A mythical creature and the Greatest Showman, we review The Mermaid by Christina Henry.
Mermaid – the blurb
Once there was a fisherman who lived on a cold and rocky coast and was never able to convince any woman to come away and live in that forbidding place with him. One evening he pulled up his net and found a woman in it. A woman with black hair and eyes as gray as a stormy sea and a gleaming fish’s tail instead of legs.
The storm in her eyes rolled into his heart. She stopped her thrashing and crashing at his voice, though she did not understand his words. But her eyes had seen inside of him, and his loneliness caught her more surely than the net. So she stayed with him, and loved him, though he grew old, and she did not.
Remarks of this strange and unusual woman traveled from village to village and town to town, until they reached the ears of a man whose business was in the selling of the strange and unusual.
His name was P.T. Barnum, and he’d been looking for a mermaid.
This is the greatest show
So I’ve read a few by Henry now and do find she can be quite hit and miss. The Lost Boy about Peter Pan was fabulous, The Mermaid? Maybe not quite the same. Where Henry does excel is by taking a well known tale, a character, or a myth and turning it into a believable story. She adds meat to the bones when you didn’t even realize meat was missing. Everyone has heard of Barnum right? But what about his exhibits, his very own showmen?
A fishy tale
The book wasn’t really about Barnum, side-lined as a two dimensional money grabbing character. It was about Amelia the mermaid pulled from the water by a fisherman who became Barnum’s watery muse. As usual with Henry the myths were dispelled – Amelia was not a thing of seductive beauty but scaly and sharp. I loved the idea of ‘dead water’ and worried about Barnum’s ruthlessness. Would he trap Amelia in a net never used by fishermen?
Give me Mr Pan
I’m not sure how though I felt about the actual storyline. Why would Amelia go to Barnum? She didn’t need money to travel, could she not simply swim? There were further questions as the book progressed which I won’t delve in to here but the ending did feel rushed and a bit, twee. After reading The Lost Boy I was so looking forward to The Mermaid, it’s an interesting idea and I appreciated the reference to Barnum but it’s not a patch on her version of Mr Pan.