tamaranth | 2020/86: Cottingley -- Alison Littlewood

2020/86: Cottingley -- Alison Littlewood

‘They don’t really like us. They don’t want to play. They don’t really know how to dance. They only wish to make us want to be where they are.’ ‘And where is that, child?’ I asked, but she would not say... [loc. 462]

Another NewCon Press novella, this is a dark and unsettling epistolary tale, framed as the letters written by country gentleman Lawrence H. Fairclough in the 1920s, initially to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and later to his associate Edward Gardner. Fairclough, a resident of Cottingley whose granddaughter Harriet has shown him the fairies (and has complained to him of being 'stung' by one) wishes to contribute to Conan Doyle's work. The fairies encountered by Harriet, her mother Charlotte and Fairclough himself are not like those photographed by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith -- they are 'minuscule, but very bright', and (Harriet informs him) they do not like to be looked at.

Fairclough's letters provide a one-sided narrative of increasing unease: it's easy to understand the tone and content of the unseen letters he receives in return. Clearly the fairies encountered by his family are rather less benign, and Littlewood does an excellent job of building suspense and a creeping sense of horror.

Very atmospheric, with a thoroughly credible narrative voice and just enough explication that the ending is really quite dark.