Selkie Moon

Selkie Moon isn’t just a lovely story about the sleek creatures who swim in the sea and doff their skins to dance on the land; through the lens of Isla’s journey, Jarvis offers us a thoughtful narrative about the choice to cast off the limitations imposed by others and fully claim ourselves by  the light of our own mirror moon—a perfect read for divisive times.

A selkie story told, so freshly and tenderly,  from the daughter’s perspective, Jarvis's debut novella offers a moving  and memorable portrait of a family whose conflicts ignite with feral,  fabulist sparks–but also speak to (and critique) the recognizable  tensions of gendered expectations. It’s a lush tale that explores the  way convention can threaten to dim the wild beauties of those who are  different, and how compassion for each other’s story matters. Its vivid,  lyrical, dreamy landscapes–the craggy coasts of the Orkney Islands,  where “wet mists...purled along the shoreline,” in the “twilight of the  simmer dim”–offer a gateway into dreams and tales of “oceans stained  purple by rains that fell from ruby-studded skies.” And oh, the  sentences! What a delight to the senses they were. I was swept up in the  prose and in Isla’s world, and left thinking about the power of  stories, of self-as-story–and the capacity we have, if we just learn to  use it, to tell our truest selves and each other into being, into  acceptance and understanding.

Kelly Jarvis writes with care, insight, and compassion as she explores selkie folklore in this novella. Her story is filled with lyrical prose and such loving descriptions of the ocean that I was convinced Kelly must be a selkie herself. The passage about swimming with the humpback whales is particularly stunning. It's magic like this that had me captivated throughout her story.
 

I love that selkie lore became a way to explore the identities that are erased, abandoned, sacrificed or forgotten with familial roles like motherhood. That something as mysterious as a selkie's oceanic life is equated with who mothers were before their children came along is standing ovation levels of excitement for this folklore enthusiast. 

Set on a timeless-feeling community in the Orkney Islands, this selkie tale sings with beauty. Jarvis writes with gorgeous, confident language that draws the reader into the depths of her tale like siren song. Her characters are flawed and complex as they fight the pull of what is traditionally a family tragedy. Their story is moving, hopeful, and above all, compelling. Selkie Moon is as breathtaking as the moon on still water and as irresistible as the tide.

An engrossing read that sucks the reader right in from the first page. This is a bittersweet family story and a splendid tale of growing up. If you love magic and myth and amazingly strong world building for a novella, this story is definitely for you! Every character is well drawn, and you’ll stay hooked right to the end!

Selkie Moon is a thoughtful, powerful  exploration of the effect of {a selkie} relationship not only on the man and  the selkie, but also on the children of that union. The story is told  from the point of view of their daughter, the one who will ultimately  find the hidden selkie skin. What, asks the story, must be like for her,  growing up aware there’s something different about her parents from  others, aware of the tension between them but not understanding what’s  going on? Her responses change subtly as she grows older: from a little  girl relying totally on her mother, to an intelligent child trying to  make sense of what’s going on round her, to the pre-teen who wants to be  accepted by her peers, to a teenager pushing against the idea of being  different, finally to a young woman who understands what it is that  makes her different. In a lovely piece of symbolism, the story’s  triumphant conclusion plays out, like the the opening, under the moon  and on the stormy shores of Orkney, bringing it full circle – or full  moon. 

It is {the} folkloric approach to family that gives Selkie Moon its edge over other family dramas, a certain beauty that both separates the story from modern life but also draws parallels to the realist’s world. Through language alone, Jarvis paints a world that is easy for a reader to be swallowed into.

And the setting—with its aurora borealis, its “simmer dim,” and its islands that, “float in the frigid waters where the North Sea kisses the Atlantic”—is one that feels almost fairytale-esque, a dreamy place that makes the family conflict so much more tense. As Isla realizes that the magical world she lives in isn’t so perfectly divine, the experience turns both devastating and enlightening. 

In just over 100 short pages, Kelly Jarvis has crafted a unique addendum to selkie folklore, expanding it beyond the mere seduction that leads to selkies shedding their seal skins, their wildness, to struggle through the tame and mild life of the land. She has bent the folklore into a relatable story about family and choices.