Against his mother’s wishes, thirty-year-old Michael (“Blue”) Whitley is going from New York City to his late grandmother’s house in rural Nova Scotia close to the “defunct Starling Cove Friendship Colony, the former commune where Blue was born.” His grandmother has left Blue the house to him in his will and to save his struggling restaurant business, he needs to sell it, but wants to see it one last time, not having been back since he was five-years-old when his mother took him away from the place. Accompanying Blue are his three closest friends: Elisa and forty-year-old Jason (older than the others), who are married, and twenty-year-old Gabe who clearly adores Blue. They arrive at their destination just in time to be invited to a ceilidh, “like a Gaelic hootenanny,” by the owner of the cottage they have rented, Maureen, a local native Mi’kmaq, and her husband Donald who has Alzheimer’s. It is the friends’ first introduction to “old country culture” of the area made up of Irish and Scottish ancestry and to which some consider to still be “sacred ground.” It is also from the surrounding woods during the ceilidh that Blue sees a shadowy image of his own self, intently watching him which is made all the more complicated by the discovery Blue later makes in his grandmother’s house—about himself.
THE GLITTERING WORLD (2015) is writer Robert Levy’s debut novel—an almost undefinable work filled with mystery, suspense, mythology and legend, splashes of the supernatural and horror, and fantasy. Extremely well written with evocative, rich prose, readers will discover page after page of descriptive language bringing to life the hinterlands of Nova Scotia while also being introduced to another, far less realistic, yet distinct world which co-exists with our own, filled with danger and the unconceivable. THE GLITTERING WORLD is a place where realms clash with shattering consequences.
As Robert Levy takes the reader by the hand and guides them through the beautiful yet haunting landscape where there are “all sorts of legends concerning… [the] woods,” he also creates real-to-life characters, both the quartet of friends and other locals, who the reader will readily visualize and with whom they will be intrigued. Local inhabitants clearly know much more about the legends and history of the area: of strange goings-on, of what “old country folks call… the Fae, but really… [are] the Other Kind,” and even about Blue and his grandmother, but most speak in frustratingly hushed, ill-defined whispers—if at all.
Among the quartet of friends, it is Blue, a man who attracts a “kind of fervent attraction” which he cannot explain from both the women and men who come into contact with him, and his return to his childhood home which triggers events in THE GLITTERING WORLD. He has no explanation for the “haunting nightmares” and feelings of déjà vu he experiences once they are in Starling Cove, especially as he wanders place to place where he feels himself being watched, catching indefinable glimpses of something near him and whispering voices while he feels as though he is being compelled—but by whom and for what purpose? Something is happening to him.
One of the major elements which makes THE GLITTERING WORLD a success is the character development Levy includes in the novel. As events move forward, each new portion of the novel taking on greater shades of mysteriousness and portentousness, Levy also concentrates considerable focus on his four central characters. Having past histories already, both individually and with each other, the relationships among the friends evolve as they are faced with the growing unknowns surrounding them. In many ways, THE GLITTERING WORLD is a novel about friendship, physical and mental attraction, love, a sense of belonging, secrets, tragedy, loss, alienation, the devastation of seeing people about whom one cares change and being separated from them, and even betrayal as much as it is about the creepiness in the forest and the escalating sense of gathering doom. Levy also inserts a notable sense of ambiguity in regards to some of the character’s sexuality. Given his approach to his characters and some very skillful writing, readers invest themselves to an even greater degree into the unknown forces at work in the woods and nearby Kelly Mountain.
Levy daringly sets his story in Nova Scotia rather than the usual British, Scottish, or Irish setting for such a story. He also whips up an astonishing, surreal world within a world in the later portions of the novel which takes readers beyond anything from typical legend regarding fairy-folk. In so doing, THE GLITTERING WORLD adds a new layer to the mythology of the strange and unusual.
As events in THE GLITTERING WORLD increasingly envelope Blue and Elisa, leaving Jason and Gabe in desperate straits to take drastic actions, the novel becomes increasingly fantastic. It’s dramatic, devastating conclusion is colored by the realization nothing lasts forever and by sadness as well as hope—both aspects on varying levels and for more than one of the characters.
THE GLITTERING WORLD is a fairy tale—a creative, imaginative exploration into an alien world filled with “chiaroscuro dreams” which encompasses both the real and the make-believe, and is a most enchanting, wondersome, moving, accomplished, and excellent read.
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