I was convinced I was going to love this book, but alas I felt there was something missing and I could never put my finger on exactly what. I lent it to my mum and she had the same reaction. OK, not brilliant.

An elderly woman sees a sign she has been awaiting and prepares to take her last walk, across the snowy marshes and into the sea. She imagines the freezing water creeping up her legs, planning how she will use her walking stick, loading her pockets with stones from the garden wall. And then she realises she has the wrong day, it is New Year’s Eve tomorrow, not today and she is a day too early. When a stranger appears, her plans are disrupted and the past must be faced. ‘Call of the Curlew’ by Elizabeth Brooks has the most fantastic sense of place. It is a haunting, atmospheric read that I didn’t want to put down. Tollbury Marsh is an ever-present character in the story too, quiet, empty, natural and ‘where a body could sink under that earth, slowly and inexorably, like an insect in a pot of glue.’
Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds, a house on the edge of the marshes, as a newly adopted orphan when she is ten. It is New Year’s Eve 1939. Her new parents, Clem and Lorna, seem ill at ease together and Virginia watches them from the banisters, trying to understand the adult tension which dominates the house. When a neighbour visits, Virginia takes an instant dislike to the way Max Deering’s eyes linger on her and this first impression of him does not improve as the weeks pass. The catalyst for change comes when a German fighter plane crashes on the marshes and Clem sets out with rope and torch to help. The wartime story is spliced with Virginia in 2015, her plans to wade into the marshes on hold. Slowly the mystery is unveiled; of what happened in the war that left such a lasting mark on Virginia so many decades later.
This is the first novel by Brooks that I have read. She writes with a poetic description that is engaging, particularly when describing the marshes and the natural world. ‘The stars were starting to poke through the sky, like silver pins through lilac silk.’ But she also writes with an eye to mystery and is adept at tantalising the reader. This is not a thriller, I hesitate to call it a mystery because the pacing is not intense. Rather this is an elegiac read about a delicate new family in wartime facing situations that would split apart the strongest of people.
Excellent.
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When Virginia is adopted by a young couple during the war, she has high hopes that her life will improve. She moves to Salt Winds, on the marshes and loves the peace and tranquility of the coast. She forms a close bond with her adoptive father, Clem, although her new mother is aloof. And their neighbour, Mr Deering seems to have a menacing hold over her new parents.
As an octogenarian, looking back over the many years spent at Salt Winds, Virginia uncovers the secrets of the place and the horrible penance she feels she must pay.
This is an exquisite book, told by a beautifully empathetic storyteller. One of a kind.

December 1939 and Virginia, an orphan aged 10, is adopted by Clem & Lorna Wrathmell. She is taken to their large house, Salt Winds, on the margins of Tollbury Marsh in the east of England. Clem is a nature writer, while Lorna is a book illustrator and frustrated artist. From her very first night in her new home, it is clear to Virginia that there are tensions between her new parents – these seem to be primarily caused by the attentions of a sleek local businessman Max Deering, who is clearly attracted to Lorna and is a widower. He is portrayed as a sort of pantomime villain, though his behaviour towards Virginia is much more sinister than the conventional stuff of essentially harmless moustache-twirling melodrama. When the War finally comes to the isolated marshlands around Salt Winds, Virginia’s new life is turned upside down and she is forced to confront some terrible challenges to her young life.
Interspersed with the sorry tale is the narrative of an aged and infirm Virginia living alone in her mid-eighties in Salt Winds at the end of 2015, looking back at those events of over seventy years ago. An unexpected arrival of a female teenager, Sophie, upsets her plans, but then once Virginia learns who Sophie is links neatly with the past.
There is a mood of L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between in this delightful tale, a gently elegiac narrative of times long past. It is a gripping and moving story, with superbly delineated characters, excellent dialogue and descriptions. In some areas, the events of the story stretch credibility, but after all this is a novel and it should be given the wider plaudits this beautiful tale deserves.

Virginia is adopted by Clem & Lorna Wrathmell in the early 1940s when she is 10 years old. They live on the edge of a marsh, which Clem insists Virginia should never cross.

The story flicks between 1940/1 and 2015, following Virginia as she recalls her childhood and in the now, finding a curlew skull on her doorstep, so she knows its time to leave her family home.

Whilst it was a pleasant story and an easy read, it didn't over excite me in its overall story. Its set in World War Two and briefly touches on it with a train being bombed and a German war plane crashing on the marsh.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

Somehow it doesn’t seem quite right that I’ve been reading Call of the Curlew sitting in my garden in the bright sunshine. The atmosphere of the book is such that it seems more suited to misty autumn nights, with the rain lashing down outside and the wind rattling the window panes. Throw in some creaking floorboards, some footsteps in the attic and your reading experience would be complete.

