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Read Solstice Wood (2007)

Solstice Wood (2007)

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Rating
3.72 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0441014658 (ISBN13: 9780441014651)
Language
English
Publisher
ace

Solstice Wood (2007) - Plot & Excerpts

I've only read one other book by Patricia A. McKillip, though I wished I could remember the name of it, but she now has a fan for life. She is such a lyrically beautiful writer, every word is sacred and every scene in the book is lovingly set for the reader to enjoy. This is a haunting book of family secrets and longing for a place to call home, it just so happens to be set in a old country manor surrounded by woods that holds it's own secrets.I don't want to get into too much detail about Sylvia and what happens to her family in this book but reading the internal torment that forced Sylvia to leave home to begin with is all to familiar with me. Who doesn't struggle with their identity at times? When that identity forces you to leave all you love behind, the pain is horrific but the strength it builds in you can be your salvation. Sylvia needs all that strength to confront her past and her family's present when she returns home for the funeral of her loving grandfather.This is a book of magic set in the modern world and not once did those two opposing ideas clash with each other. Patricia A. McKillip crafted the story to be believable and she more than pulled it off. Not once did it feel out of place for there to be fairies living in the wood or for magic to be created by knitting, weaving, and sewing knots. This is a fairy tale for adults and I can't wait to get lost in this world again.

This is my second time reading this, which is a sequel to Winter Rose. The first time, I hadn't read Winter Rose in a couple of years and so couldn't directly compare them, and I felt as though Solstice Wood stood up reasonably well.This time, I read them back to back, and oh dear, I thought Winter Rose was much better and didn't like Solstice Wood as much.The problem, I think, is the disjunct between the styles and the settings. They're both first person, but Winter Rose has only one narrator, while Solstice Wood has five. McKillip distinguishes their voices well, so I never lost track of who was speaking, but at the same time, I never got to know any of them as well as I did Rois in Winter Rose.Winter Rose feels as though it's very much not set in our world, but in a fantasy world McKillip has created. Solstice Wood is very firmly set in upstate New York, and so reading it back to back made the setting not work for me at all. I just could not reconcile the two totally different settings in a way that made it believable that one had become the other, even though years later.As a book on its own, Solstice Wood is an interesting look at how a community might deal with having another world in its woods. As a sequel, though, it simply doesn't live up to its predecessor.[ETA: edited 4/6/13 to fix idiotic author last name mistake.]

What do You think about Solstice Wood (2007)?

The one where Sylvia's grandfather dies and her grandmother calls her home to a house that's a gate between two worlds.There's the germ of something wonderful here, and it all clusters around Iris, the grandmother, and her Fiber Guild. Everything in Iris' POV, everything about the Fiber Guild, I loved. The changeling was also wonderful, with a truly alien mind. But I can't recommend this one.Part of the problem was the plot's dependence on things I just didn't believe. The human antagonist was completely laughable; I never bought his threats for a moment. And the plot required that the obvious answer to Sylvia's parentage never occur to Iris, which I also didn't believe. Second, it was awfully tell-y -- people spent an awful lot of time telling each other about the things they felt, whether that was in character or not.And part of my problem was the Mary Sue Specialness of everything in the book. On page 1, Sylvia wakes up in bed with a guy with purple eyes, and it just gets worse from there; nobody has short hair, or eyes of a normal color, or an ordinary, demographically plausible name.
—Res

So, normally I don't like McKillip. Too much ungrounded metaphor, too much dream-confusion, too much over-writing, etc. But this book is different. It's written as a tale that takes place right now. There are lots of characters with dyed hair or piercings or both. And cell phones. There is some really good stuff about women making magic with the way they tend the world in normal, everyday tasks. But, what I really liked about this book was how it looked at ancient prejudice and how and why we do things the way we do. At the very end of the book, there was a bit that really struck me. I suppose it could be considered a spoiler, so don't read it if you would rather not get a paragraph. "It's very old, and could be very powerful, if we need it to be. And it creates, as well as binds. I won't disband it. But maybe, for a while, we could just sew. Concentrate on what we make instead of what we control. See what happens."I'll read this book again.One last note: This book is one where each chapter switches viewpoint. It's not very gracefully done, though it's not terrible either, and the voices sound so much the same that it was hard to remember who's voice I was reading. I did finally get used to it, but even down to the last two chapters, I still got confused as to who was speaking.
—Lia

Sylvia Lynn left her family years before, moving to a different coast to get away from the troubling aspects of her own past, and from the grandmother who raised her. Called home by the death of her beloved grandfather, she is drawn into the strange workings of the Fiber Guild, a group of magical women who literally stitch, knit, and crochet a web of protection around their little town. Sylvia must confront the dual nature of this protection, as well as her own duality, when she is forced to go up against the fae to rescue someone she loves.This is a contemporary fantasy about complicated love, complicated families, and the quixotic nature of the fae. A modern day sequel to Ms. McKillip's historic fantasy, Winter Rose, it's beautifully written, and full of humor, mystery, tension. Ms. McKillip's wonderful understanding of the human heart—which is, after all, just as quixotic as the fae—blends well with fantastical and near-hallucinatory passages. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
—Peejay Who Once Was Minsma

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