My first book by this author, and what a great experience it was! I am actually quite glad I didn’t remember what it was about and didn’t read the synopsis, because much of the novel, maybe even for half of it—it felt like—is about Mary, at a young age. Her hopes and ambitions and sketching the 19th century, when arranged marriages and bloodlines were king, and the stigma against the working poor was codified in the entire population of Irish stock, which she comes from.

It transitions into quite a sweeping, historical tale though, as it traces the relationship between her and her husband, and can be nonlinear, and even a bit mysterious with the narrator of the story, who addresses the reader directly and is clearly not Mary, but we don’t know of her significance until much later on. It becomes a generational tale, reminding me of Downton Abbey, at times, where it’s the last of the aristocrats and the changing of the country, doing away with old notions and old ways of life, and old ways of thinking, too.

Folklore also permeates to the bone, the narrator of the story; nature playing a significant role in the land of Fayne, and a counterpoint to the unnatural city and ways in which people are treated and how food transitions into how we know it today. The “old ways” at Fayne are still practiced, and it is in many ways a sanctuary from the changing of time that takes place outside of it.

At a macro plot level, id describe this book as where a lot happens, but at a very slow pace. It’s great at situating time and place and setting scenes. The prose are accessible but erudite, fitting the time period—language changing along with the generations. It’s something to sink into, which will be something some readers enjoy, others, looking for the plot will probably find it middling, on that front. If you read for character work, you’ll find a lot to love, however.

Their intersections with all revenant social constructs today and topical issues, including queerness becoming a larger theme than I had expected, situates this as fantastic historical fiction. It does everything I want from the genre: Educating me on the time period and placing me there, while also showing how that life is relevant to my own, now. The more things change, the more things stay the same, essentially. I will certainly go on to read more from this author in the future.