About the book

Author: Cotter, Charis.

Title: The swallow : A ghost story

Publication: Toronto : Tundra Books, 2014. ISBN 9781770495913.

DAISY audio format available on Bookshare. It is not available on the CELA library (yet). 320 pages in the paper edition.

About the story

OK, I fell off the blogging wagon for a bit, there.

Ironically, it was Ursula K. LeGuin’s WONDERFUL collection of novellas, The Found and the Lost. I SO wanted to do it right, with a list of the contents and a short summary of each…. I will do that, but my life is just a bit out of control right now. Not out of control enough to stop reading, but just enough to lose track of tracking.

But yesterday my partner read me this excellent and very moving book by a Canadian author, Charis Cotter. (Best. Partner. Ever.)

Set in the Toronto of the 1960s, in what is now the Regent’s Park area (near the Parliament Street library), it is a story of friendship, loss and invisibility. Two lonely, early-teen girls feel invisible to their families and peers. They find each other and become friends. It’s a ghost story, and a story about families who have been disrupted.

It’s not one of those “teen issue” books: it’s part mystery, part adventure, part ghost story. It looks at mental health, and growing up in the Toronto of the 1960s (a very different Toronto than it is today).

It’s gripping, and moving, and an excellent read. Neither of us wanted to stop reading it, and we were both in tears by the end.

I wish this were available in the CELA library, but it’s not (yet?).

Highly recommended. And not just for young adults, either.