I read many books over the course of a year, some for pleasure, some for work, some to review and share with others.  Some of the books I start out reading for work or to review I end up enjoying more than I had initially predicted.  Very, very few however, of these books make it onto my all time favourite list.  So in a year when I have read some of the finest books yet, it is with great excitement that I add The Folk Keeper to my list of all time favourites.

The Folk Keeper sits within a genre of books that has become very popular with children’s and adult writers alike – I like to call them ‘full-pitcher’ fantasies. The term refers to Maurice Saxby’s description of literature being like the magical pitcher that never runs dry, you can always dip into it and come up with a recurrent theme, archetypal character or story with which to do something new.

I have to admit from the outset that full-pitcher fantasies are probably my favourite sort of books to read.  One of the children’s literature subjects I teach focuses on the history of myths, legends and folk-tales and how these traditional literatures impact on modern writing for children.  It is a fascinating subject and I am on as steep a learning curve as the enthusiastic students with whom I work.  What I most enjoy is discovering some element, character or symbol from one of these traditional literatures woven into a new book.  Perhaps it is this context, which made The Folk Keeper stand out for me as such as strong story. 

Corinna Stonewall, the female protagonist, masquerades as a male so as to be allowed the position of Folk Keeper.  She is endowed with all the feistiness and ingenuity needed to keep the Folk of the Otherworld at bay.  Her story is told through the entries she makes into the Record, a diary of what the Folk are eating and how they are responding to her keeping of them on certain feast days throughout the year. I normally find books told through the device of diary entries quite boring – it is a device that has been done to death.  So I was surprised by the originality of the opening entry.

February 2– Candlemas

It is a day of yellow fog, and the Folk are hungry.  They ate the lamb I brought them, picking the bones clean and leaving them outside the Folk Door.

The lamb was meant for Matron’s Sunday supper.  She’ll know I took it, but she will not dare say anything.  She can keep her tapestries and silks and Sunday dinners.  Here in the Cellar, I control the Folk.  Here, I’m queen of the world.

It is one of the strangest opening passages I’ve ever read but two or three entries later I was completely hooked.

Billingsley has this knack of casually throwing out clues about Corinna which are at first slightly unnerving.  We are told she hardly eats or sleeps, that her skin has a strangely translucent quality and that her downy hair magically grows two inches each night.  Coupled with her fierce determination to control the Folk and her revengeful nature it took me a while to warm to her. Early in the story and, against her wishes, she is summoned to the bedside of Lord Merton who is dying.  He sees past her boyish disguise and recognises her face and her skin.  When she agrees to become The Folk Keeper at Cliffsend, Lord Merton’s estate, she finds herself caught up in a tangled family history.  A history full of secrets and mystery and of characters who are not what they appear to be.  As Corinna searches desperately for her own identity and her place in the world her vulnerability is revealed.

I did not pick the solution to the mystery … I didn’t see the love-story coming and the murder took me completely by surprise, but even if I had guessed at these things I am sure I would still have been satisfied by the story.  Billingsley laces The Folk Keeper with many motifs and archetypal characters from Celtic and Norse mythology, and tells it in an unusual combination of literary quality and pace.

Please judge this book by its cover – Sarah Gibb’s eerie illustration is striking, and Yeti McCaldin’s design is one of the most sophisticated I have seen – you will find it holds a truly remarkable tale inside.

Review by Sarah Mayor Cox

© 2002 Sarah Mayor Cox