“The Crow Maiden” by Sarah Singleton. Cosmos
Books. http://www.wildsidepress.com

A young mother, trapped in a loveless marriage.
An ex-radical, torn between his grown-up duties,
and his political affiliations. An amoral,
manipulative woman, restless for adventure. And
a young, androgynous Goth, looking to belong
somewhere. With its setting in eco-activist
subculture, and the bucolic English suburbs, “The
Crow Maiden” combines the elements of
contemporary psychological fiction with dark
fantasy in an utterly unique, haunting way. It’s
the kind of novel John Fowles might write, were
he try to supernatural fiction.

The novel begins with Katherine, a new mother,
leaving her husband and child for a walk in the
woods. While there, she meets the enigmatic
woman, named Crow. Crow offers her tea, and
Katherine disappears for a day. When she
returns, she is scratched, confused, and has lost
her memory of the missing hours. Her lover Paul,
meanwhile, tries to make sense of a disquieting
encounter of his own. All of this happens
against the vivid backdrop of a group of
eco-friendly tree-dwellers attempting to stop the
building of road through a natural historic site.
The inner turmoil and the tensions as the
confrontation between the activists and the
corporation are palpable. The intrusion into
nature has evoked the inscrutable curiosity
other, ancient forces.

Singleton weaves a dense, skillful narrative,
with strands of her unpredictable (and real)
characters interior landscapes and the
cipher-like surreal creatures at the edge of
sight. Singleton’s “faeryland” is an
uncomfortable, id-ridden place, full of beauty,
cruelty and sexuality. It’s more reminiscent of
sheila-na-gigs, their crude, potent sexes splayed
wide than butterfly-winged damsels. Her
characters are complex; her portraiture at times
a little too intimate. (Hot-and-cold Elaine is a
triumph of creation; at times I wanted to slap
her).

The prose is rich and luminous, filled with
scent, sound and atmosphere. The landscapes
that Singleton describes, both real and
imaginary, are characters in their own rite.
The prose is so lovely that it becomes
overwhelming at times. Her sentences are marvels
of grammar, rhythm and energy that take on a life
of their own. They are the engines that propel
the story to its final denouement.

Like Wharton, Shirley Jackson or Jonathan
Carroll, Singleton uses the textures of fantastic
and mythic fiction to illuminate human truths and
emotions. It’s an impressive debut. The heavy
air of melancholy is hard to shake, when the last
page is turned.

--Craig L. Gidney

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