Why a Booktrail?
Magical times: Imagine being sent a novel with your grandmother’s name inscribed inside. Could the story reveal family secrets?
The Book of Speculation
What you need to know before your trail
Long Island
Simon Watson lives alone in his family home perched on the edge of a crumbling cliff. His parents and mother have died and his sister Enola is with a travelling circus and so barely calls.
One day he receives a book from an antiquarian bookseller, inscribed with the name Verona Bonn, Simon’s grandmother. Curious, he starts to read and finds that it’s a story of two doomed lovers who were part of a travelling circus more than two hundred years ago. The pages are old and yellowing but the story is one which fascinates him but troubles him at the same time – and soon the line between fact and fiction start to blur.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
The House on Long Island Sounds
“Perched on the bluff’s edge, the house is in danger”
Perched on the edge of a cliff which is slowly crumbling into the sea, the atmosphere is one of dark foreboding as the water slowly claims the house and the history of those who lived there. It has already claimed the life of his mother who drowned.
The mysterious book – the Circus
Simon receives the book Peabody’s Magic and Miracles’ from a stranger, a bookseller by the name of Martin Churchwarry. The novel reveals the story of a travelling show and the human mermaids who perform there. Simon’s grandmother it turns out was one of these performers and so her story links both the past and present of Simon’s research
Simon’s research immerses him into the circus story of the 1700s and its reveal rumbles and meanders to reveal a dark and gloomy backdrop of a magical and mystical travelling show.
“Every culture has water spirits, mermaids, selkies, nixies”
The circus is one of tarot cards and tricks, woman who appear to live and breathe underwater. Then there is a man with tentacle tattoos who can light up bulbs with his body.
Water
The theme of water for the family’s fate is omnipresent with the house being claimed by the sea as water has claimed the life of generations of circus mermaids who all died by drowning on July 24th.
The mixing and merging of the two stories slowly blend and blur like a paintbrush being dripped into a pot of water. With a few swirls and swishes of events, the full fantastical mix of colours is revealed.And the cycle of how it all started is revealed. But can the family curse which ends in drowning be broken?
Where Next?
