relentless in its quest for change while the island tries its hardest to maintain tradition and sameness. The story centres chiefly on Mara’s coming-of-age, her meeting with the enigmatic Pearl and her acceptance of herself, her past and where her dreams will take her.

One of my favourite things about The Gloaming was Logan’s philosophical yet lyrical style. She simultaneously painted a beautiful dream while smacking a wedge of truth home. The setting was vividly depicted and the gently swaying prose made it very easy to submerge myself within the island.

It is difficult to draw together all of the multiple threads that occur within The Gloaming but at its core, it is about finding the balance between tradition and change. In their own ways, each of the family members seem to struggle with preserving the past and living the lives they ultimately want to lead. Both Peter and Signe often seem to hanker after their lofty successful careers, Islay and Mara both feel the pull of the sea and the big wide world beyond it. It is only Bee, who appears to have a certain mystical glow to him, that is at one with the island itself.

Mara harbours so much guilt and pain, following the tragedy. Even after she leaves the island, it’s a large piece of baggage that she continues to carry. She is constantly conflicted between confronting it head-on by staying on the island and running away from it with Pearl. Pearl seems to be the revelation that Mara needs. By introducing her to a different way of living, Mara learns that she doesn’t have to be a dutiful daughter consumed by ghosts from her past. She can learn to be happy and free -but only if she exhales and lets go of the guilt.

Whenever anyone is ready for death on the island, they simply walk to the top of a cliff where they promptly turn to stone. This really moved me and I thought it was such a strange macabre idea. The image of all of these villagers stood in various positions on top of a cliff was so dark and yet strangely beautiful. Also although the island is seemingly part of the real world, the fact that this is a factually-accepted tradition that is obviously steeped in magic is never delved into. Nobody ever questions why or how this happens, which I found quite odd. Is it a metaphor for the immortalisation of the place’s history or is it something much darker?

It took me quite a while to get into the story. At the start, it appeared that every chapter was from a different viewpoint and sometimes in a completely different time period too. This was difficult to grasp and it meant that I often had to read certain passages over to make sure that I was on track. Thankfully, the writing style was beautiful and it was this that held my attention and fuelled me to continue. However, I understand that some readers may have got frustrated and confused and put the book down before getting to the heart of the plot.

The Gloaming is a very whimsical strange story but I feel that it has a lot of lessons embedded within it -namely that nothing lasts forever but that everything and everyone has the power to create a permanent imprint. Once I’d got over the initial problems with multiple narratives and flashbacks, I enjoyed the main story. At times, it felt like it may have been a little too clever for me but I appreciated the beautiful prose that delivered it.

As a massive fan of Kirsty Logan I was beyond excited to get my hands on a copy of The Gloaming, and my goodness it did not disappoint!

This is a bewitching tale of family, home, grief and love all set on a Scottish Island.

It is a quintessential modern Scottish folktale full of magic, wonder, and of course Selkie's! The language is wistful and lyrical throughout meaning that you are never quite sure where fairytale begins and reality ends but that is all part of the wonder of this delicious book.

The Gloaming is one of those books filled with mystery and wonder. Unlike a fairy tale, that doesn’t mean that everything is good, as lots of bad things happen. The Gloaming is a book full of stories that people tell each other and the truths they omit but told in a way that is appealing, as the line between the two is very thin and can be twisted to become fantastical.

The Gloaming revolves around a family of five, Signe and Peter lived extraordinary lives before they met each other and decided to move to the island. Signe and Peter have three children; Islay, who is beautiful, Mara who is plain and Barra who is much younger than the girls, who is described as being angelic. The way the story is told, you think it will follow Islay, but really it is about Mara and how she is slightly removed from reality due to the stories about the magic of the island she has been told whilst growing up.

Mara just wants a happily ever after, when we first meet her she is a teenager and no one has ever told her that life is more than a story. As the middle child Mara has always believed the stories their Mother tells both Mara and Islay, and she also doesn’t notice the way Islay embellishes them. They have their own rituals as well, but unfortunately and accidentally Barra also likes to imitate his older sisters and is too young to know that actions have consequences.

