BRAXTON-SMITH, Ananda

Neen Marrey is a heishan--in Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, neither girl nor woman, but somewhere in between. And as the relentless sun beats down on her and her aunt during this summer of in-between growth on their tiny island, Neen wants answers. Gossips say that her father drowned and her mother was a merrow, or mermaid, who returned to the sea, but practical-minded Auntie Ushag will have none of it. As Neen scavenges among the sea-wrack (and the local folklore), boring into the shifting sands and rock caves as never before, she gets glimpses of an amazing truth, answers that will change her aunt and herself forever. The forcefulness and musicality of Braxton-Smith's prose seems born from the very waters of her setting--the Irish Sea, at a time when Norsemen still roamed and raided; when selkies, merrows, and krakens were considered to be real. Neen's forthrightness, her precise, pungent way with words ("[The sun] had no pity, and under its rays all the dead of last night's great tide had shriveled to black guts and silvery-fine fish leather. The stink of them seemed to walk abroad like it was its own creature"), intensifies our sense of the grumpy obsessiveness of her adolescent restlessness. A vital, surprising tale, in which description itself is full of passion. deirdre f. baker

Gossips on the Isle of Man say that Neen Marrey's father drowned and her mother was a merrow, or mermaid. Scavenging among the sea wrack (and the local folklore) for answers, Neen glimpses an amazing truth. Braxton-Smith's forceful, musical prose seems born from the very waters of her setting--the Irish Sea, at a time when Norsemen still raided and selkies, merrows, and krakens were considered to be real. Glos.