I loved Sarah Winman’s fourth novel, “Still Life” so I was looking forward to reading “A Year of Marvellous Ways” whilst in London.  Turned out to be not so great.

Like “Still Life”, this book is a big, sweeping novel involving flashbacks and many fascinating characters, but Winman just didn’t seem to be able to tie it all together in a totally satisfactory way for me.

The clever play on words in the title refers not just to the extraordinary events that a 90 year old witchy woman creates in her gypsy caravan by the tidal river and near the church on an island where she lights a candle every night. It also refers to her name which is Marvellous Ways.  She tells stories of her mother, a mermaid, and uses her special talents to rescue others.  The primary one in need of rescue is Francis Drake, a 23 year old veteran of WWII who has a major case of PTSD and who shows up nearly dead and frozen in Marvellous’s woods one night. Saving Drake and eventually a woman baker named Peace who was among the 417 babies Marvellous mid-wived into the world are the substance of the book.

It’s a grand story but the purple prose got in the way from time to time and a good editing would have cut it by about 1/4.  Nonetheless, Winman has again provided me with several characters who will remain lodged in my memory.  The action takes place largely in Cornwall which we visited last year and that added to my enjoyment of the book.

I read this book on my Kindle which made it much more difficult to flip back and forth which would have been especially useful in this novel filled with flashbacks and tied together neatly in the final pages.  When Drake discovers his missing father’s tombstone on is island graveyard outside the islanded church, the book reaches its climax, but frankly by then I was so confused and dazed that I don’t think I totally got it.

On balance, not a book I’d recommend though I still would urge folks to read “Still Life” which I loved.