The Bone Mother

By David Demchuk

Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award: “Beautiful and brutal nightmares . . . made all the more terrifying by the history in which they’re grounded.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies.
 
The Rusalka, the beautiful, vengeful water spirit who lives in lakes and ponds and lures men and children to their deaths. The Vovkulaka, who changes from her human form into that of a wolf and hides with her kind deep in the densest forests. The Strigoi, a revenant who feasts on blood and twists the minds of those who love, serve, and shelter him. The Drevniye, an apparition that impersonates its victim and draws him into a web of evil in order to free itself. And the Bone Mother, a skeletal crone with iron teeth who lurks in her house in the heart of the woods, and cooks and eats those who fail her vexing challenges.
 
Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers—and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall—will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.
 
“A fable filled with mythical creatures ranging from werewolves to witches . . . set, in part, among the villages of eastern Europe on the eve of the Second World War.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
 
“Extraordinary . . . A dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
Longlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Winner of the 2018 Sunburst Award
Longlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Awards

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781771484220

Reviews for The Bone Mother

[strider66_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pros: delightfully creepy and/or unsettling vignettes, real photographs, fascinating mythologies Con: no frame story to bring the disparate bits together This is a collection of vignettes by people who have had supernatural experiences of some sort or are themselves supernatural creatures. Each story shows a snippet of life. There’s little description or detail, but it’s not required. I enjoyed piecing some of the stories together as the collection went on, though there’s no frame story giving them the feeling of being a cohesive whole. The publisher’s synopsis for the book is basically the frame story the book itself lacks and needs in order to give a sense of cohesion to the collection. I read this in ebook format and hadn’t read the synopsis in months, so wasn’t able to benefit from the information it gave. At the very least there should have been a wrap up story that tied things together better. Most of the stories are fronted by a real photograph from the Costica Acsinte Archive. A few stories have hand drawn illustrations instead. While I was familiar with a few of the creatures described, most of them were new and quite fascinating. It would have been cool to get more details about them, but again, the stories are more about ambiance and the feeling of dread than about describing things in detail. In this way, not knowing what the creatures were in some ways enhanced the horror based on the limited descriptions that were given. Several of the stories are by people who grew up and lived in the three Eastern European villages, the rest are by their descendants. At least one story took place in Canada, and another in the United States. On the whole I enjoyed the collection. A few of the stories were genuinely terrifying, while most were joyfully creepy. I would have liked a proper conclusion or frame story tying everything together better, but it’s definitely worth picking up.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a series of vignettes, each narrated by a different person, set mostly in and around the Ukraine, framing traditional fairy tales and mythical creatures in the real world of WWII and Soviet occupation. I picked this up because it was short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award in the best novel category, but I couldn't find the narrative thread that would tie these vignettes together into what I would consider to be a novel. I thought the writing was good, and I enjoyed the photographs of (real) people that preceded each vignette, but I think I would have been lost without the publisher's description on the back of the book. Still, interesting and different.