As mentioned this is a book about stories set in the magical world Islay and Mara have created, where their stories take on a life of their own. We find out more about Islay and Mara’s parents as The Gloaming progresses, about the stories they told each other, as well as themselves. The island is off the coast of Scotland, and although the world is modern, it is also has a timeless feel where things don’t really change, as people go about their lives.

Mara dreams of leaving the island and finally seeing the world, but it is Islay who abruptly leaves with no indication that she will ever be back. Mara feels that she must be responsible for her parents, so she sacrifices her dreams in the hope that she will fill the holes in their family. It is heartbreaking that the family do not talk to each other and they hide how they really feel. The whole family seems to live in a bubble, where things happen to them, but they seem to keep moving forward never seeming to want or ask for more. They are all haunted by tragedy, but keep their feelings to themselves rather than supporting each other.

The book revolves around living on an island, which means you are never too far from the sea. In this story, the sea is almost a character giving the family things, but it is the nature of the sea to also take what it wants. The sea and the way that Islay and Mara interact with it can seem mythic, especially as the characters have rituals to not appease the sea, but to give it things as well. Mara’s character is also like an island, as she is isolated and seems to be surviving rather than dealing with her present.

The Gloaming seamlessly skips between the past and the present, as well as the perspectives of different family members, so we really feel that we know more about them than their family does. It is interesting that the family doesn’t speak about the trauma of loss, but we do see how they try and deal with it. The Gloaming asks questions, that you don’t always want to know the answer to. Stories within stories make for a vivid world, with an almost dark magic beating at the heart of it, where who knows what is really real, and should life be compared to these stories?

Logan’s story is a book about death and discovering life, it is beautifully written and flows really well, the pacing is never rushed and it is easy to drift along with the story. It can be frustrating in places due to the characters trust in the stories they tell themselves rather than the reality that is before them. Due to the nature of the book, it can seem slightly unsatisfying at times as there are a few parts that feel insubstantial, like a dream, which isn’t really a bad thing, unless you like your stories to have concrete endings.

Logan is a master in storytelling. This tale reads like you're drifting through a dreamscape. This story of a family haunted by grief is melancholic but beautifully written. An invocative mix of mystical, folklore and reality of a family haunted by grief and the deep murky waters inbetween.

In the Gloaming, there's such a keen sadness-the grief-that underlines everything. The characters are all quite real but also unreal. The whole book is real and unreal honestly. There's a lot of myth intertwined here-mermaids and selkies pop up again and again. The island itself is a character full of an environment that ensnares its people. It's a hard novel to talk about really in terms of not spoilering it. Every part links to another in a dense web of magical realism/myth vs reality. The prose is beautiful and the intertwined anecdotes actually work well.

The Gloaming is a sad, but also beautiful book. Unfortunately, I have to say that it isn’t for me. I spent too much of my time feeling lost and trying to make sense of the story and as the result, I was unable to enjoyed it as much as I hoped to. I root for the characters and felt for them, but at the same time, also felt disconnected from them. If you’re looking for a poignant story, this book is for you. But if you’re looking for some more substances and plot like I did, this book wouldn’t really work for you.

Full review can be seen on my blog.

"To stay in the gloaming is to hold off the night. But if the night never comes, then neither can the day."

This is another entry into the growing trend of 'grown-up fairy tales,' like Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child and Claire Fuller's Swimming Lessons. I like this genre but it can be dangerous, bordering on the cutesy if you're not careful. However, Kirsty Logan manages to walk the line quite well and The Gloaming is an immersive read that's a bit different from anything else out there at the moment.

There are some quite dark elements to the book which I think save it from the occasional tip into fairy tale land, instead Logan uses folklore to balance out what is essentially a family drama in an isolated landscape.

If you're a fan of family dramas then The Gloaming is for you, with each character providing a different ingredient to the boiling pot of family emotions and interactions. Although I found Mara a little frustratingly apathetic at times, I did believe in her and found her to be understandable in her actions, and a lot deeper than she first appears.

