The Brides of Rollrock Island

Over the generations, the reputation of Rollrock Island has spread on the mainland: ‘that mad isle’ with ‘rude red men’ and ‘dark silk-haired women’ which eventually becomes ‘an island of nothing but men’. Behind this strangeness is the witch, Misskaella, who spends her early life as ‘an unhappy pudding’ with a ‘thick-set, unpromising shape’. Derided by the other islanders, she consorts with the seals and acquires the gift of obtaining seal-brides for the men of the island. Within the seals’ joints, parts of the human system appear as buds which come together ‘to make a woman within a seal’. The brides, who are of great beauty, rear a generation of dark-haired sons (the girls don’t survive) – and then, in great unhappiness away from the sea, kill themselves. Meanwhile, Misskaella has grown rich on the proceeds, yet has become a ‘dreadful woman, so ugly and so angry’, wearing ‘dark rags (which) looked as if they had grown out of her’. At the end, the men are taking mainland wives, ‘breeding out the stain of the seal-wives as quickly as they can’.

The myth of the selkie (half-human, half-seal) featured previously in John Sayles’s 1994 film, The Secret of Roan Inish, set off the coast of Ireland (although the source-novel was set in Scotland). Rollrock’s location is left vague, but Lanagan writes with a charming Celtic lilt which allows for some remarkable descriptions – ‘the sea was grey with white dabs of temper all over it’. Some of the most lyrical passages occur when explaining the lure of the seal-brides. One has a smell that ‘promised cleansing, and horizons, and sky, a flying-out from this, a floating-out, an altogether larger, fresher way of living than we’d so far been  cramped up in’. In contrast, one boy who has experienced life as a seal tells us on his return to dry land that ‘it is all feeling and caring, and it makes me so tired’.

This literally enchanting book tells a story of mythical, even biblical, proportions, concerning isolated people living with the elements. It is divided into seven first-person narratives (including one by the young Misskaella herself) which develop the story, often quite obliquely. For instance, we learn about Misskaella’s life in middle age as part of an incident arising in one of the other narratives. Accounts of the limited life on Rollrock are interspersed with passages of poetic intensity which often incorporate descriptions of surprising frankness. Underlying the apparent simplicity there are primordial depths, and the book will probably be best appreciated by those of 14 and over.