The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. What, she asks, would such a relationship truly be like? How might it satisfy, but also destroy those involved? A beautifully written story featuring a thoroughly realized setting and cast. Growing up, she was teased by her peers, and they never really outgrew it. The true morals of the book revolve around the ideas of rejection, isolation, and revenge, but Misskaela, the protagonist, really embodies the heart and soul of the narrative. Lanagan (Tender Morsels) casts the traditional selkie tale in a poetic yet deeply antiromantic form. The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan finds strength as a character expos. Decades later, the jilted human women have all left the island, leaving the spell-struck men with their captive wives, who cannot always hide their yearning for the sea. The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from. Then suddenly the man’s outline sharpened within the seal.” She uses this power first to find herself a lover and then to take revenge on the people of Rollrock Island, who she believes have slighted her, providing each man with a supernaturally beautiful seal-woman (for a price). The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan: 9780375873362 : Books On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livingsand to catch their wives. A head-blur parted from the body-blur some limbs came good, splitting from the main shine.

In this powerful but grim tale set on a rugged, windswept island, an unlovely, embittered young woman discovers that she can magically pull human beings out of seals: “I drew each speck toward and into the man-shape at his center.