Myths and Fables: On Sexual Violence in Fiona Mozley’s ‘Elmet’
Elmet, Fiona Mozley’s sparse stunner, contracts where other debut novels might tell too much. Departing from current narrative conventions of dialogue-heavy realism, Elmet strips a mythic, unnerving fable down to its bones. Ex-hitman Daddy has built himself and his teenage children, Danny and Cathy, a home in the Yorkshire woods with his own two hands, where the three live a ruggedly idyllic life before crime and corruption in the shape of landowner Mr. Price threaten their survival.
At least, this is the allegory on first glance. Mozley’s medieval history background isn’t lost on her fiction: references a poetry cycle on Britain’s last Celtic kingdom, believed to have existed near modern-day York. Daddy’s larger-than-life strength—his career as a renowned boxer in underground fight rings, his knowledge of bow-and-arrow hunting, logging, and woodcarving—cements him as a primitive British hero. Daddy has even killed men while carrying out Mr. Price’s dirty
