This year has not been the best for me reading wise – I seem to have little to no attention span at the moment, and for the past month I’ve been slogging though a book on magic (don’t judge me) that has actually been a far from magical experience. And so, looking for something a little lighter, I stumbled upon A Pocketful of Crows. This one had the magic I had been looking for.
A nameless girl lives in the forest. Keeping apart from others, she’s one of the travelling folk, living so close to nature that she can even walk in the skin of the other forest creatures. Until, one day, a chance encounter with a handsome young lord in the forest finds her falling in love, and leaving the forest to live with him. But it comes at a price. As she changes to please her beloved, she finds her abilities dwindling, a price that becomes too high when she’s thrown over in favour of another.
I’ve had a slightly hit or miss experience with a couple of other Joanne Harris books, but I’m glad that I read this one, which went a long way towards making me re-revise my opinion of her writing. A Pocketful of Crows is a very well-written fairytale that doesn’t forget to include the darkness that’s at every fairytale’s heart, and one I enjoyed so much that I read it in one sitting.
If you’re at all a fan of fairytales, especially the older, un-Disneyfied ones, then you’ll find a lot to enjoy here.