What's on your nightstand

Which book has moved or engaged you? Please share it with other CCW members. We accept all genres. Tell us what the book is about (without giving away any spoilers), your reaction to it and why. Please send book reviews to Barbara.siebeneick@gmail.com. (Please note that all book reviews are the opinion of the writer and not the Central Coast Writers.) This month’s review is from Barbara Siebeneick

The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor, Harper Collins Publishers 2017, 380 pages

I picked up the Cottingley Secret in a bargain box and didn’t have any expectations on whether I would like it or not. I usually don’t read fanciful writing, but the author is a NYT Bestselling Author and I was taken by the story. As a mystery writer, I enjoy Arthur Conan Doyle (or ACD as he is referred to in the novel) and I had heard that he once printed a book on the existence of fairies with pictures. This book, The Cottingley Secret is the story behind his book.

The book opens in Yorkshire in 1921 where a Mr. Gardner from London is following Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths with cameras to see if he can record an encounter with fairies at the “beck” behind their house.

From there it jumps to the present day where Olivia Kavanagh is in Ireland getting her grandfather’s affairs together after his untimely death. Her grandmother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s and is the key to take Olivia back to 1917 and the story of the fairies.

The book jumps between the present, 1917 and WWII as the story unwinds. Two girls, Elsie (9) and Frances (16), like to play in the local stream and are always getting in trouble because they come home wet and muddy after their adventures. Frances tells Elsie that she saw fairies near the water fall and they are drawn again and again to the water to see if they can see them again. When Frances mother finally has enough of the wet, muddy mess they bring home and forbids them to go there again, Frances blurts out their secret that they have seen fairies near the water.

Although dubious, Elsie’s father gives them a camera to take pictures as proof. They fake pictures of the fairies by painting fairy cutouts and placing them so they look alive. The girls swore to never tell anyone the pictures were fake because they knew they had seen real ones before. As they say in the book, secrets never stay secret in a small village, and the photos and news of their find explodes on the news and even reaches the interest of ACD. The girls kept their secret about the photos until their old age, but still swore that they had seen real ones.

The book tells the story of a time between world wars when the world was yearning for hope. Through Olvia and her great grandmother they trace the story through four generations of women who were each affected by the fairies in some way. Are fairies real or not? That is a question will leave to you to decide.