Stories within a story
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The blurb
Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive but graceful, unique, and with surprising depths. Perhaps that's why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector's magazine.
Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped, and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.
On his journey through the old towns of England, he reads the fairy tales of Ewa Chaplin--potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice--to break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.
A love story of two very real, unusual people, The Dollmaker is also a novel rich with wonders: Andrew's quest and Bramber's letters unspool around the dark fables that give our familiar world an uncanny edge. It is this touch of magic that, like the blink of a doll's eyes, tricks our own.
The Review
This is a really hard book to review, mainly because it is several books in one. The main story follows two characters - Bramber and Andrew. Bramber advertises for a pen pal and quickly she and Andrew form a strong bond through their correspondence. Both of them seem isolated, solitary people and they both have trauma lurking in their childhood. Andrew decides, unbidden, that he is going to cross their metaphysical boundary and travels across England to meet Bramber. We follow him in his journey, while Bramber continues to write to him.
Interspersed between their stories are some dark, eerie fairie tales from a book that Andrew is reading whilst on his travels. A book written by one of Bramber's favourite dollmakers, turned author. And it is within these short stories that this book really comes alive. Every single one of them was unsettling in some way, and some of them are downright horrible. The weird parallels that can be drawn between these stories and incidents in both Andrew and Bramber's lives make them even more unnerving.
By doing this, Allan really plays with the structure of this book and subverts the normal mechanisms of storytelling. Stories within a story can be hard to pull off but actually these mini fairy tales were the best thing for me about this book. These asides encompass all the best things about grim fairy tales (pun intended). They are appropriately dark and menacing! And because they are so good - something strange happened. They took me out of the main thrust of the story. I would then be returned to Andrew and Bramber's story feeling confused and having to remind myself what was happening, and really, I just wanted to return to these brilliant, insidious fairy tales.
And weirdly, this left me wanting more from the main plot. It felt like we were building up to some big reveal with Bramber's narrative with the increasing revelations about her past, but actually I found their eventual meeting anticlimactic, and her backstory didn't make a huge amount of sense to me. The 'love-story' element between these two characters just didn't play out for me.
This is a really interesting book that considers what its like to be different in a world that doesn't tolerate differences and how isolating this can be. But I wanted it to do more.
However, if this author ever brings out an anthology of dark fairy tales, I would read it in a heartbeat.
The Dollmaker is released on 4th April 2019 by Quercus Books, Riverrun.
Big thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.