Currently Reading :: The Curlew’s Eye :: Karen Manton

Hello! I just wanted to pop in today and tell you a little bit about my current read, The Curlew’s Eye by Karen Manton.
I have to be honest – this was one of those titles that pops up in my mail box sometimes that get shelved on the ‘maybe if I get to it’ shelf (not an actual physical shelf, but mentally. I’m not actually organised enough to have a shelving system that sophisticated, and also there isn’t enough space on the shelves for everything, but I digress). SO I had this filed under maybe and then I heard a bit more about it and decided i liked the sound of it so I’d really try and squeeze it in this month. After finishing some historical fiction and a YA fantasy book this week I thought I’d pick it up as kind of a palate cleanser, and found myself completely hooked right away.

I’m only about 60 pages in, but I am finding the writing so atmospheric and engaging. It’s really giving me that sense of unease I love in gothic writing, where I’m a little bit creeped out but can’t quite put my finger on why, and I’m loving it.

I’ll report back on this one when I’m done, but I kind of have a feeling this one is going to be perfect for people after a creepy October read that isn’t horror.

Let me know if you’ve read this, or have a favourite atmospheric read too?

xo Bron

ps Thanks to the lovely team at Allen and Unwin for sending this through, and high fives to the fabulous publicists who sometimes know what I want to read before I even do!

The Curlew’s Eye – synopsis

Greta’s partner Joel grew up with five brothers and a sister in a feisty household on an isolated NT property. But he doesn’t talk about those days – not the deaths of his sister and mother, nor the origin of the scars that snake around his body.

Now, many years later, he returns with Greta and their three young boys to prepare the place for sale. The boys are quick to settle in, and Joel seems preoccupied with work, but Greta has a growing sense of unease, struggling in the build-up’s oppressive heat and living in the shadow of the old, burned-out family home. She knows she’s a stranger in this uncanny place, with its eerie and alluring landscape, hostile neighbour, and a toxic dam whose clear waters belie its poison. And then there’s the mysterious girl living rough whom Greta tries to befriend.

Determined to make sense of it all, Greta is drawn into Joel’s unspoken past and confronted by her own. Before long the curlew’s haunting cry will call her to face the secrets she and Joel can no longer outrun.