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My Starry Rating: 4/5 Stars
Reason for Rating: An interesting story layered with mythology, folklore, and adventure that anchored emotional subject matter.
What I Learned: Writing strong characters is hard and magic doesn’t have to be so literal.
Publication Date: February 6, 2024 by House of Anansi Press
Genres: Literary Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Magical Realism
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54540797
SYNOPSIS:
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From international bestselling author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Holly Ringland, comes a haunting and magical novel about joy, grief, courage, and transformation.
‘On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.’
The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from lutruwita, Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
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REVIEW:
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The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland is an intricate story about sisterly love, myth, healing, and transformation.
Holly Ringland is back with her incredible storytelling power in this novel about Esther Wilding, who goes on a journey across the world to find out what happened to her sister Aura who mysteriously died. Spanning Tasmania, Copenhagen, and the Faroe Islands, Esther learns the truth about what led up to her sister’s death following the path of her sister’s beguiling tattoos, journal, and photographs. Statues, oceans, seals, and stars guide both sisters on a journey to healing their relationship to each other and themselves.
The plot is intricately woven with mythologies and folklore that anchors the story to its message about rebirth. I loved how the story was broken up into sections exactly like Aura’s journal which added a whimsical element to a story full of difficult topics.
Holly Ringland has an earthy wild woman way of telling a story using the healing power of nature to conjure the strength of the feminine. This story had a beautiful way of doing just that, with its magical descriptions of locations and landscapes that were oftentimes mirrors to the characters inner worlds. I really enjoyed reading this book as the further along the story unfolded, the deeper into its tidepool of myth and mystery I as the reader went.
We will all find ourselves wearing different skins at different parts of our lives, but as long as it is our own choice to shed our skins that we find ourselves in, it is our story to tell, and no one else’s.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a free arc in exchange for an honest review.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
HOLLY RINGLAND grew up in her mother’s tropical garden on the east coast of Australia. When she was nine years old, her love of landscapes, cultures and stories was deepened by a two-year journey her family took in North America, living in a camper van and travelling from one national park to another.
In her early twenties, Holly worked for four years in a remote Indigenous community in Australia’s western desert. Moving to England in 2009, Holly obtained her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester in 2011.
After wanting to be a writer since she was three years old, Holly’s debut novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart was published in 2018 when she was 37 years old, and has since become an international bestseller. Publication rights have sold in 30 territories. In May 2019, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart won The Australian Book Industry Award General Fiction Book of the Year.
In February 2020, Holly signed a new two-book deal with HarperCollins Publishers Australia. Her second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, will be published in October 2022.
Throughout 2020, Holly travelled Australia to film Back To Nature, a new, visually stunning 8-episode factual lifestyle series she co-hosts with Aaron Pedersen. Back To Nature premiered on ABC TV + ABC iView in August, 2021. All episodes are now streaming on ABC iView.
In May 2021, Amazon Prime Video announced their commission of a television series adaption of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, to stream globally. The seven-part series, a tale of female resilience, friendship, and the power to overcome tragedy, will star Sigourney Weaver, produced by Made Up Stories, Amazon Studios and Endeavor Content. Production is underway with filming currently taking place in Australia.
Prior to the pandemic, Holly divided her time between Australia and the UK, where she had Australian native flowers growing in both places. In 2020, Holly bought a 1968 Olympic Riviera caravan, named ‘Frenchie’, her Plan B writing office based on Yugambeh land, southeast Queensland. In which Holly currently spends most days writing Esther Wilding’s story.
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