Rosy Thornton

Rosy Thornton’s debut short story collection, Sandlands, is a collection of sixteen stories, each of which is set in Suffolk, an English county bordering the North Sea. The county is a low-lying one with a few hills, extensive wetlands, and a long coastline, and Thornton uses many of its physical features as key elements of her stories. Too, the county is filled with historical significance, and almost all of the sixteen stories link the county’s historic past with its present.

I have long admired short story writers with the ability to construct believable little worlds and populate those worlds with complex characters, all within the limited number of pages and words they allow themselves. That process always reminds me a bit of working a complex puzzle of sorts, and Rosy Thornton managed to solve the puzzle more times than not in her Sandlands collection.

There are stories here of witches from centuries past who still have the power to kill, World War II soldiers who spend the duration of their war as POWs in Suffolk, ancient churches still being worshiped in today, and women walking the same paths that their mothers and grandmothers walked and biked decades earlier. There are stories of good ghosts, and stories of the scarier sort of ghost. Some of the stories are funny, some are very sad, and some are nostalgically heart-wrenching – such as the last story in the collection, “Mackerel,” in which an elderly grandmother eagerly awaits a visit from her young-adult granddaughter as she prepares the young woman’s favorite dinner.

As in any collection of short stories, it is only natural that I have my favorites, such as “Nightingale’s Return” in which an Italian man comes to England to see with his own eyes the farm on which his prisoner-of-war father was forced to work for much of World War II. Another is “Curlew Call,” the story of a young woman who decides to spend her gap year in service to an elderly wheelchair-bound woman who lives alone in an isolated house on the coast. When the old woman is hospitalized and the teenager finds herself living alone in the intimidating old house, she manages to reconstruct the old woman’s tragic past through old pictures and newspaper clippings. What she reveals is not at all what she, or the reader, expects.

Then there’s my favorite story of all, “The Watcher of Souls,” featuring the barn owl that serves as the inspiration for the book’s cover photo. In this one, a woman is able to track an owl she encounters on her morning walks back to its nest and begins to explore the detritus at the base of the owl’s nesting tree. Expecting to find nothing but the tiny remains of the owl’s meals, she is surprised to find instead a bundle of letters that have been hidden there for decades. But what she finds next turns into the biggest surprise – and shock - of all.

Sandlands is a fine collection of highly atmospheric stories that reflect on how closely the modern world is still tied to the generations that preceded it. It is about family and reminds that we are who we are because of those who came before us and prepared the way. Readers with a fondness for well-constructed, more literary short stories are going to enjoy and appreciate Rosy Thornton’s Sandlands.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)… (mer)

Thank you to Rosy Thornton for the review copy.

Sandlands is a gorgeous collection of short stories, rooted in the Suffolk countryside, among its people, villages and wildlife. These stories and the images they evoke will live and linger long in my mind. A white doe, appearing suddenly in the dark woods, blue winged butterflies, a barn owl watching over a decades old Oxo tin of love letters, bell ringers, the spirits which exist within a four-hundred-year old house. Rosy Thornton celebrates the flora and fauna of the county she must dearly love, the stories link subtly by landscape, and by the past and present which weaves in and out of these wonderful stories.

The collection opens with The White Doe, in which the appearance of an animal shrouded in folklore, is observed with reverence by Fran. Having lost her mother six months earlier, the woman whom once she would have shared her sightings, Fran reflects on their relationship, and their differing experiences of motherhood.

“There were more sightings after the first. Several times she glimpsed the herd in the woods, away to the left of the path. Twice they moved almost in step with Fran but along a parallel ride, separated from her by a band of silver birches; on another morning they had gathered to graze in a small open area, cleared in the autumn by volunteer coppicers. Always it was the white doe that was visible before her sisters, whose coats bore the same muted grey-brown hues as the winter woodland.”
(from The White Doe)

owlI would be hard pressed to choose just one favourite story, but The Watcher of Souls would certainly be a contender. Rebecca is living alone now since her husband’s death, walks frequently in the woods near her home. She has become aware of a feeling of being watched – an owl, a barn owl, camouflaged by its surroundings, appears to be watching. Rebecca seems drawn to the owl and the part of the wood it watches over. Rebecca takes to visiting the same spot every day, looking out for her owl. One day she finds an old Oxo tin of letters, which she is convinced is being watched over by the owl, Rebecca is captivated by the story the letters reveal.

Several stories take us into the past, people from the present finding and feeling echoes in the past. There is a slight supernatural element to one of two stories, which remind us how the past and present are so inextricably linked. In Nightingale’s Returns, Flavio travels from his home in Italy to visit Nightingale Farm, where seventy years earlier his father worked during the war. His father Salvatore, a farmer back home, had slipped easily and comfortably into the rhythm of agricultural life in England during those years, and after had never forgotten the farm or the nightingales that had given the farm its name. While the stories of three generations of women are explored in All the Flowers Gone, as Poppy a botanist goes in search of a rare flower on the side of an air base.

“Nightingale Farm the place was called, and his father said they were really there, back in those days, the birds that gave the place its name. Flavio remembered hearing nightingales at his grandparent’s house at San Cesario in the countryside of Emilia-Romagna – hearing them but never seeing one. They were anonymous little brown birds according to Papi, plain as Franciscan fustian, with a drabness quite at odds with the extravagance of their song, and they kept t the densest thickets, nesting deep in the heart of gorse or underscrub. There was, besides, some quality about their song which made its source and direction impossible to gauge.”
(from Nightingale’s Return)

The Witch Bottle is a wonderfully atmospheric story, looking back to the days of witch trials and burnings. A builder working on Kathy’s four-hundred-year old cottage finds a witch bottle while digging up the inglenook. A story of love, obsession and retribution, as Kathy draws closer to builder Nick, the two discover more about the story of Patience Spall a girl accused of murder by witchcraft in the seventeenth century. Curlew call the penultimate story in the collection, brings us back to the present. A young girl, spends her gap year, living as a companion to an elderly disabled woman. A keen naturalist, it is the chance of a year in a county of sand lands, reed beds and the spectacular wildlife that exist there, that drew her to such an old fashioned sounding occupation. Instantly charmed by the curlew call she can hear from her room, she is made welcome by her eccentric employer. In a series of emails to her mother, the story of her employer’s life is gradually revealed.

In other stories, we see ghosts meet bell ringers, the various patrons of The Ship pub, butterfly collectors and Mr Napier, the inhabitant of High House, caring for a fox rescued from the floods, and a runner struggling with her impending motherhood.

I love short stories, I have said that before I know, lots of times, and this collection contains many elements I really love. Strong characters brought to life, within a stunning English landscape, the natural world, folklore, and the past and present weave together seamlessly.… (mer)