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Title: Song of the Selkies by Cathie Dunsford ISBN: 1-876756-09-8 Publisher: Spinifex Press Pub. Date: 11 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: 'Seriously disappointing
Comment: I guess you have to be a "fan" of Cathie Dunsford to know what you are getting into with this book. I bought it for my interst in Selkie Lore and found myself immersed in a long and cumbersome plot that was so thin that it had to be padded with liberal doses of cultural anthropology diatribes, excerpts from Frommer's Guide to Orkney, dining the Orkney diet and the ramblings of the pseudo-politically informed. A thin plot is always a quick read, but at times this felt as long as 'Gone With the Wind' or 'War and Peace.' Having purchased this book and paid for shipping and handling, I felt compelled to finish it, but writhed through the ordeal. I was bored by the characters and seriously disliked most of them. They were only tools to vocalize the comparative cultures and get the point across ... ad naseum... that all early/primitive sea-faring cultures basically had the same legends and lore. I call this "My People" syndrome. It goes back to films of the 1950's when the charcters, be they Indians, Mexicans, or other indigenous peoples, spoke in broken English and were always beginning their speeches with "My people..."
The selkie tale in this tome is brief enough to qualify as a short story. The lesbian love stories and the women "bonding" with the matriarchal society of early Orcadian women qualifies as torment.
There is an underlying tale of a selkie, her bonds to the sea and her former lover and their unknowing offspring. We go through page after page of plot development and this is the only "interesting" part to the book. Unfortunately, the final encounter where the child learns she is the child of a selkie and the woman she thought was her mother wasn't her mother and that her father who did not really drown when she was a child but had been transformed into a selkie and had just died for real is covered "off camera" and apparently takes place within the span of one page of text. Meanwhile, we are thrilled to miss the "tell all" disclosure so we can stand around the Stones of Stenness chanting at the sky with a group of women bonding with themselves and the women of the past.
A thin plot weighed down with women who take themselves much, much too seriously and take their lesbian love far, far too seriously. Even the talking seals were a bore as their dialogue was relentlessly supported by their eating habits.
There was one character I did like. A sea spoot spits into the face of one of the main characters. I held the same opinion!
Rating: 5
Summary: Selkie Love
Comment: . Readers of previous Cowrie books who might be frustrated with Cowrie's difficult and complicated loves of the past, can join in Cowrie's joy already on page fifty when she and Sasha kiss and enter an erotic dreamworld together. For Dunsford, the erotic is powerful , healing and other worldly. "In this state of grace, they are invincible, alive, fired with erotic energy, surging with sensual desire, body, mind and soul in perfect harmony. They could emerge from this state to compose a symphony or catch fish with their fins. They could talk to their ancestors, cause peace to fall upon the earth like gold dust from the heavens. In this state of grace, they can do anything. The choice is theirs." (169) A state of grace akin to Audre Lorde's definition of the erotic: "Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those apsects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives." (from "Uses of the Erotic" in Sister Outsider, N.Y. Crossing Press, 1984, p. 57) But Dunsford is not insensitive to the harmful powers of the erotic if it is so overpowering as to be used irresponsibly. The child Shelley watches "entranced and horrified at once" as she sees her father, Kelpie, with Morrigan: "humping on a blue dory...their barebums floating through the air in an almost hypnotic movement." (157) Despite the love that Morrigan and Kelpie have for each other being depicted as transcendent, it is clear that they hurt others badly by taking no heed of the social circumstances. The erotic is not a simple equation of good but one to be respected for its complexity.
Rating: 5
Summary: Song of The Selkies is Stunning
Comment: The novel begins at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where other artists, storytellers from around the world have come to share stories, legends, visions. Sasha from Iceland tells a haunting Inuit creation story of a girl rejected by her community, clamouring onto a lifeboat only to have her fingers slashed off. She drowns and her fingers become the sea animals and her body the great mother sea goddess. Indigenous storytellers compare creation stories and find commonalities: "Maybe it is in ancient storytelling that our shared roots can be found, where a common thread for the future lies, and all the stories require some form of sacrifice to achieve change." (195) After the festival, to continue the spirit, Ellen from the Orkney Islands invites some of the storytellers to join her in Orkney. The group that assembles are dynamic, political feminists: Cowrie from the previous Cowrie novels, a Maori activist and academic; Sasha from Iceland with Canadian Inuit roots; DK and Uretsete, indigenous women from Great Turtle Island (North America) and Cowrie's former students; and Monique, West Indian German. Only one woman, Camilla, who joins because she thinks she will be enjoying a free seaside B & B, doesn't seem to quite fit the group. She is English with a capital 'E', Christian and quite uptight. Then there is mysterious Ellen herself whose name suddenly changes to Morrigan as they arrive by ferry on the islands. Already on the way to Orkney we meet the seals Sandy and Fiona who keenly watch the 'Nofin' new arrivals. Morrigan has told them it is time to share the knowledge, that this day would arrive. But Sandy "is thinking about the consequences of too many Orcadian secrets being let loose on those who may not be ready to hear them.
Song of the Selkies, could easily be classified as a mystery à la Agatha Christie. Suspense is built up with classic attention to detail. First Cowrie discovers an oily sealskin in a trunk in one of Morrigan's derilict sheds. Then a body is hauled out of the water. Suddenly Morrigan disappears only to be found nights later in a smoky shed cooing to a wounded seal like a lover. Morrigan herself adds to the mystery: "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to bring these Nofins back to Orkney afterall?" (27) Nofins? Why is she talking like this? Short of donning tweed, Cowrie turns detective, determined to find out what is behind Morrigan's erratic behaviour. Also in good detective genre, some mysteries are solved along the way, just enough to bait us to solve the next one. Morrigan's nightly disappearances get explained: she fishes by night. But why is her boat still in the harbour when she is supposed to be out? And what about the seals that appear at crucial moments? Or the people who disappear, are 'taken by the sea' only to reappear in underwater scenes as selkie--seal folk?
Song of the Selkies is based on legends about seals that transition from human to seal and back again. Throughout the story, Cowrie and her the group of storytellers try to rationalize the legend. Perhaps Inuit fishers in sealskin kayaks made it to Orkney shores and were confused for beings half person, half seal. Some believe that selkies have the ability to shed their skins (a kayaker getting out of the boat?) and so lead a double life, on land or sea. "Folk around here are divided into the believers and non-believers" (36) Morrigan tells them. DK, who feels that anyone believing these stories must be "one sausage short of a barbecue," (55) is encouraged by Sasha to think more symbolically. Perhaps the shed skin, often stolen and hidden by men, represented women needing their freedom. (55) It is the number of different stories and their accumulation which slowly woos the reader into believing.
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Title: The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend by David Thomson, Seamus Heaney ISBN: 1582431841 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley ISBN: 0689844611 Publisher: Aladdin Library Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Selkie by Anne Cameron ISBN: 1550171526 Publisher: Harbour Pub Co Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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