Usually when I pick up a book about missing children and frantic mothers, it falls in my preferred genre of domestic suspense. But in her debut novel, The Fisherman’s Gift, Julia R. Kelly proves that a common plot can be the basis of a story in any genre.
Closer to literary fiction than suspense or fantasy, The Fisherman’s Gift takes place in an isolated Scottish fishing village in 1900. After a storm, a young boy washes onto the beach, unable to speak and resembling Dorothy’s son, who disappeared on the same beach years ago. After Dorothy agrees to take in the boy until his parents can be located, strange coincidences begin to happen.
With the language and rhythms of a fairy tale, the novel moves between past and present as readers see how Dorothy first came to the village and was ostracized by the women there; her doomed flirtation with the fisherman Joseph; her troubled marriage and motherhood. The book is not a fantasy about a child who somehow comes back to the scene of his disappearance. The spine of the story is Dorothy’s isolation as she struggles to fit into a village where she’s judged for being more educated than the populace. At the same time, Kelly gives us the perspective of some of the women doing the judging. Theirs are tough lives, with marriage the only option and a bad match a lifetime mistake. The story’s prose is poetic, and the descriptions of the storm-beaten wintry landscape are vivid.
The Fisherman’s Gift is not a good choice if you’re looking for suspense or fantasy. But if you enjoyed A Light Between Oceans or you appreciate the small stories in the lives of Elizabeth Strout’s characters, you’ll find this novel compelling.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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