The story of two teenage girls on a very remote Scottish island incorporates a good deal of myth and magic and is fairly enjoyable if you like that sort of thing (I generally do), but it has some problems.

Mary lives with her Da and 3 year old Barney after her mother died in the recent past. They survive by trading Mary's embroideries and her father's fishing catches to the "tall men" who visit their island and trade them food, candles, and other items. When Barney becomes the latest in a string of boys to disappear from the island after the tall men have visited, Mary is driven to try to find him, and in the process remembers some harrowing repressed memories.

Morgan lives with her parents and sisters behind a 13 foot high fence which is always locked closed by her mother. They are the only non-natives on the island, having fled from the mainland. Her mother is deeply troubled with anxiety and persecution complexes, and Morgan reads fairy tales and dreams of escaping her prison. When she gets out, she runs into Mary and sort of bumbles around the island, acting as a witness to developing events.

Fantastical elements include the Thrashing House, a building which a tree on the island formed itself into on its own initiative and which kills anyone put in there, transforming them into a physical object with symbolic meaning. The island's women, the power brokers, use it to punish transgressors and criminals.

Mary is able to recall the memories of people who have previously held metal keys when she has those keys in her hands. Also one of the main characters of the novel turns out to be a Selkie and abruptly disappears when she finds her lost seal skin and returns to the sea, presumably losing all interest in the mystery of the missing boys. Bye then.

Problems include dropped plot points. A couple of instances are provided of women seeming to go mad because the Thrashing House key has disappeared and no one can get in to the bell tower attached to it to ring the bells which are said to take away the dreams of the sleeping. No bells means no escaping dreams, which is a problem? But then that's dropped and we don't hear any more about that idea. Nevermind.

The missing boys are traded for by the tall men, who take them to the mainland for... some reason. I don't know why. Seems odd they'd give up trading goods out of benevolence so the boys could go get educated in larger society, it runs counter to their cold business like approach, but that seems to be the best argument presented. Doesn't make much sense.

I was also bothered by how this island could exist in such isolation. We're not told what time period this is, but clues are given that indicate it is pretty close to the current day. The island may be remote, but it's not unknown... islands off Scotland aren't exactly well hidden... the tall men trade with it and sail around, so word would get out. Some of the boys from the island went to the mainland. So... how can there be total absence of things like tourists, and national government, and such? I doubt very much any mainland government would leave law and order on the island up to women putting people into a Thrashing House that kills them as the means of maintaining law. ( )

I read this novel after Simon and Gavin of The Readers podcast announced it as their July book club pick. It sounded like something I wouldn't pick up on my own, but I was in the mood to step outside my comfort zone.

Although I'm usually put off by dialects, it didn't take long to get into the rhythm of Mary's and I was quickly drawn into the story, curious about the lives of both Mary and Morgan, the two main characters, whose stories are told in alternating chapters. Mary grew up on the isolated island that is visited regularly by the tall men who arrive in boats to trade products from the mainland for the embroideries that the island women make and the fish that the men catch. Morgan's family came to the island in an attempt to calm the mother's neurosis. Mary's younger brother disappears and Morgan yearns to escape the fortress that her parents have created to keep others out and their family in.

Snake Ropes is one of the most original stories I've read in a long time. The setting and sensory details are superb--I could feel the cold, hear the seashore, imagine character's voices. The plot and characters are unique, yet familiar in some ways due to the underpinning of mythology and fairytale woven throughout the story and its feminist critique.

Magical realism enhances this tale and doesn't seem gimmicky at all (as it often does to me). The community is matriarchal, but that doesn't mean its a paradise for Mary and Morgan. Both young women suffer due to parents' emotional problems, tradition, or the schemes of elders, but there's hope that together they'll find peace and healing, and create a safe home together. ( )

" I guess there was just too much in this story (Selkies, Rapunzel, a whipping house, etc) and it never really came together satisfactorily. The narrative meandered too much-we learned far too little about the characters and yet they did so much."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/snake-ropes-jess-richards.html ( )

It took me longer than it would take me to read another book because of the slow start. I thought it could of been a very good story except questions weren't answered. I wanted to know more about the Thrashing House and I thought the end was rubbish. I wanted to know what happened after it. For example; what happened to Morgan's mother and the rest of her family? And what about the rest of the women's son's and the Tall Man?
Also, there weren't enough descriptions of the characters. I couldn't picture then properly and in my mind they all looked the same.
It started to get good in the end but Ifelt that the book finished too early. ( )

Mary shares a cottage with her fisherman father and little brother Barney on a small island just off the edge of the map after the death of her mother. Traders from the mainland visit the island regularly in their fishing boats to trade goods with the inhabitants, but then boys go missing, one of them Barney. Morgan was born on the mainland but now lives on the island with her parents and twin sisters, imprisoned in her own house with a storey-high fence. Alternating between the two voices, this book tells of the events that lead to those separate narratives becoming a joint one.

A masterful debut, I wager that this novel will be unlike any other you've read before. Truly original, at times it appears as if it were the brainchild of a fevered imagination, with dreamlike, almost hallucinogenic, qualities; at others, to be the essence of every dark fairy-tale you know. It is in turns atmospheric, threatening, enigmatic, puzzling, but also filled with love and hope, and extremely memorable. It exerts a grip on the reader that doesn't stop with the closing of the back cover. There are ropes that bite, keys that talk, a tunnel of eyes and, in the centre of the island, the Thrashing House, where bad deeds get punished and no one that enters it ever leaves. There are so many twisted layers to this book that it will take years of repeated reading and discussion to untangle them, it is so rich in reference and allegory. The writing is like poetry in places, with the author's love of language and stories obvious. Even if the first 50+ pages don't seem to make a lot of sense at first, I implore you to stick with it and keep reading, as a lot of the questions will be answered. There are still loose ends after the last page has been turned, but I don't think this is meant to be one of those books where everything will have a happy ending or be neatly tidied away. A reading experience - tell your friends!

(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.) ( )