Told in chapters that alternate between 2015 and the early years of the Second World War, Call of the Curlew has a haunting, mysterious quality. Salt Winds, the old house at which orphan Virginia arrives in 1939 to join her adoptive parents, Lorna and Clem, occupies an isolated position on the marshes at the end of a long lane.

The author really gets inside the mind of ten-year old Virginia. Initially, she’s concerned that she might be a disappointment to Lorna and Clem and be sent back to the orphanage (although she doesn’t think they do sale and return). Virginia doesn’t understand everything she sees and hears in the house but she’s sensitive to the tension she detects between Lorna and Clem. ‘Virginia liked it when they discussed everyday things: pots of tea and food prices and what needed doing in the garden. It made them sound peaceful and close. Anything bigger or more personal and they were on edge, like a couple of cats.’ Underlying everything, there’s an air of mystery, of secrets and things that can’t be spoken about.

Virginia also has a child’s literal interpretation of Clem’s warnings about the perils of setting foot on the marsh and the dangers that wait because of the shifting tides. Virginia forms a touching relationship with Clem who seems better able to communicate with a child than Lorna. Virginia’s relationship with Lorna is strained; Lorna always remains slightly distant and less openly affectionate. Virginia has also acquired an acute sense of how to deal with certain situations: ‘Shutting up was almost always a clever move, she’d discovered, not just with Clem but with everyone. People rarely object to a quiet child.’

From the very first time, Max Deering, a childhood friend of Clem, visits Salt Winds, ten-year old Virginia takes an instinctive dislike to him, sensing something unsettling about him she can’t put into words. Her view of Max can’t help but affect the reader’s view of him, especially as the manner of his arrivals at the house conjured up thoughts for me of Mrs Danvers gliding in and out of shot in Hitchcock’s film version of Rebecca. Virginia muses: ‘It was difficult to explain the car’s pull on her imagination – not without sounding silly – but there was something about its predatory grace that made it seem like a living thing. The lane from Tollbury Point to Salt Winds was pitted with holes and bumps, but Mr Deering’s Austin 12 never seemed to mind. It just glided forwards, silent and slow, the way a shark glides over the ocean floor.’

I loved the author’s evocative, imaginative descriptions and eye for the smallest details when depicting a scene. For example, as Virginia makes meticulous plans in response to what she believes is the sign she’s been waiting for, ‘She pictures the house, room by room, and plots the route of her farewell tour, mentally circling certain parts and crossing others out.’ Don’t you just love the idea of the ‘farewell tour’. Or this description of the kitchen table: ‘The old tabletop rolled between them like a parchment map, grainy with longitude lines and knotty islands and uncharted territories.’ I can almost feel that under my fingers.

As the book progresses, it becomes apparent that some sort of tragedy occurred at Salt Winds which has haunted Virginia for the rest of her life and for which she feels, justifiably or not, responsible and for which she is convinced she will someday be called to make amends. The enjoyment for the reader is finding out exactly the nature of the tragic event and the consequences that follow.

I thought the book was fabulous. To my mind, in Call of the Curlew, Elizabeth Brooks gives Susan Hill (think The Woman in Black) and Sarah Waters (think The Little Stranger) a run for their money when it comes to creating a creepy, unsettling atmosphere. I was also reminded at times of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and there is no higher praise in my book (pardon the pun).

This haunting and atmospheric book is set in a fabulously dramatic and brooding location which is painted in beautifully descriptive prose by the author. Saltwinds is an old house set on the edge of Tollbury Marsh a vast silent landscape of seeping water and sucking sands which come and go with the tides, populated with wading birds it’s nevertheless not a place to go walking, its eerie beauty belies the deadly nature of the swampy marshland.

Not the ideal spot you might think for a young orphan girl to be brought to live. But eleven year old Virginia considers herself fortunate to have been chosen by the childless couple who live at Saltwinds, for amidst the outbreak of world war 2 and the uncertainty in the air, she has been adopted and found her forever home at the edge of this Marshland which both fascinates and terrifies her.

Quite a lot scares her, not least whether her new parents will like her!

As the book begins she is taken of foot along the path beside the marsh by her new adoptive Father towards her new home, and won over by the rather dour man who hands her sweets from his pocket. But her new Mother Lorna seems constantly distracted and is a difficult women for the lonely little girl to love. But Virginia has a lot of love to give and this lonely place proves very insular and isolated making growing up difficult and confusing for her. My emotions were really tugged for this confused young girl.

The book takes us back and forth in time from Virginia’s childhood and upbringing to the present when she still resides at Saltwinds as lonely and old lady at 86 as she was as a child of eleven. But time has passed and she knows tonight is the time she is due to die, so, as she begins to make plans for her own demise, (should she leave a farewell note? Find someone to feed her cat) the past begins to throw up its own reminders of things she believed buried beneath the shifting sands of time and of the terrible marsh beyond the windows. Why has she lived all these years under a terrible pall of guilt? The dual time aspect creates a real sense of mystery and intrigue.

