Title: The Gracekeepers Author: Kirsty Logan
Published: May 19, 2015
Genre(s): Magical Realism
Page Count: 320
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:As a Gracekeeper, Callanish administers shoreside burials, laying the dead to their final resting place deep in the depths of the ocean. Alone on her island, she has exiled herself to a life of tending watery graves as penance for a long-ago mistake that still haunts her. Meanwhile, North works as a circus performer with the Excalibur, a floating troupe of acrobats, clowns, dancers, and trainers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining in exchange for sustenance.
In a world divided between those inhabiting the mainland ("landlockers") and those who float on the sea ("damplings"), loneliness has become a way of life for North and Callanish, until a sudden storm offshore brings change to both their lives - offering them a new understanding of the world they live in and the consequences of the past, while restoring hope in an unexpected future.
With graceful prose and impressive vision, Kirsty Logan’s debut novel, The Gracekeepers, combines the delicacy and magic of fairytales with the smart complexity of dystopian fiction, and the end result is a beautiful story of two young women and their fight for a home of their own in a world covered entirely by water. This novel is compelling and inventive from its opening scene—a circus act gone wrong when the tame bear goes feral—and though the story that unfolds is dreamlike and nearly surreal, the underlying current of urgency in the protagonists’ intersecting stories is undeniable. It may be hard to precisely pin down the nature of this book, but it’s undeniably gorgeous and not to be missed by fans of either fantasy or magical realism.
The opening scene with the feral bear serves as an introduction to both Callanish and North, the women who serve as the novel’s primary narrators. Callanish is a spectator in the audience, and North is onstage, acting with her parents and their bears. Both are very young when this takes place, and have matured well into young adulthood by the time the story proper begins. After a tragic falling out with her mother, Callanish lives in self-imposed exile on a remote island, tending to the burials of the seafaring folk—the “damplings”. North has ironically followed in her parents’ footsteps, acting in a water circus with her bear. Both women are lonely and hounded by a secret that could ruin them, and each wants to escape. Their paths cross by chance, but it’s their individual secrets, once revealed, that join them into family.
Logan chooses to narrate this dual-protagonist tale with alternating third-person perspectives, adding other voices besides Callanish and North’s into the mix as well, so that every major player can say their piece, and the nuances in character motivations can be understood. It’s a very wise decision, for though Callanish and North are at the center of The Gracekeepers, the author is able to expand upon her setting more fully by shifting perspectives, and is also able to give outside perspectives of her protagonists, which gives readers a richer understanding of who they are.
As main characters, Callanish and North are wonderfully drawn and irresistible. Both are just emerging as adults in a post-apocalyptic landscape that shapes their lives just as much as the tragedies of their pasts. Though they seem fundamentally different—one comes from a wealthy “landlocker” family while the other from a destitute “dampling” circus, their similarities are enough for them to forge a bond that’s entirely believable in spite of the fact that, really, the two only share scenes in two chapters (one in the middle and on at the end), plus the epilogue. Logan’s prose isn’t quite sparing, but it’s certainly a testament to her skill that she can sell a relationship in so short a time, as well as detailing such fascinating characters in and of themselves.
Beyond characters, Logan’s talent shines through in her setting, which is strange and hauntingly beautiful. Centuries ago, the world was covered by land and the seas were mere “bodies of water”, but for Callanish and North, the sea is endless, broken up only by scattered archipelagos where the wealthy live. The rest of humanity survives on the water, floating wherever wind and current take them, reviled as filthy and ferocious by the “landlockers”. It’s a stark existence, but as North wonders—is it possible to compromise? To live on both land and sea, beyond (or perhaps because of) circumstances of one’s birth?
This is the question that Callanish and North answer, in the end, but only after they, finally, lose what they’ve hoped for the hardest. It’s a bitter, intense climax that is tempered by the peace and optimism of the epilogue, where The Gracekeepers leaves its protagonists with the expectation of a new life—hopefully a better one, now they’re together.
