‘Lovely writing that has been captured and nailed to the page in case it takes flight into poetry’ Liz Whittaker
‘(A)n impressive debut novel from an extremely talented writer’ Wales Arts Review
‘[A]n extremely readable debut. Mysterious, esoteric and compassionate… Beautifully controlled…’ Buzz Magazine
Fern’s choices in life and in love are an echo of her mother’s, as Iris’ are an echo of her own mother’s. Three women, three generations: one dark secret.
Iris keeps a scrapbook of Lawrence, the lover who went missing years earlier. Fern’s father. She defines herself by his loss and soothes herself with gin and the fairytale of this one perfect relationship... Fern, once a ‘strange and difficult child’ who believed that her dead grandmother’s soul lived inside her stomach, reluctantly returns home to the island to take care of Iris. She is tasked with finding Lawrence and in the process she has to confront her own past and memories... Ivy, Iris’ mother, had her own cache of secrets; spells she took to the grave. Spells that Fern unearths.
The Scrapbook is a novel about memory, and the unreliability of memory. It’s about the tangled, often dysfunctional, bonds of family. And it’s about absence and the power that a void can exert over a person’s life.
Author Bio
Carly Holmes was born on the Channel Island of Jersey and lives on the west coast of Wales. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UOW Trinity Saint David and has just completed her PhD in Creative Writing. A number of her short stories have been published and placed in competitions. Carly is Secretary for the PENfro Book festival committee and organises The Cellar Bards, a group of writers who meet in Cardigan monthly for a lively evening of spoken word, and she’s also on the editorial board of The Lampeter Review. When not doing any of the above, Carly can usually be found in her garden, talking to her hedge sparrows.