Back in the past, terrible events, involving a German pilot who crashes into the marsh is about to shatter her newly built family, fractured though it already seems, it is about to completely break.

As Virginia tries to come to terms with loss and being left behind with the mother she remains detached from, the pompous and sinister Max Deering, one of their closest neighbours and his family become embroiled in their lives and a secret she has promised to keep hidden threatens to be revealed and leave nothing the same ever again.

The writing is superb, it has a slightly misty, murky feel just like the marsh which surrounds us as we read it, nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems …. see that nice clear path across the Marsh – DON’T step on it, it will swallow you up!

The book is very atmospheric, the storyline creepy and sinister with a gentle tension which builds so subtly you are hardly aware your jaw is tightly clenched as you read it. It’s one of those books where you are lulled into almost believing not much is going on, until you look back after you read it and think - Oh my, that was something else!

In some ways this book reminded me of the wonderful modern classic novel – The Book Thief (not least of all the fat tear which wound its way down my cheek as I drew a gasping breath at the end) tempered with a hint of Daphne du Maurier.

This sublime book is perfect for anyone who enjoys a historical setting subtle mysteries and the slight other-worldly misty memory feel you get when we slip back and forth in time inside someone else’s memories.
Loved it.

This is a beautifully written, understated book which evokes the dark, sinister atmosphere of war, the bleak salt marshes and strange adult behaviour. The tale alternates between present day and 1945 and I have to say I much preferred the war-time setting. I was a little confused by the present day, not sure why we met the young girl, descendant of Max Deering. However, I loved the overall telling of the tale where we see things from 11 year old Virginia's view-point and I also enjoyed the descriptions of nature and the curlew itself.

There’s nothing I like better than a dual timeline mystery and Call Of The Curlew is definitely one of the best I have read.

The book is very atmospheric with the descriptions of the bleak, eerie marshes adding to the feeling that anything could happen. The bleakness seems to creep in side the house and affect the people living there, making them act very strangely at times.

The reader is aware almost from the start that something is not quite right with the house and the situation but is largely kept in the dark about what it might be. The facts are slowly and tantalisingly revealed as the story unfolds in a way that is very well done by the author. I was very intrigued and wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen.

The characters are very well created and developed well throughout the book. I’m not sure if I particularly warmed to any of them though I did feel sorry for them and the situation they find themselves in. Virginia was an interesting character very astute and capable one moment but very childlike at other times, even when she’s an 85 year old. She obviously adored Clem which was very touching to see and her pain over what happened is very palpable, I did really feel for her then. Max Deering is a great characters as he is very unlikeable and smarmy at times. I wanted him to get his comeuppance and not get the ending he obviously wanted.

This is Elizabeth Brooks’s debut book and I really can’t wait to read more from her in the future. If you like atmospheric, dual timeline mysteries with some great characters you’ll love this book. I felt this book was similar in style to The Taxidermist by Kate Mosse so if you liked that book I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Hannah Bright for my copy this book. This is definitely going on my keep forever shelf!

I really enjoyed this mystery novel set in 1939 and 2015. It flicks between the two time periods but it's easy to follow.
Recommended holiday read if you want something to get lost in.

Set on the isolated saltmarshes during WWII, this is an atmospheric, gothic style mystery novel. Virginia is 10 when Clem & Lorna Wrathmell collect her from the orphanage. It doesn't take her long to feel the undercurrents between Clem and Lorna as well as those with Max Deering. Widower Max owns the manor and likes to feel that he owns other things besides. One New Year's Eve a German bomber comes down out on the marshes and Clem goes out to rescue the pilot. Life is never the same again for Virginia.

This is one of those books set in two time periods - the present day where we meet Virginia as an old lady still living at Salt Winds House on the saltmarshes. The other follows Virginia from her first trip from the orphanage to her new home. The author made good use of the dual time periods with each story unfolding and revealling things which are relevant to the other. Thankfully the author has given us good chunks of text in each thread before reverting to the other. Each chunk is clearly defined and there is no confusion.

The author makes good use of language in describing the atmosphere caused by both the people involved and the surrounding saltmarshes. I could clearly feel the underlying tension in the house as young Virginia starts to understand the complexities of adult relationships. There is much that is not explained in detail but hinted and alluded to so that each reader can come to their own conclusions.

This is not a book which is neatly tied up at the end. Not everything is explained and the reader is left with several things that require their own interpretations. Different readers could interpret things in very different ways.

I enjoyed this book very much.I would certainly look for other books by this author.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.