Described by its author Iris Costello as “a love letter to forgotten voices and those who seek to preserve and channel them,” The Story Collector is a century-swapping, time-hopping historical thriller.
Costello’s story dances nimbly between three interlinking tales told across various decades between modern-day Cornwall, London in the grips of the Great War, and Danholm prisoner of war camp in Germany a few years later, as the war comes to an end. It’s not a novel technique, but it is done masterfully, with a common thread running through all of these stories that begs the reader to pull at it.
The book is chock full of fascinating characters: a tarot-card reading baker, shedding her German name to hide in plain sight amongst suspicious neighbours; a mute, British PoW and a researcher studying him who faces a moral dilemma.
The Story Collector’s pacy and accessible style brings to light some genuinely fascinating topics – the role of the occult in helping a generation at war to make sense of their surroundings, the pressure on foreigners to assimilate, the researchers recording the voices of PoWs to preserve them for future study.
The Story Collector, Iris Costello (Penguin)
Price: £8.99/£3.99 Ebook/£14 audiobook. Info: here
words HUGH RUSSELL