Review on short story ‘The Faerie tree’ by Author: KATHLEEN KAYEMBE
Published in November 2017 http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-faerie-tree/
Great suggestion @didic, thank you!
THE REVIEW
The title captures the essence of this short story perfectly!
Before even reading ‘The Faerie Tree’ the title immediately made me feel excited, like a young girl waiting for something magical to happen. I love all things mystical and Fae-Folk have been the inspiration behind a lot of my photography editing recently.
The illustration (by Galen Dara) that accompanies the story is beautiful! It tells the tale using a magical portrait. It captures the essence of the writing, for example the passage: “Its branches are gnarled like an old woman’s fingers, knobbed like her knees, and the trunk hunches down like she’s reaching for my house” is depicted perfectly in the picture. You can see the branches reaching for the girl and can only imagine the magic that lies behind those reaching branches.
’The Faerie Tree’ is a short story therefore there is no preface or introduction to the work. I was quite pleased about this because the title told me all I needed to know and I was eager to jump straight in!
The tale was everything I could imagine. It fits perfectly with my expectations of a short story with a title this enchanting, with a side order of macabre.
Immediately you can tell that the book is written from the point of view of a child. The author does a great job of placing the reader into the shoes of the young girl. You feel her every emotion and understand her confusion towards the situation she is facing.
The story adds a whole new perspective to the real world of ‘not fitting into society’. It reminds me of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, perhaps using the mystical world as an escape from reality… or is she?
“I remember they all looked at me strange when I said so, like they knew I was Different. Wrong. Not a real girl.”
It was quite easy to follow the Author’s thread, she dropped hints along the way as to which direction the story was heading and it certainly helped create unease for both the reader and the character.
The style is probably not for everyone. It was however perfect for me! It was very informal and in first person narrative, bearing in mind the main character is probably a child aged around 10 years old. You are given enough information to understand what is happening from a child’s perspective; and given the opportunity to form your own adult observations. I love this approach as there are so many unanswered questions with it being a short story. The mind boggles as to what came before… wait, no spoilers here! Lol
The ending was slightly abrupt, I would have liked to have known more about certain events that happened ‘before’, however I think the author’s intention was to create questions rather than answers and it certainly ended in a resigned and unnerving manner.
The Faerie Tree’ is a good read and I would recommend this story if you love all things mystical and slightly chilling, but don’t have a lot of time to sit down and read a novel. It could easily be turned into a full novel in my opinion as there is so much scope here to develop the characters and the back story.
This is my first taste of Kathleen Kayembe, but I will be changing that shortly and checking out her other books!
I have enjoyed reading this story and writing the review. Thank you @didic for the recommendation and hosting the competition! (Which you can find here @didic/woc-and-trans-author-book-review-contest)
Thank you for visiting my blog! Much love @beautifulbullies xx
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