In her debut, Brooks convincingly renders a child trying to make sense of the confusing and mysterious world of adults; Virginia is observant, but she doesn’t always get things right, and her efforts to control events can have unintended consequences ... A careful buildup of suspense will keep readers guessing and glued to the pages.
These mysteries are involving...although somewhat predictable. What’s missing, though, are those 75 years between Virginia’s coming of age and her actual old age. A few scattered references to career and travel don’t give a true sense of a life fully lived. As it is, young, naive Virginia’s story is more interesting than that of the bitter octogenarian who wavers between wanting revenge and making amends. Other characters are enigmatic rather than complicated, while smarmy, mustachioed Deering is a cartoon villain. What Brooks gets right is her evocation of time and place ... It reminds me of another haunting wartime tale belonging to the marsh. Surely, it’s no accident that Virginia chooses as her 12th birthday present a copy of Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose.
Elizabeth Brooks’ grasp of the genre is evinced by the inclusion of integral elements. What distracts are periodic clunky dialogue, overly written passages verging on the twee, and a heavy reliance on adverbs, disrupting the flow of an otherwise very good story. The problem is the gothic cannot afford disruption; it’s crucial the reader sink in deeply, perhaps more so with this genre than most other. If a writer cannot sustain a grim and foreboding atmosphere, the spell is broken. Overall a good novel, The Orphan of the Salt Winds fails to deliver at a high level. Had it avoided a few sophomoric pitfalls, it could have been quite good indeed. As written, it just misses.
Ambiguous and infused with both fairy tale and matters more threatening, Brooks’ novel is persuasively descriptive...but doesn’t quite knit together. Deering’s semifarcical lechery, Lorna’s perplexing psychology, and the ends left dangling rob the story of conviction. A committed, stylish mystery better at composing its mood music than pulling all the notes together.
In her hauntingly gothic debut, Brooks beautifully mixes bittersweet youthfulness with the stinging pain of past memories ... This quietly unsettling tale holds its secrets close, making for a powerful story of loss and longing.
