THE SEVEN SKINS OF ESTHER WILDING, making art out of grief

THE SEVEN SKINS OF ESTHER WILDING
HOLLY RINGLAND
House of Anansi Press
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A haunting, magical novel about joy, grief, courage and transformation from the international bestselling author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.

‘On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.’

The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita/Tasmania, to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body. The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Pretty, pretty chapter-opens and lovely sentences to console and condole the woman in a time of loss, particularly effective if the loss is a much loved sister.

Doesn't sound like me, does it? It's not me, I'm not the target audience. It's not me, my sisters aren't close this way, either to me or to each other. It's not like I'm someone particularly sentimental...but many, many are, and I think the fact that I read many, many, many pages of this book speaks loudly of its merits.

Has one of your giftees lost a sister, or (worse) a friend as close as a sister? Is there a abig grieving hole in your life for someone you shared a big part of your life with? These "skins" or fables (re)enacted in search of an involuntarily severed connaction with a fellow woman might offer some balm for the wound.


Not incidentally, the tales offer some very useful and constuctive perspective on loss. See below.


This is a terrific book, since it kept me reading. I recommend it happily.