FORMAT: HARDBACK / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal. – Paulo Coelho.
Beth Cartwright’s debut novel Feathertide is a mesmeric coming of age story bursting with magical locations and extraordinary characters. Maréa is a wondrous protagonist born to a human mother and a bird-like father. This hybrid child hides her true self like the feathers she is scared to expose, or more precisely forced to hide. As she grows into a woman, Maréa feels the pull of her estranged father tickling in the downy feathers on her back. She realises to find herself she must first find him. When she turns eighteen, she leaves the comfort of anonymity and sails across the long waters to the City of Murmurs, a collection of islands connected by bridges and enchanting inhabitants.
There she discovers love, loss, heartbreak, and the beginnings of herself. These self-discoveries are latticed with beautiful writing. But it’s not all poetic prose and succulent language. There is a deep human story in here about difference and acceptance. Mermaids that transform to human only to long for the sea. Bird people who abhor their feathers only to realise freedom is within their flight. The choice of love that can only bring pain in the end.
Fear of growing and being trapped are woven through this story. From ominous freakshow boats that may capture those who appear different. To holding onto the past like a hot coal which burns with each touch. Though Maréa has mentors, both in her childhood home and in her new life, neither knowledge taught through books as a child or magic bestowed as a woman from these people can truly guide her. She must literally decide if she wants to spread her wings.
Feathertide sometimes swirls like the jars of healing mist the people of the islands carry with them. It promises revelations with each page turn while floating new secrets before they are even exposed. You may get lost within these remarkable worlds that Cartwright has furnished in such imaginative detail. But the map is always a paragraph or two away and leads back to a beautiful story of growing, learning and love.
A highly accomplished debut and an author to watch.