The only character I didn't really believe in was Pearl, who seems a little bit too quirky and different to be real. She reminds me too much of the 'quirky girl' stock character who always turns up in indie films. To be fair though, by the end of the book I found she had more depth to her.

I think Logan has really nailed the mix of mythical and everyday family struggles. Though the book focuses on a lot of folk lore, selkies, mythical islands etc, at the base of it, it is a family struggling with issues that everyone can relate too; grieving, aging, family dynamics and the simple struggle of everybody who is trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

My Rating: 4 Stars

I received a copy of The Gloaming, via NetGalley, in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

'The enchanting spiritual prequel to The Gracekeepers, Kirsty Logan’s The Gloaming is a present-day fable that brims over with dazzling imagination and captivating language.'

This book is whimsically dark; beautifully eerie and will stay in your mind long after you have finished the last page. As a fan of Kirsty Logan's 'The Gracekeepers' I honestly wasn't aware that this was in any way related, apparently it is a prequel, and while it shares the same feel as 'The Gracekeepers' I don't think that it will hinder your enjoyment of this book if you haven't read that first. The more this book sits with me the more I love it and if you're a fan of folklore, magical realism and lyrical prose then you will love it too.

I had seen The Gloaming all over Bookstagram, so I was keen to read it, but unfortunately it didn't hit the right notes for me. The characters felt flat, the emotional reactions didn't feel authentic, and the descriptions of the island didn't ring true for Scotland. Unfortunate, but I am sure it is just a matter of "not clicking" with a read and there will be swathes of people who do fall in love with it.

The Gloaming is not at all what I expected it to be. A quietly mournful book of love and grief, it centres mostly around a family of five – boxer Peter, his ballerina wife Signe and their three children Islay, Mara and Barra – living on a small island where people eventually turn to stone.
Why you would move your children to an island covered in stony old people was never fully explained. Nor was the actual turning to stone part, I wanted to know where this started and how, and why – but all we were told was that it happened. The description of how was excellent, with the slowing of movements and the stiffening of limbs alongside the gentle clouds of dust and the gradual slowing of time. We see glimpses of an outside world full of magic realism, rentable clockwork hearts, people growing antlers and hiding them under hats, alongside the normal working world of shops, boxing, ballet dancers and bar work. Again, however, we only see glimpses of stories that may or may not be true.
The main emotion I felt while reading this book was a sort of subdued sadness. Mourning, loss and broken hearts punctuate it from the very beginning, and when an unspeakable tragedy ruptures the family unit with scars both physical and mental, this sadness seems to settle over them all. Raised on sanitised fairy tales with happy endings, and a sea that takes only your confessions and never your lives, these are children to whom sorrow is an idea that has not occurred right up until it tears their world apart irreparably. They have two choices: run from it, or try to live with it, and neither can make the hurt go away.
I enjoyed the elements of magic realism, and the nods to the unhappy women of folklore and fairy tales – women who had to be trapped in order to stay, who were ‘loved’ so much they were kidnapped, bought and sold, of missing children and loves that last a lifetime or burn bright and quickly like candle flames. With its endless winding guest houses, underground dwellings and the constant call to return to the sea, The Gloaming is a novel punctuated with fairy tale elements whilst also maintaining the steadfast realism of a family falling apart. However I felt something about this book was absent. Part of this was admittedly intentional, with the open ended ‘perhaps they were happy’ style plot within which very little is tied up, as in life. I think I went into it expecting it to be a very different book to what it turned out to be, more The Little Mermaid and less Oh god why is everybody so sad.
The novel focuses on Mara, physically and mentally scarred, living in a house that falls apart as quickly as it is fixed and reading book after book of deaths so she can turn back to the first page and have them all live again. Her life seems to be an eternal repetition of the same, sorrowful day until she meets the mysterious Pearl – a girl who has travelled the world performing, and who draws Mara into her life with promises of escape from the island and tales of love and adventure. In an island where nothing changes, she is something new, so of course falling in love with her is the most natural thing Mara could do. Of course this is a novel full of many forms of love, and not all of them are the same, and not all of them are happy forever. Or are they? I suppose that is the point. If we don’t know the ending, it can be whatever we want it to be. Personally, I’d like to think they were happy, but that’s because I’m tired of the media carousel of sad lesbians.
None of the characters were hugely likeable 100% of the time – but again I sense this is sort of the point. Grief can be selfish, or lonely, or full of rage and irritability, progress and the inability to move. These characters experience their own kinds of grief, and they separate themselves from the world to experience it. Islay runs away to travel a world we don’t see, Signe tries to create the perfect home and fix what was broken, Peter tries to maintain the world there was before it felt apart and Mara, seeing nothing but her scars in the mirror, wants desperately to be someone else. This is, most of all, a lonely book, a colourful world muted by isolation.
Overall it was a book I struggled to fully mesh with, and perhaps that’s why I don’t really know what to make of it. I felt that for me, it was missing something. Perhaps I should reread it in future and see if the experience changes now I know what to expect. It’s still a beautifully written book, with a lesbian relationship that feels neither forced nor sensationalised, and just the right amount of magic to make you want more from the world its set in – it just left me with one unanswered question too many.

