CULTURE CLUB
Book Club CAMBRIDGE EDITION SOAK UP THE SUN WITH A PAGE-TURNER: THIS MONTH’S OFFERINGS RANGE FROM A BEWITCHING ROMANCE TO A COOKBOOK FULL OF HEART
WORDS BY CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS
THE SEAWOMEN BY CHLOE TIMMS This bewitchingly sinister gothic
romance is set on Eden Isle, a distant community isolated from the world. Young Esta lives on the island with her pious grandmother, in constant fear of transgressing the barbaric, misogynistic rules that dictate the inhabitants’ lives. Her mother and father mysteriously disappeared the same night as the fire that burned their family home to the ground and scarred three-year-old Esta’s face – but precisely what caused the blaze is just one of the mysteries set up at the start of this haunting book. The women of Eden Isle live in constant terror, forbidden even to look at the sea in case they succumb to the lure of the Seawomen – semi-mythical merwomen alleged to have tried seducing the women and girls of the first settlers. Wives and daughters are tightly controlled by the Keepers and the Ministers, a ruling class of priests led by the all-powerful Father Jessop – as well as the anonymous Eldermothers, who help to carry out punishments, prepare women for marriage and decide when their ‘motheryear’ will start. During this appointed 12 months, a new wife must bear a child or, presumed barren, face ‘untethering’: the barbaric witch-trial- THE WOMEN OF EDEN ISLE LIVE IN TERROR
esque ritual with which this brilliantly imaginative novel begins. A childless wife is sent back to the Seawomen by being bound, drugged and inevitably drowned in an old boat, pushed out to sea by her husband, rendered free to marry again. As Esta grows, so does her curiosity for the Otherlands, and her sense of unease with the constricting rules that dominate her very existence. But is testing her boundaries worth drawing the wrath of the Ministers, or worse – the Seawomen? Did she really see a silvery face flash beneath the shallow waters? With splashes of The Handmaid’s Tale and the isolated, quasi-religious communities in the films Midsommar and The Village , this is a book you can truly submerge yourself in: so take a breath and dive beneath the waves…
26 JUNE 2022 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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