Wild Spinning Girls

Ida Llewellyn is going to be a ballet dancer, following in the footsteps of her world-famous ballerina mother, Anna Plessey. It is more her mothers wish than her own, and she lacks her mothers natural talent, but Ida adores Anna and she is happy to follow her mothers dream. But then, when she is sixteen, Ida damages her ankle in an avoidable accident that dashes any hope of her fulfilling her ambition. It also releases her from the pressure of Annas expectations. Anyone who has read Carol Lovekins previous novels (Ghostbird and Snow Sisters, both also published by Honno) will know how adept she is at portraying powerful and conflicted relationships between mothers and daughters, and also between sisters a skill that is once again amply demonstrated here, drawing the reader in from the outset. Thirteen years after her accident, when Ida is quietly content working in a small independent bookshop, living in her own flat but still spending much of her time with her parents, and especially with Anna, Idas life is ripped apart. In Paris for their second honeymoon, Anna and David are both killed in a freak accident: In the space of a few moments, what was best in her life turned bad. And from that day she stopped believing anything would ever be good again. However blue the sky, however beautiful a garden full of yellow roses, however sweet the songs the blackbirds sang at twilight, Idas world turned to grey. Not knowing how to move forward in her life, Ida decides to visit the house in Wales that she has inherited from her father. Standing alone in an isolated location at the edge of a moor, Tyr Cwmwl, or Cloud House, is where Ida was born and spent the first five years of her life. She has no memory of it, knows only that her mother hated it and was unhappy there. At Tyr Cwmwl, Ida meets seventeen-year-old Heather. Heather was also born at the house, and lived there with her mother, Olwen, until a year ago, when Olwen died suddenly and unexpectedly. For Heather, the house has been a happy place; it is where her mothers ashes are buried and where her ghost resides; she does not want Ida there. And so these two young women, these wild spinning girls, both of them angry and beset by grief, dance around each other, initially vying for power and the upper hand, then slowly cautiously growing closer. They had drifted into one anothers lives like litter on the wind and now Ida felt uncomfortably trapped. She forced herself to listen, even though she no longer wanted to hear another word of Heathers story, sensing that knowing it would somehow bind them even more. She cannot begin to know how close and tight that binding will become. It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales. Gellir defnyddior adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru. -- Welsh Books Council