Crow Face, Doll Face

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Stori yn llawn dieithrwch a throeon anghyffredin. Dyma gyfrol am gael eich gwthio i fyw gyda chanlyniadau eich dewisiadau, ac i fyw gyda'r ffantasïau a grëwyd gennym er mwyn ein cysuro pan fo'r bywyd a brofwn yn syrthio'n fyr o'r un a gynlluniwyd gennym.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

A story full of strangeness and extraordinary twists, games and trickery, Crow Face, Doll Face is about being forced to live with the consequences of the decisions we make and the fantasies we construct to soothe ourselves when the life we live falls far short of the life we planned.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

In-stock items will be dispatched within 3 business days, usually by Royal Mail Tracked 48. For pre-orders, we’ll dispatch within 3 business days of receiving the item from our supplier.

Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi, west Wales. Her debut novel The Scrapbook was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her Literary Strange short story collection Figurehead was published in limited edition hardback by Tartarus Press, and reprinted in paperback by Parthian Books. Her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, The Lonely Crowd, and has twice been selected for The Best Horror of the Year.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Within a web of delicate and complex imagery, Carly Holmes has created a story both fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. And it’s not your typical horror, it’s much more subtle than that: it’s the quiet horror of seemingly ‘normal’ family life painfully distorted by the terrible inadequacies of the parents. Annie has dreams of travelling and adventure with her husband Peter, but even though he had been as keen as her, he’s now settled into the safety of routine: work and home, quiet and contented. When Annie violently confronts him, her frustration boiling over, he crumples into tears of humiliation and admits his fears of stepping into the unknown. Faced with either losing Peter or abandoning her dreams, Annie chooses the latter and, as she’s already pregnant, decides to devote herself to being a full-time mother. Three children later and she’s immersed in the belly of domestic life, longing for another baby. Her eldest, Julian, the beloved first born, self-contained and confident, had been followed by Elsa, for whom, after a torturous birth, Annie was unable to feel love. For the first eight months of Elsa’s life, Annie couldn’t bear to touch her for fear of contaminating the baby with her indifference. Annie recovers her love for Elsa, but then a few months later Kitty is born – little Doll Face, astonishingly beautiful, instantly her father’s favourite, while plain and ‘mousy’ Elsa writhes with jealousy. Two years on and Leila is born at home, slithering out of her exhausted mother to be scooped up by Kitty. Barely more than a toddler herself, Kitty holds her new sister up high, newborn head lolling on a fragile neck. She sees the shock of black hair and beaky nose, and lovingly calls her Crow Face. Kitty reluctantly allows her father to take the baby and give her to Annie, but even as Leila takes her first feed from Annie, she gazes only at Kitty. The bond between the two little sisters is tightly exclusive, and Annie is tortured by a desperate jealousy, trying to interpose herself between them. Julian and Elsa are also excluded. It doesn’t bother Julian, but for Elsa, who already pines for Julian’s sparse attention, it compounds her miserable isolation. Neither Annie nor Peter is capable of seeing the emotional damage they have inflicted on their children. And there’s something else, beyond the ordinary, about Doll Face and Crow Face: things happen that have no logical explanation, a possibility of something magical perhaps. But in this dysfunctional family there’s no discussion of the odd events, and Annie builds a narrative for herself in which the girls are ‘special’ and need to be ‘protected’. Which in turn leads her to inflict an even greater wound on the ever-vulnerable Elsa. In this fascinating and compelling novel, Carly Holmes writes with an unerring eye for the small but painful tragedies caused by heedless, irrational parents and the fight between rival siblings for their attention. The pain caused by casual cruelties between family members is familiar to all of us to a lesser or greater extent, but here Carly Holmes has distilled a gripping and intense concoction of emotional suffering and thoughtless cruelty.