The second round of SFINCS, the indie novella competition is now going ahead, and our team, The WIPs are in the process of reading, rating, and reviewing our 5 allocated novellas. My first read in this round was Selkie Moon by Kelly Jarvis. As always, the following review is my own personal opinion as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. Find out more about the competition here and my team, The WIPs, here, and read all my reviews for the competition here!
Selkie Moon by Kelly Jarvis is a poetically written, folk/fairy tale-y fantasy novella about love, family, and heritage. It explores the early life of its main character, Isla, living on the wind-swept shores of Orkney, coming to terms with the strangeness and messiness of her family life.
As long as Isla can remember, her fisherman father told her stories of the sea, how he met her mother, and how Isla was born: mystery and wonder-filled tales that helped her fall asleep, while her mother, taciturn, her life riddled with strange habits but always loving, left her small gifts of pebbles and shells to communicate her emotions in her own way. Isla’s parents fought often, their relationship tense and seemingly full of pain and disagreements, while they were clearly also unwilling to let go of each other. It isn’t until Isla’s little brother, Callan, is born, and then when Isla feels the urge to learn and make friends and travel, that she starts having real questions and doubts. Could it be possible that her mother has something to do with selkies, the seal-skinned shapeshifters of the stormy northern seas? If she is a selkie’s daughter, does that mean that she is so different from her peers that she could never be loved? And would her mother then leave her eventually, like every selkie wife from the stories does?
I really enjoyed the intimate style of the novella, and the descriptions of the natural environment, the wild, exciting, dangerous northern shores, the fields, feral sheep, and the little towns of the islands, and the way people live there. So much so that I definitely want to go and visit now! Isla’s voice and story were relatable, because even though her situation is fantastical, her struggles with her turbulent family situation, her opposing urges to leave and live her own life but also be connected to the place, the people she grew up with, are, I think, universal in a way and touched me deeply. I was also really thankful for the twist on the selkie wife tale which, on a first glance, I often find a bit uncomfortable—I appreciated this look on it from a different point of view. The characterisation was all done through young Isla, of course, but I got a good sense of the complex personalities and relationships of her parents and larger family which made it harder to harshly judge or favour anyone. The writing itself was also lovely, very easy to follow and get immersed in with beautiful, moody descriptions. If there was anything I wished for, it was maybe a bit more interactions between Isla and her mother, and between the two parents, but I also got the sense that the mother, although playing a very central part, stayed purposefully far and mysterious from both us the readers and Isla most of the time, while still a constant and loveable fixture in her life. This harmonized well with the POV we receive the story from: an offspring of this mythical creature, trying to navigate her life divided between mother and father, the sea and the soil, folklore and reality, and the pulls of different life paths and wishes.
Selkie Moon ended up to be a great experience and will remain a memorable read for me. I whole-heartedly recommend it to everyone enjoying mythology, folklore tale retellings and re-interpretations, and themes of divided families and mother-daughter (and father) relationships.
Helyna L. Clove 
Leave a comment