In Darkling Wood

After her younger brother Theo has a heart transplant, Alice is sent to stay with her unknown grandmother Nell at a house called Darkling Cottage.  She soon makes friends with a reclusive young girl called Flo, whom she meets in the woods which enclose the house.  She also starts at the local school and begins to make friends, but it is made difficult when it gets out that her grandmother is having the wood cut down.  Added to all of this is the growing sense that there is something strange and perhaps magical about the wood itself, but can Alice solve the mystery and end the estrangement between her father and grandmother.

This is a lovely book by one of our excellent new authors.  It is overall a serious book that covers a range of truly emotive issues.  Alice’s family has split up and her father now has a new partner and child, whilst Theo is facing a truly momentous challenge and her mother has to cope with all of this.  Even Nell, it seems, is hiding a major tragedy from years ago.  Intertwined with this modern day story we have a parallel sequence made up of letter sent by a young girl to her brother in 1918 and telling stories of how she has actually seen fairies in Darkling Wood.  This part of the story has been inspired by the stories of the Cottingly fairies that took the country by storm in 1919 and caught the interest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The overwhelming themes of this book are about love and friendship and the importance of family and caring for each other.  The characters are flawed and human, so that we can associate with their actions and thoughts.  As with real life, those of us on the outside can be objective about events whilst those directly involved have their reactions tempered by emotion.  It is a story that can be read at a variety of levels and will no doubt be of great help for families coping with major traumas, as well as being an extremely good read.