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400 pages, Hardcover
First published August 2, 2022
‘This was a pleasant place, but outside it would soon be growing dark. Her happiness felt like a very small island. Through the open door she saw that the sky had changed. A chill was creeping in like a touch of cruelty.’
‘[it] was widely agreed that the trees in the wood remembered; they could whisper to one another of things past and days long gone. They were hungry for human dramas, and they loved to hear stories from the village below.It’s not easy to give a plot summation of ‘Small Angels’; the narrative centres around the titular church, as well as Blanch Farm and Mockbeggar woods, where the Gonne family are the latest in a genealogy of village outcasts obligated to perform certain rites to keep the feeble villagers safe from an ominous threat linked to the death of Harry Child two centuries ago.If you whispered your tale by moonlight (the trees listened best by moonlight) you might hear Mockbeggar whisper back. The story would rustle from leaf to leaf, branch to branch, all the way to the shadowed, thorny heart of the woods where no human had ever existed.
When the trees listened, a story lived – it became vivid, it took possession. You’d be there at its centre, watching it all unfold. It was worth braving the dark and the cold for this subtle magic.’
’The breeze tugged at the flowers and the dog roses shed petals over her head.She reached out to one of those sweet pink and white flowers, but just before she was about to pick it she had a feeling that she shouldn’t, that it would be a huge mistake –
The small storytelling voice had crept back into her mind – she had been too distracted by the woods to guard against it.
’The night was warm as summer. Moonlight was coming in through the open barn door, and the dancers’ shadows made strange shapes in the light – like tree branches, Chloe thought, if you looked out of the corner of your eye. She found herself dancing, though she couldn’t remember when she had joined the others. […] The bride’s wreath was tight against her hair, flower stems scratching, but she would not take it off.’
‘A story wears a groove if it’s told often enough. It wears you away like pacing feet on stone.'