'The Fortunate Isles collects fourteen tales of salt-crusted weirdness from the rugged, cold-clime harbour village of Barradoon...
'Barradoon: the limit of worldly navigation; stronghold of sea-myths and ancient forces; a place of simmering tension and ruthless vengeance meted out by human and inhuman alike.
'These densely wrought, boundlessly inventive stories form, in their totality, a singularly strange mosaic novel of sorts - ever twisting and writhing like a storm-charged ocean. Yet they are never out of the meticulous control of Lisa Hannett's masterly storytelling.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Fallon's Palms weren't yet callused. His fingers were sea-softened, and he fancied they were gently webbed; better shaped for paddling than climbing. Each nail was blunt as a seal's nose, not sharp like Mither's, despite her relentless nipping and filing and grooming, her daily tugging at his little digits, at his disappointing limbs. Wings flapping, she yanked one arm, then the other, while he clung to the foot of their feather bed, or the porch rail, or the stool by the cottage hearth. She pulled while he resisted—not the idea of growth, mind, but the ache in his joints as she tried to stretch him. the clear futility of it all. ' (Introduction)
