Starred review from October 12, 2015
Clare Macleod learns that she is the guardian of a gate between worlds in this numinous fantasy from Catmull (Summer and Bird). When Clare was small, before her mother died, her family lived in an ancient stone house in modern Ireland with a living yew tree in it. After years of aimless grief, Clare and her father return to the house, and Clare finds that the tree has a door. On the other side of the door is a boy named Finn, who isn’t exactly human, and both Finn and the doors are threatened by a vicious enemy. Catmull’s take on fairies uses conventional elements in original ways, building a stunningly atmospheric, gorgeously complicated dream of a book. Genuinely frightening and eerie moments are drawn as masterfully as the joyous, glowing, peculiar images that populate Catmull’s version of a world inexorably linked to, yet separate from, our own. The gentle romance between Clare and Finn is understatedly believable, the quiet emotional core of a story that deserves the word epic. Ages 12–up. Agent: David Dunton, Harvey Klinger.
November 1, 2015
A 15-year-old American girl and a half-fairy Irish boy fight to save the gate to the fairies' world. Clare Macleod was born on Midsummer Day in an odd Irish house with a tree growing in the wall, but after her mother's death, when she was only 5, she and her father moved to the States. She's grown up with half-remembered stories of fairies her mother called the Strange. When they move back to the odd house, with its walls of stone and quartz and the yew tree living in it, Clare recalls and then meets Finn, a boy she shared infancy with. Finn, however, is actually half-fairy, several hundred years old, and the grandson of Balor, a demonlike man expelled from the fairies' world and now on the point of attacking the main gate between the fairy world and ours: Clare's yew tree. If the gate is destroyed, humans lose creativity and magic; fairies lose love. Catmull's omniscient perspective prevents the reader from entering into Clare's or Finn's emotions: their actions are seen as though through a glass wall. Her mannered, consciously romanticized prose ("Even for Clare, to dive through a window that may be in the sky or may be in the water, a window on an island that floats at the heart of the Strange, was not an easy thing to do") creates further distance, muddling the worldbuilding beyond where most readers can suspend disbelief. Worst, the novel's conclusion isn't worth the number of pages it takes to get there. Fewer words would have made a better story. (Fantasy. 12-16)
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Starred review from December 1, 2015
Gr 7 Up-After Clare Macleod's mother died, Clare and her geologist father traveled the world, their grief never allowing them to settle and put down roots. But after nine years, they are returning to their home in Ireland-a strange and wondrous house built inside an ancient yew tree that Clare has never quite forgotten, even though she hasn't seen it since she was five. Clare soon discovers that she comes from a long line of mothers and daughters who lived inside that tree and had deep ties to the fairy world. At first skeptical and suspicious of her new surroundings, Clare soon finds herself drawn into the dark and bright magic of Ireland. When she meets the mysterious and (somehow familiar) Finn, her past catches up with her, and she finds herself embroiled in an epic struggle between good and evil, which may very well end in an eternal schism between the world of mortals and the world of fairies-a separation that would be disastrous to both. In lovely lyrical writing, Catmull, author of Summer and Bird (Dutton, 2012), creates an unforgettable tale that begins slowly and gently, gradually and inevitably leading to a thundering crescendo. VERDICT This is a haunting novel that contains all the darkness and light of A Midsummer Night's Dream.-Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK
Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2015
Grades 6-10 Clare was born in Ireland in a house with a tree for a wall. After her mother died in that home, Clare and her father moved out, hoping to heal and leave the painful memories behind. Now, after almost 10 years of moving around the States with her dad, Clare is headed back to her birthplace. But the walls contain other things, too: inside them are creatures called The Strange, remnants of the fairy world that Clare has tried to ignore because the modern world isn't kind to waking dreams. But once Clare has settled in among the vestiges of her mother's old life, she meets Finn, a neighbor boy who is also familiar with The Strangeand he may be a bigger part of Clare's life, and the danger she now faces, than she could ever have imagined. Catmull has created an eerily lovely story, writing with an old-fashioned style that at times sings like a lullaby. An excellent addition to either teen or juvenile collections of all sizes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2016
When Clare Macleod returns to Ireland after years away, her dreams of fairies and magic suddenly make a lot more sense. She meets and is instantly drawn to Finn, a half-fairy who enlists her help to preserve the gate between worlds. Self-consciously lyrical prose is likely to turn off as many readers as it enraptures.
(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)