A Pocketful of Crows Paperback – Import, 15 October 2020

The book sweeps you into a magical wild world.Beautiful and lyrical prose.Fairy tale lovers must definitely give this book a try.

This was a wonderful departure of style for Joanne Harris, who is so versatile in the range of subjects for her stories.A Pocketful Of Crows is a pagan style novella that essentially tells of the cycle of life. It is narrated over the course of a single year, beginning in May by a fourteen year old creature that might be seen as a witch. She has the power to enter the bodies of forest creatures, such as a fox, or fish etc. Those with these powers are called 'traveling folk'. Set some hundreds of years ago, when superstition was rife.She makes the mistake of falling for a human nobleman named William while in her human dark skin. As a result she loses her powers. However, William eventually goes into the arms of Fiona, a maiden. The young girl plots revenge.This is a dark tale, ideal to read. It is also illustrated. ,It could well be seen as a modern fairytale. It is certainly unlike any book you will have read before. A pity the chapters are so short. The book could well have been a lot longer.The ending is excellent, and gives a new insight in how the cycle of life exists for the mysterious 'traveling folk'

Modern, pagan fairy tale written in deceptively simple language while presenting ideas that resonate with modern readers. The book is a poetic paraphrase of a ballad but the female protagonist is presented with a dilemma that is common to women in our present society. At the heart she loses herself because she gives in to love, which turns out to be shallow and disappointing. At the end the there is a pagan trinity of women who in retrospect make the structure of the tale dovetail neatly.The cover and pages are also beautifully illustrated, which enriches the reading experience and makes it a pleasure to sit and read quietly. It is a refreshing antidote to reading on screens.

This is one of Harris’s fantasy novels, demarcated by her middle initial “M.” to separate her from her other oeuvre of non-fantasy works.This folklore-inspired novella has a simple narrative that centres round a wild child’s love affair with the heir of a landlord in the village. She is nameless, except for the description ‘brown girl’, and she is a “Travelling Folk” who can inhabit the bodies of woodland creatures to run, fly and swim as she pleases in the woods, sometimes spying on the villagers whom she knows to keep away from, until one day she falls irresistibly in love with the handsome heir who passes her by in the woods.What follows is a chronological account of the year that follows, in keeping with the different seasons that mark the lives of both the villagers and the woodlands alike, as the brown girl predictably falls out of favour with her faithless young lover, suffers cruel betrayal, and vows bitter revenge. The language Harris employs in the book sings in the style of old-time ballads that sings with each line and description, making it a joy to read, aloud especially. And it’s no wonder, considering that Harris had initially as a series of tweets on live Twitter #Storytime. The many illustrations in the book also add much colour to the reader’s experience of this timeless yet modern magical tale.

This is the perfect fairytale – love, obsession, revenge and dark magic blended together in a delightful fable. The book itself is a lovely piece filled with illustrations and poetry and reading it was a pleasure. As for the story itself, it has everything you could want from a fairytale. I liked the way the book is divided into months of the year. The narrator is the nameless wild girl who falls in love, allows herself to be tamed and given a name and seeks revenge when she is casually tossed aside. A Pocketful of Crows gets pretty dark towards the end but no les enthralling. This book is a joy to read.

The idea of writing something that reads like a fairy-tale or a folktale is something that sounds that sounds easy, but is very difficult to create in reality. It is not just what happens, but the mood, the setting, the language.This way what Joanne Harris has done here is so impressive. The narrative of one of the faerie or travelling folk, who falls in love with a mortal is a traditional one. But is the way, that it is told that is the important thing. The voice of the narrator, is enticing with it’s descriptions of life as a liminal being within the landscape. The story features elements from myths and folklore that add to the feeling that this story is part of the tradition that it celebrates. If Harris tried to extend this to a full length novel, it may not have worked. But as it is, it is a wonderful tale, that reveals in the shared heritage of fairy folk, traditions, re-told tales and ballads, and in it’s telling, earns its place with them.