Crow Face, Doll Face by Carly Holmes
Unhappily married mother of four, Annie is drowning in domestic servitude.
She often wonders what her life could have been had she not had children, but when her youngest daughters perform a seemingly impossible act of levitation, her life is touched with magic and she realises that her girls are truly special and that she must protect them. Eventually Annie musters the courage to leave the wreck of her marriage, but she commits a terrible, unthinkable, unmotherly act along the way.
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Crow Face, Doll Face explores being forced to live with the consequences of the decisions we make and the fantasies we construct to soothe ourselves when the life we live falls far short of the life we planned.
An uncanny tale of a flawed mother and her wicked children.
My Review
Amazing cover!
I’m not sure what I’ve just read. I don’t know how to describe it or what genre it falls into. Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s its own genre. I just know I found it terrifying and at times was scared to read on.
Annie wants to travel and see the world. But she marries Peter and he doesn’t. So she gives it all up. They have their first child – a boy they call Julian – followed by a girl. Annie struggles to love Elsa and believes that touching her will taint her with her mother’s disdain. She wears gloves on the rare occasions she handles the baby. At this point, I would have diagnosed her with post natal depression, maybe postpartum psychosis, but this was then, not now. I’m unsure if this is the 70s – it never gives the date, but they still use pound notes, though there are 50ps, there are no mobile phones or internet.
Then Kitty is born. She is so beautiful, they call her Doll Face. Peter is obsessed. Finally they have Leila, whose dark, shiny hair and slightly beaky nose make her look like a crow so they call her Crow Face. Leila and Kitty are inseparable. Annie is slightly jealous that she isn’t needed by either of them, emotionally at any rate.
I felt so sorry for Elsa at this point. She’s plain and clumsy and gets pushed out all the time. She adores Julian, who is the only one who is kind to her.
Annie believes that the two youngest are special in some way and she must protect them, even at the expense of everyone else. It’s hard to tell whether she is delusional or her post natal depression is spiralling out of control. I found her hard to like, even though she is as much a victim as anything else. She never wanted to be a mother, she never wanted to be like her own mother where having children was enough for her. Peter’s behaviour is pretty awful as well, though having clipped Annie’s wings, he’s left her to falter on the ground.
It’s a remarkable book, but don’t expect everything to be neatly packaged. You’ll be disappointed.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Carly Holmes lives and writes on the banks of the river Teifi, west Wales. Her debut novel The Scrapbook was shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, and her Literary Strange short story collection Figurehead was published in limited edition hardback by Tartarus Press, and reprinted in paperback by Parthian Books. Her prize-winning short prose has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Ambit, The Ghastling, The Lonely Crowd, and has twice been
selected for The Best Horror of the Year.
