Tantony, by Ananda Braxton-Smith

First published in 2011 by Black Dog Books

STORY:

Fermion Quirk and her brother Boson are twins, living in the remote coastal world of Carrick. When Boson sickens and dies ‘face down in a bog of stars’, Fermion is the one to find him. Now she must find a way to adjust to life without him, and help her family function again as a unit. To do so she must take a sea-journey, out to ‘The Other Island’ that is only there according to its whim, as local legend would have it. While she is there she discovers a world of secrets and answers and things unexplained, and above all how to become a whole person now that her brother is gone.

 

BACKGROUND:

What an entirely strange, weird and wonderful book Tantony is. It is hard to describe and explain; it is something you can only appreciate through experience. I really don’t think there is anything like this in the Aussie YA market, and I absolutely love Black Dog Books for publishing something that is really quite a literary oddity – in an amazing way. Tantony isn’t perfect but its flaws are easy to love, and there is the same mix of gorgeous, unconventional language, quirky endearing characters and immersive word and place-building that made me love Braxton Smith’s first novel, Merrow, so much. This is an author who genuinely leaves me hanging out for her next book, just to see what else she’s got up her sleeve. GORGEOUS!

CHARACTERS:

The harshness of life on the Carrick coast shapes the people who inhabit it – Braxton-Smith shows us this through the attitudes and mindsets of her characters. In Tantony we learn of those ‘afflicted’ – bearing some outward mark of the evil that inhabits them (this is a very simplified description – Braxton-Smith just about creates a whole mythology out of it).  Fermion bears the burden of having an ‘afflicted’ brother, although his is much more a capacity for mental strangeness that has got the people of Carrick so up-in-arms. What I love about the characters in Tantony is that no matter how much page time they get, we always understand something of their complexity, something of all that might be sitting just under the surface. But this is really Fermion’s story and she is a real little fire-cracker, stubborn and strong but oh-so-very vulnerable. In particular I enjoyed the relationship between her and her father – and what an exquisite emotional moment when her father comes looking for her at the end. You will rarely find a more motley, odd-ball collection of characters than in this book.

STYLE:

I am a little bit in love with the way Braxton-Smith writes – some passages are just like a revelation with all the beauty and ache they hold. Carrick is a world of spirits and legends and you can feel it haunting every page. The way the characters express themselves is a delight to decipher, and the word-building here is some of the best I’ve read in YA. The characters are compelling, the tension is high, and the language weaves a gentle rhythm through the stark raw world of Carrick. Braxton-Smith also artfully employs two narratives – life with Boson and life after Boson, that enrich and feed off the other.

CONCLUSION:

Tantony is the second book in the Secrets of Carrick series, which links together different stories through landscape and mythology. It can definitely be enjoyed without having read Merrow (although I recommend that you do, just because it is brilliant). It won’t be for everyone, and it might not be an easy read, but it truly is a breath of fresh air in the Aussie YA market.



Merrow, by Ananda Braxton-Smith

Published by Black Dog Books, 2010

Let me begin by saying that I just love Black Dog Books as a publisher: their attitude, their enthusiasm, the children’s and YA titles they produce. I first discovered Merrow whilst browsing their site, and knew straight away it had to go on my reading list; I’m a sucker for a good coming-of-age story, but one possibly about a Merrow? That put me very much in the realm of The Little Mermaid, which is one of my favourite stories (book and film) ever. After reading it was also seeped in Manx folklore - another fascination of mine - I begun to have very high expectations.

Were they fulfilled? Yes. Ananda Braxton-Smith has written a charming little tale and I found it a delight to read from beginning to end.

What is a Merrow? If I have my Irish folklore correct – and I’m pretty sure I do, because as a teenager I very nearly cleared out the Celtic mythology section of the town library – it is the Irish equivalent of a mermaid. The females are beautiful, the males are not (!). They can also shape-shift between merrow, human and animal (mostly cattle) form by means of a red feather cap, sometimes a cape. Offspring of a marriage between a merrow and human will often be covered in scales.

This is the dilemma facing Neen: marked by her scales, she is both an outsider in the community and a young girl eager to reclaim the truth about her family and her self. This is what feeds the story and gives it an emotional brevity – we all want to know where we fit in the world.

And it is a wonderful  world Braxton-Smith creates. I love the way the characters speak; their vernacular, their quirks, and the stories they tell. I was familiar with many of the little folk tales that sprung up, courtesy of Ma Slevin, and it was great to see them getting page space. I love the relationship between Neen and Ushag and the way it develops. I love the way Neen views the world, and I love that the emotion here is raw and real and yet filtered through something distinctly otherworldly. I love the clash of the old and new worlds  and I love the way Merrow is so stubbornly unique.

Most of all I love the way Braxton-Smith uses words to evoke time and place and feeling. There are some very beautiful passages that make you feel the heat, the lethargy, of the summer, the movement of the ocean, or the sound of Scully’s fiddle as he plays deep into the night.

I loved this book. I think the best way I can describe it is imperfectly perfect.

"I looked upward and pictured how it might have been to sink forever into this dappling light; how its air would rise as the body sank, falling slowly, face to the sky, and all above just hair and bubbles."