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Book Reviewed by:
Norah Piehl
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In this breathless and beautifully crafted tale, twelve-year-old Neen Marrey must separate town gossip from town lore to learn the truth about her mother - and herself.
The people of Carrick Island have been whispering behind Neen's back ever since her father drowned and her mother disappeared. The townspeople say her mother was a merrow and has returned to the ocean. Neen, caught in her hazy new in-between self - not a child, but not quite grown up - can't help but wonder if the villagers are right. But if her mother was a merrow, then what does that make Neen?
A Note From The Author
Some of the words in this book are Manx, the talk of the people of Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. This language nearly died out but is now reviving. There are still only two thousand speakers of it in the world. The language of the Vikings is called Old Norse. The author would like to thank Ruarigh Dale of the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age at the University of Nottingham, U.K., for giving Ulf words.
CHAPTER ONE
Wrack
Aunti Ushag said I wasn't fit to be around. She said it was beyond her how a body could be so prickly and dark. She said it gave her the Screaming Purples just to look at me, always lying around looking sideways at her like a reptile on a hot rock. That if I couldn't raise myself on my hind legs and help, the least I could do was go away and leave her to it.
Honor Bright, all I said was I wished she'd open her mind a bit and that she didn't know all about everything. I said she couldn't prove that our Marrey great-grandmother ...
Although some readers may relish the folklore than infuses the novel, others may grow impatient with the slow pacing that results from the numerous stories within the main story. In the end, Neen’s narrative suggests that the stories that sustain us and give us hope, the ones that are most powerful and important, might not always be the ones that are objectively true: “If I didn’t make my own story, there were plenty to do it for me. Some would do it kindly, others any way they could, but I knew now I wouldn’t like it. What I needed was a new story, the right story to say what I knew about Mam; I needed a story in which both lies and facts could turn to truth in my throat.” Merrow isn’t just a mermaid story; it’s a novel about the importance of stories to make sense of our own and others’ lives...continued
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
One of the main storylines of Merrow involves the arrival of a man, Ulf, who Auntie Ushag, using her native Manx language, calls a "wiggynagh," or what we'd call a Viking. Like many elements of the novel, this has a basis in historical fact, since the Isle of Man has a significant history of Viking exploration and settlement.
According to historian and archaeologist David Griffiths, the Isle of Man's central location in the Irish Sea – nearly equidistant from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales – made it an attractive and strategic destination for the many sea-faring raiders from Scandinavia (known today as Vikings) who raided, traded and settled their way across most of Europe and much of Russia for the best part...
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