Susan Fletcher’s fourth novel, The Silver Dark Sea, is unashamedly romantic. Championing hope, love and the transformative power of stories, it is set on Parla, one of a small group of fictitious, sparsely populated islands, which, with their puffins and sheep and imaginative folklore, recall the Orkneys.

The action takes place in the present. Maggie, now in her early forties, is mourning her husband, Tom Bundy, who accidentally drowned four years previously. Maggie was an inlander, but Bundys have inhabited Parla for generations. The community is close-knit and inward-looking, and Tom’s death arouses feelings of guilt and

Literary Review

Sep 2012

Categories

Pamela Norris

Pain, Folly and Joys of Romantic Love

Love Rectangle

Who Is Sylvia?

Double Life After Double Life

Seizing the Moment

She Longed for Security and Affection

Reading between the Lines

A Rodin of One’s Own

A Terrible Warning to Keep Clear of Cornwall

Women Can Do It, Too

On the Brink

Rooms with a View

Camera Obscura

The Snowman’s Tale

The Art of Diction

A Writer’s Refuge

Chaining The Soul

Mother Swapping

Sex and Cars

Writers’ War

Sister Act

A Short Story

‘A Baton In The Dark’

Off The Radar

Dearly Beloveds