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When I was a child, I loved all sorts of fantastical beings — dragons, fairies, unicorns, mermaids. I still have books leftover from that era: Peter Dickinson’s The Flight of Dragons, Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries. And from time to time, I find myself wanting to indulge the girl I once was. So when I was recently in the mood to read about selkies, I picked The Brides of Rollrock Island from a list somewhere on the Internet. I thought I was indulging a whim with a book that would probably be a bit trashy. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find that this YA novel by Margo Lanagan is really quite good.
Misskaela Prout is at the heart of the story. Misskaela is large and unattractive by the standards of those around her; her grandmother says she “harks back,” revealing a bit of her family’s selkie heritage. As she grows older, Miskaella discovers that she has a power over seals. She can attract them, and she can even draw a human being out from a seal.
Hurt and angered by the way her family and fellow islanders treat her, when the first young man approaches to ask if she can give him a selkie wife, she sees an opportunity for revenge. She delivers what he wants — for a hefty price. These beautiful, docile women enchant the island’s men. Soon man after man pays Misskaela for a selkie wife or mistress, pushing the island’s women aside. Misskaela is happy — as happy as her bitter heart will let her be — growing wealthy off the backs of the foolish island men who are besotted with their seal-wives, and watching in triumph as the women of Rollrock Island are forced to leave rather than compete with the growing population of selkie women.
My child was as surprised as I was when I told her how much I was enjoying this complex, feminist story. “The cover looks like it’s trashy,” she said, and so it does. But Lanagan is an excellent writer who weaves an interesting tale. She manages to make you feel both sympathy for and anger with Misskaela. Even the selkie women — as beautiful and compliant as they are — are more than robotic Stepford wives. The greatest weakness to Lanagan’s story is its men; virtually all of them fall prey to the glamour of the selkies, unable to choose faithfulness to their wives or fiancees.
The Brides of Rollrock Island is not a must-read. It will not become a classic, sitting on people’s bookshelves (or in their electronic readers) 100 years from now. But if you can get past the cover, you’ll find it’s a thoughtful and entertaining read, well worth your time.