A copy of The Gloaming was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Overall rating: 📖📖📖📖 4 books out of 5

I was a fan of The Gracekeepers, but think I actually preferred this story as I felt it was better structured and felt more emotional and easier to connect with. But I will be going back to read The Gracekeepers now this story is fresh in my mind as the prequel.

The cover is stunning, and the story is full of magical realism, beautifully written and is one of those books you can just pick up and lose yourself in! And that is exactly what I did!

Signe and Peter are the parents to 3 children - Mara, Islay and Bee - and live on the Island knowing they will die there, no matter how hard they try to get away. The 3 children are all so different and we see their stories unfold - there is a lot of sadness in the family and this is exquisitely imagined by the author and helps you to connect with the family more as they face the demons that loss brings to their lives and also allow new experiences to change their outlooks and perceptions of the world around them.

The pace of the story played a big part in my enjoyment - things never felt rushed, but were allowed to evolve in a more realistic way and especially the way it allowed flashbacks to various memorable events in all their lives play out on the page and just made me want more from this unorthodox family!

beautiful!

Logan has a very lyrical and distinctive writing style and after reading her collection; A Portable Shelter I was very excited to read this. Once again Logan has created a fantastical world full of intriguing characters and poetic language.

This is a beautiful novel, sad in parts, but a lovely story full of myths, folk tales and magic realism. Mara's life on a remote Scottish island is haunted by the death of a sibling, taken by the ocean, and also her parents slow deterioration following the loss. When Pearl arrives in Mara's life, things start looking up for her, but Pearl is mysterious and also has a link to the ocean and nature.

3.5 stars

I wish Netgalley had made it very clear that this was a prequel to The Gracekeepers as I think the story would have had an even deeper meaning for me had I read that book first.

But this story had its own merits and charm. The writing was at times mesmerising making you feel like you are coming up for air when you stop reading

The story is not permeated by magical realism except for one little detail. Once a person reaches a certain age they slowly turn to stone, finally make their painfully slow way up the cliffs surrounded by their family and friends, and right at the last moment take their place among the statues. I thought the idea of this type of departure was beautifully depicted. The phenomenon was never explained, it felt like just a part of life on this island.

The main character is Mara, she lives with her sister Islay and brother Bee in an old ramshackle house with their parents.

Growing up the island is a treasure-trove of discovery and charm but after the family suffers a devastating loss they start to fracturing. Islay leaves the island and Mara draws into herself until she is almost invisible. That is until Pearl arrives, she is the spark that brings life back into Mara’s eyes (and bed).

This is a tale about the effect of loss, but it is also about the magical pull of love, family and roots.

An easy recommendation