SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
The Cottingley Cuckoo
AJ Elwood
Titan Books 2021
Pb, 365pp, £8.99, ISBN 9781789096859
We have three wonderfully fortean concepts to start with. We all know that fairies, even if they might sometimes be pretty, delicate little winged creatures, are rarely benign, and in AJ Elwood’s we learn (perhaps) just how vindictive they can be. On her first day working at a nursing home Rose meets a somewhat formidable resident, Charlotte Favell, who gives her a letter to read; written to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1921, it tells of the finding of a dead fairy by a river in Cottingley by the writer’s seven-year-old granddaughter Harriet. Over the coming months Charlotte gives Rose more letters to read:
