by Carly Holmes
SYNOPSIS
Annie surrendered her fantasy of travelling the world, settled instead for marrying her beloved Peter and becoming a mother.
When her two youngest daughters – her Crow Face and her Doll Face – perform a seemingly impossible act of levitation at a family picnic, Annie realises that they are truly extraordinary. Magical. And it’s her role to protect them. With growing paranoia and a bitter fatalism, she spirits her daughters away from their home and the wreck of her marriage. But she commits a terrible, unthinkable, unmotherly act on the way.
Crow Face, Doll Face is an uncanny, brooding tale of domestic disturbances, dysfunctional families, flawed mothers, and unfulfilled dreams.
REVIEW
When Annie met her future husband Peter, it gradually dawned on her that she would have to forget her dream of travelling to exotic places and possibly setting up home abroad in the sunshine. For some people this would have been a deal-breaker, but actually, Annie grows to love domestic life and her new role as a mother. Her motherhood journey has not been easy though, fraught with fear and what looks to be quite a severe postnatal episode, she is grateful to have come out the other side with four wonderful children.
The problem is that this blissful family life is about to be shaken to the core. It has been becoming clearer that her two youngest daughters - Crow Face and Doll Face - are different to her two older children. They look nothing like Annie or her husband, they have their own unusual bond and then one day at a family picnic, they all witness Leila levitate and after this act, their family unit begins to unravel.
I first discovered Carly Holmes when I read her short story 'Dodger' from the Darkness Beckons Anthology. I immediately fell in love with her writing style and I just knew that this book would be brilliant. Crow Face, Doll Face is unlike any other book I've read. The writing is so haunting, it completely mesmerises you as you read and you end up so totally involved in the story that it's difficult to come back to reality when you've finish reading.
The events in the story can be so mundane but so captivating at the same time. The author uses these scenes of domesticity to lull you into a false sense of security before you are hit with a devastating realisation about something or a sentence or paragraph that is so honest and raw that it stops you in your tracks. I don't want to give too much away about the story but there was one scene where Annie is struggling to bond with her new baby so she insists on wearing gloves when she touches her so that the negative feelings she's having don't spread to the baby - that in particular will stay with me for a long time. The book is full of moments like that, when you suddenly get a glimpse into what is really going on, how much Annie is struggling and how much she has given up for others, and these moments are described so beautifully and in such an inventive way.
Crow Face, Doll Face is a devastating exploration of the darker side of motherhood and family and a book that I hope many more people get a chance to read
Thanks to Random Things Tours - @RandomTTours, Carly Holmes and Honno Press - @gwasghonnopress for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Honno Press Genre: Contemporary Fiction
ISBN: 978-1912905829
Pages: 256pp
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