Felicity is 8 years old the first time They appear to her. Led by their “queen’ Elfrida, they entice Felicity and welcome her into their fairy circle, showing her all the things she had dreamed of and never dared to hope for. In The Fair Folk by Su Bristow we follow 8 year old Felicity all the way to Cambridge University, but so do her fairy friends. Her childhood fantasies are not so easily put aside. Felicity leads many lives in this story. She is the only daughter of farmers tending to an outdated farm, in an expiring way of life. She is the consort of fairies, becoming something entirely “other” each night that they call for her. She is the poor relation of relatives who live in town. She is the smartest girl in school, and later the enthusiastic and frugal Cambridge student.
While the fairies and their mischief are an ongoing presence driving this narrative, it is the everyday world of Felicity that draws you in. How she navigates her private life of glamour and wonder, with the day to day obligations of family, and the joy she finds in her education. The big decision she makes early on in life, drives the rest of the narrative because of what it means to her relationship with the fairies, but also because of what it means to how she has chosen to live. To the kind of person she has chosen to be. She constantly refers to that decision as having decided who she was going to be, and it is a fixed point in her story, a choice that cannot be faulted by the reader. Had she chosen otherwise, she would have been a disappointment.
Choice, and the illusion of choice are given a lot of exploration in this narrative. Showing choices from the poor farmer’s daughter, to the privileged Cambridge classmates, even the choices of the fairies themselves alongside the mortals who consort with them. There are three notable stories in the book that highlight the choices available to young women. While we focus on Felicity, who is able to break societal norms and attend university for advancement rather than just a broader marriage pool, we also see Alys who was raped and bore a child that was stolen from her, and cousin Angie whose only dream in life is to marry well and tend a home of her own. Felicity is on the narrowest path, but none of the women are maligned for the choices they make, or for those forced upon them. It is an extraordinary thing that Bristow has done with the tales of these three women, three branches of the exact same path with no blame on the women.
Despite her desire for the glamoured world of the fairies, Felicity is grounded in the earth she grew up on. When she is at Cambridge and interacting with other scholars of a higher social standing, she often compares what they know of the world to the real earth that she knows. She is extremely perceptive about where she comes from and how she interacts with this new world. Perhaps it is her knowledge of illusion that allows her to see through mortals so well. Bristow gives her voice an authority and wisdom far beyond her years, even as she tries desperately to navigate a life within and without the fairy kingdom.
Her involvement with Professor Edgerley, a folklorist, who himself is an ardent seeker of fairies, helps Felicity to order her thoughts, and enables her to think about the fairy world in a more clinical way. He helps her to ask and navigate the question “What do they want from you?” It enables her to see her life more clearly and to process what is happening to her. As the consequences of her choices and of the “gift” she has been given play out over the years, Felicity learns how to navigate her relationship with Elfrida, until she is able to steer herself instead of being steered. Bristow weaves in several traditional stories of fairydom along the way, each with a slight bearing on the story of Felicity, we also see other illustrations of what fairies appear to be, and how they are accepted (or not) through the interactions with the Professor and his students. When you finally hear the Professor’s own story, your heart breaks several times over for the children affected by interactions with the fairy world.
In fact The Fair Folk poses many questions about how we care for our children, and how that plays out against our own desires. Felicity wonders infrequently about the desires of her parents and relatives, but the voice that Bristow gives them in those moments, speaks far louder about them than Felicity’s throwaway thoughts. Ultimately, parents want better for their children than they had and this desire plays out in many different ways across the relationships in this book. When you are able to glimpse into the world of her parents a little more, you discover such depth and love. Even the oft maligned aunt and uncle receive sympathetic glances from Felicity at key moments. None of the people she encounters are made monstrous, probably because she knows what real monstrosity is.
Aside from my natural inclination for fairy stories, I was surprised to find myself enjoying one of the tertiary storylines far more than I would have expected. Bristow spends much time throughout each part of Felicity’s journey talking about the family farm. You learn its history in increments, from the people who live there, and from the fairies that have visited the family for generations. You see the difference between the two brothers, her father and uncle, one who chose to tend the farm, and one to leave for town life. The changing nature of farming in England is its own character in the tale, one that I had never given much thought to outside of reading Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, but which Bristow brings beautifully to life. The transformation of British farms from small, mixed-use holdings, self-sustaining worlds, into a corporation; single use farms being the only way to drive a profit. It brings to mind some of the themes of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the way people and societies are changed by the changing farm mechanisms around them, the imagery employed is very similar.
The development of the landscape as viewed by Elfrida and her group also offers a startling image of what is happening to mortal society as a whole, wrought by the changes of industry and gentrification. I had never considered taking a story like this and viewing what the fairies see concerning the passing of time and changes in the mortal realm. I very much like that Bristow has crafted this in a way that makes you approach from this vantage point. Elfrida’s thoughts on the changing human world are something that I had never considered. It reminded me of Jack Harkness’s throwaway comment in Doctor Who that the rain on earth has started to taste of birth control medicine. What does a truly foreign being view of the world we have created.
At the end of Felicity’s story, the summation of each intertwined storyline felt rather rushed. Inevitable I suppose, given the pace and depth of the story as a whole, but the rush also made the vagueness of the ending feel unwritten instead of open-ended. However, my disappointment in the feel of the end of the book does not mar my experience of the book as a whole. This is a book to be savored, not rushed through and I feel that it will only improve upon a second or third reading, such is the depth of each and every character that Bristow has woven together. I may even find that time and re-reading alters my perception of the ending, just as Felicity’s perceptions were changed throughout the book.
The Fair Folk is the second novel by British writer Su Bristow. Bristow is a medical herbalist by day and the author of two books on herbal medicine: The Herbal Medicine Chest and The Herb Handbook. Her first novel, Sealskin, is a reworking of the Scottish legend of the selkies (seals who can turn into people). It won the Exeter Novel Prize 2013. The Fair Folk was released by Europa Editions on January 23, 2024.
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