Fur by Meg Harper combines a modern coming-of-age story with the ancient Selkie myth to create a truly moving book for teenagers and adults alike.
Fur by Meg Harper (Usborne 2006, ISBN 0 7460 7305 4) combines the ancient Selkie myth with a contemporary environment and modern-day people to produce a simply stunning, emotive story of myth, family ties and coming of age.
Synopsis
Grace lives with her father in a coastal resort. Like all teenage girls, she is struggling to come to terms with pubescent feelings and physical changes. But she has a secret. Fine hairs are beginning to grow on her entire body. It affects her relationships with boys and she thus begins her quest to discover the reason for the shocking change.
It is then that she discovers a link to her mother, whom she barely remembers, and
about whom her father has held many heart-wrenching secrets of his own. We follow Grace’s voyage of discovery as she unravels the truth about her mother and attempts to reunite them, with devastating, tear-jerking results.
Modern themes for today’s readers
The themes within the story are those with which a teenager in today’s world is likely to have encountered or be going through themselves. Grace’s father is a single parent. He is extremely responsible in how he has handled all the physical side of puberty, taking immense care to explain the changes Grace will face. But he is struggling in his own way to met the demands of his teenage daughter as she wants to know more and more about her parentage, her past family life and infringes on the secrets he has taken great pains to keep hidden from her.
First love and emotional struggles are foremost in Grace’s mind as she has to reconcile her own body secret with the developing feelings she has for the boy she has begun seeing. Her own emotions are raw as she wrestles with her own instinct for the sea, while wanting to keep her father happy.
Body image is predominant in many teenagers’ minds and is treated with sympathy in this book. The teenagers here are all developing their own adult shapes and forms, and producing the kinds of attractions which go hand in hand with it. The concern Grace has about an element of her body change, although taken to extremes in this novel, echoes the worries many teenagers have about their body image.
Myth and the sea
The Selkie myth is intertwined with Grace’s entire lifestyle. She loves swimming. It helps her when she is emotionally troubled. Meg Harper uses the sea to great effect throughout the novel, utilising its motion to echo the turbulence of emotions in Grace’s world.
The entire setting for the book is either nearby or actually in the sea. The close proximity of Grace on the seashore to the Selkies in the sea reflects just how split her life is between the human world on the shore and the mythical nature of the creatures out at sea. The sea draws her in. She dreams of the sea, and she cannot bear to be away from it for any length of time. Her father understands this, and even his acknowledgement of the part the sea has to play in their lives is evident by the location of their house.
If the sea echoes human feelings, then it is at sea when the feelings combine with action to create a hugely tempestuous story of love, family ties and ultimate sacrifice. The mythical element of the plotting is forgotten as the reader is drawn into a climactic set of actions which embroils the reader in such emotional turmoil that all characters become equal as we wait to discover their fate.
Cotemporary style
The visual appeal of the book is engaging for the teenage girl, most notably with an element of Chick Lit colouration about it, using variants of blue coupled with vivid pink. The language is informal to the extent that younger readers would become absorbed immediately, and the dialogue between characters, particularly between the teenagers themselves, is realistic and expressive. The language flows as easily as the plot itself. The final denouement is satisfying for both a younger readership and even for the adults who have read the book with a tissue at hand.
This highly recommended novel is a modern version of a quite sinister myth, made accessible for a teenage audience through its identification with contemporary emotional issues. Its emotive power, particularly in the relationship between Grace and her incredible, estranged mother, leaves any reader with a shiver up the spine and a tissue wet with tears. Can you read it without becoming intensely emotionally involved in this superb, fascinating story? Impossible!
