($39.99, Corvus)
Every second book I’ve picked up lately seems to be narrated by a young child and as I love books narrated by young children, I just keep reading them. But a girl needs to change her diet every now and then, otherwise her teeth fall out (or similar), so for this week’s book I changed my selection system.
I chose a book based entirely on the fact that the edges of its pages are red. I once bought a car because it was red too. And of course I am married to a person of the redheaded persuasion.
I also wear a lot of red.
If more books’ pages were red around the outside I might have discovered this system a little earlier. They just look so cheerful sitting there all ruby-like and waiting for you to open them!
And so it was I dipped into The Diviner’s Tale, which probably would not otherwise be quite so much my cup of tea.
Cassandra is a professional diviner or dowser, ie, she can find water, and is hired by a developer to dowse his land. While walking through a lonely valley one spring morning however, she finds more than water – she stumbles on a young girl hanging from a tree.
But when she returns with the police, there’s no sign of the girl, and Cassandra – who has been teased her whole life for carrying on the family divining tradition – is once more put in the “loony” basket.
What follows is the tale of Cassandra trying to put back together a life that was torn apart by the death of her brother many years ago. Meanwhile, her beloved father slips further into the grip of dementia, her twin sons head towards adulthood, and the secrets of her past haunt her in more ways than one.
I loved the whole idea of divining, and Cassandra is a fascinating character, with more problems than most to overcome, so if the story ebbed and flowed at times, it was never enough to keep me from turning those red-edged pages.
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