Anyone who knows me knows I am a lover of fairy-tales. Not so much the Disney Princess tripe pretty much all young kids assigned as girls are brainwashed into admiring. (My apologies to anyone who is a Disney stan!) My fondness for fairies and mermaids and monsters and mythical creatures comes from a time before I was taught to be skinny and pretty and quiet. It comes from the dirt.
I distinctively remember scabbing about in clumps of earth; chin glowing golden with buttercups, inspecting fairy circles in the grass. Braiding daisies and pressing petals for all sorts of potions and spells in the hopes I would rip open the gates to a world I would really belong. Or at the beach, where a shimmer on top of a wave mutated in the heat. A violent ocean became the galloping horses of mermen, and a conch shell could sing what the mermaids said like how we used tin cans. I would lie under the water and erupt with bubbles, emptying my ribs. Allowing my body to sink as I imagined how it would feel to swim as fast as I could run with flippers instead of feet. Inevitably, I had to come up for air.
Now It would be rather strange of me to go about using my specs as a magnifying glass to hunt for pixies or refuse to leave the deep-end of pools. But, there is still a way for us boring adults to escape into other worlds with possibilities we can’t conceive of uttering aloud. You know what I’m going to say… reading!!!
Books are portals to other lives; the pages offer us experiences we’ve never had, maybe will never have— and this paper life somehow becomes more real than the moment where you sit. Your face reflected in fantasy, more true for the distortions. The book I am discussing today transported me fabulously to a place full of senses and character and emotion and action. The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey is a myth for modern times, reminding us of where (and the what and how and why…) we come from.
The main premise of the plot is pretty simple: a mermaid falls in love with a land-dweller. David. However, this is where the traditional element fractures somewhat. Aycayia – the mermaid of Black Conch – is wrenched from the waters by American money-grabbers, and rescued by David. (I love David because it all starts with him smoking a spliff on his fishing boat, the best book opening I have read in a while.) However, on land her aquatic appendages begin to fall away, and she becomes more human again. But if love between Aycayia and David is one of the central themes, her conversion begs a question: should you have to change to be with the one you love? And more importantly: Just because you love someone does that mean you get to keep them?
For me it wasn’t the love story element which was most compelling, but the evocation of loneliness for the characters. Aycayia learnt to live in the loneliness of her ocean depths, but as soon as she is removed there is a catch 22: first loneliness in the water, pining after connection she’s never felt. Then loneliness on an island populated with people nothing like herself, knowing that what she wants can’t hold. Even David himself, despite living on such a small communal island, is somewhat of a maverick: aloof to the ladies and withdrawn from his distant relatives, the Rains. Solitariness is the only constant in this magical tale full of ups and downs. But, I also think that’s what makes the loving moments stand out more potently. By the end I was crying like a little wimp.
Another aspect of the story I really appreciate are the descriptions Roffey gives of Aycayia in her mermaid form. Most cultural depictions of mermaids that come to mind are very white and very sparkly: prepubescent maidens with their little titties in a glittery bra. There’s none of that here. Aycayia in the water is a formidable, majestic force at one with nature: she has barnacles and limpets encrusted up her nostrils, on her tattooed skin. Her hair is dreadlocked with seaweed, out the nubs on her spine spike dorsal fins, and she is best friends with an octopus! But Aycayia’s tail is the stand out: double her size (she shrinks out of the water), and scaled silvery-black like a shark. I found it liberating to read David falling in love with Aycayia without needing her to be clean or ‘pretty’. Aycayia can speak with trees and animals and sing: her magnetism comes from how she carries herself without compromise, not from trying to pose as a modern Caribbean beauty queen.
The Mermaid of Black Conch is a book to lose yourself in. And in that loss – of normality, of ‘yourself’ – surrounding familiarity will start to slot into a newness more real. I left this book emotional and elated, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to go on an adventure that feels like coming home. Monique Roffey has enchanted me with her siren’s song, and I hope she will you too.