The Silver Bough [Paperback]

 

 

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I can't believe I missed "The Silver Bough," by Lisa Tuttle, when it first was published in 2006; she's one of my favourite authors and she writes novels far too infrequently for me (this is, I think, her fourth full-length novel since "Windhaven," co-written with George R.R. Martin, appeared in the mid-1970s). But I'm absolutely thrilled to have found it, however belatedly. "The Silver Bough" is set in Appleton, a small seaside town on a peninsula in the west of Scotland, described by folklore as having once been an island, until in the mid-1600s, it somehow got attached to a tip of the British Isles. Incomers appeared after that, bringing with them the craft of apple-growing, as the climate and soil turn out to be perfect for that fruit, and eventually one arbourer creates the Appleton Fairest, the best apple in all the Isles. But times changed, and the apples failed, and by the time our story opens, Appleton is almost a ghost town, struggling to stay alive in a modern world that has no need for it. Enter several new incomers, three American women from different times of life, including young Ashley whose grandmother was born and raised in, and precipitously left, Appleton in 1950; Kathleen, a transplanted librarian given the job of grounding and eventually modernizing the local library, a magnificent structure built by a local architect some hundred years earlier; and Nell, who has been living at and restoring the Orchard for the past several years, after the sudden death of her husband in a sailing accident. Nell has cut off contact with other humans, mostly, but has filled her days with restoring the old house and planting its gardens, including a walled garden that had previously been home to an apple orchard and which now, thanks to Nell, is an apple orchard once again. She has found an old ailing tree and grafted it, and finds that the Appleton Fairest may truly be alive again. But the Appleton Fairest is far more than a mere apple, however tasty; its fate is tied to the fate of the town, and vice versa, and the three incoming women are the key to determining that fate....None of the above gives even the slightest sense of just how magical this story is, and how wonderful. Tuttle writes in a very clear prose - I am never struck by a particularly "poetic" sentence or turn of phrase, but instead find that after reading a paragraph or a page or a chapter, I have a whole world in my mind that wasn't there before, and all of it is poetic and stunning. Anybody who loves fantasy (including dark fantasy; this is more gentle than some of her work, but there's some scary times here too), or is interested in mythology or in the Celtic worlds, or just loves good, clear writing, is well advised to search this book out. And then go on to discover all of Lisa Tuttle's other work too; this woman is a treasure, to be sure. Very highly recommended.

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