It may not be the season yet to take a book to the beach and on reflection, maybe taking THE BOOK OF SPECULATION to the seaside is as silly as sitting on the sand and reading Jaws.
Maybe its just as well to cosy up in a chair or bed to read THE BOOK OF SPECULATION, and let Erika Swyler’s enchanting story swirl around you.
THE BOOK OF SPECULATION commences, quite literally, as a cliff hanger, “Perched on the bluff’s edge, the house is in danger.” The house is the ancestral home of local librarian, Simon Watson, who lives alone in the dilapidated dwelling since his sister, Enola, ran away with the circus.
Enola is following a well formed tradition by the females in her family to join the carnival, only she has opted to be a Tarot reader rather than a mermaid, the breath holding heritage of her maternal line. Good career choice, as all these aquatic acrobats drowned.
Occupational hazard is supposed but suicide spurred by a curse is also posited when a rare book is delivered to Simon, a book of revelations to the young bibliothecary, a book of speculation in whose pages the evidence of a hex is firmly evident.
Author Erika Swyler juggles two narratives in THE BOOK OF SPECULATION, the present day story of Simon and the book that has been sent to him, a journal by a Mr. Hermelius Peabody, a late 18th century showman, a precursor to Barnum Bailey and the Ringling Brothers.
Within the pages of the latter we get the ancestral roots of the curse and clues to its deciphering.
In the present, Simon’s place is not only on the precipice; his employment has been terminated, his sister may be in mortal danger and he has begun an illicit affair with the daughter of a life long friend.
As he, and we, are drawn into the ancient narrative it is clear that a deadly deadline is looming, a particular date that fate has marked fatal for the female line the latest of which is his sibling, Enola.
THE BOOK OF SPECULATION is the literary equivalent of Who Do You think You Are, a detective story that delves deep into ancestral nooks and crannies, flows and eddies, skeleton coasts and safe harbours.
An edifice complex is revealed, “a crippled token of one man’s love for another man’s wife”.
With all the portent of flood and tides and tempests, the book is basically about family, blood and blended, past, present and future. As Simon says “there are obligations that come with family, letting them care for you when they need to.” And, “We carry our families like anchors, rooting us in storms, making sure we never drift from where and who we are. we carry our families within us the way we carry our breath underwater, keeping us afloat, keeping us alive. I’ve been lifting anchors since I was eighteen. I’ve been holding my breath since before I was born.”
THE BOOK OF SPECULATION is a wild carnival of a book with a cavalcade of bizarre characters- you wont forget the tentacle tattooed human electrical conductor in a hurry, – sideshows, and a touch of magic. Take the plunge.
THE BOOK OF SPECULATION by Erika Swyler is published by Corvus