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The Sunlight Pilgrims & The Dead Queen of Bohemia by Jenni Fagan – review

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A hopeful end-of-the-world novel contrasts with a poetry collection suffused with ennui

Jenni Fagan’s debut, The Panopticon, catapulted her on to the 2013 Granta list of Best Young British Novelists. The Sunlight Pilgrims, her second novel, is a vivid and tender coming-of-age story set at the end of the world.

In a caravan park in the north of Scotland, a motley cast of characters from the margins of society assemble to wait out the most extreme winter they have ever known. The earliest sections of the novel are narrated by Dylan, a tattooed giant who abandoned London when the art-house cinema in which he grew up was repossessed. He is grieving for his mother and grandmother, and doesn’t yet realise that the caravan he has inherited will lead him to a secret about his grandmother’s past. Later, we meet the charismatic and bold Stella, a transgender teenager with a crush on a local boy. Stella’s mother, Constance, is a tough survivalist who wears a taxidermied wolfskin and faces local prejudice for having had two lovers at once. Also resident in the caravan park are a hunchbacked man who is in love with the sky, and a woman who insists that Stella has two souls. Although these fantastical touches might suggest flights of fancy, they are subtle touches of magical realism, serving to enhance the portrayal of the characters. Despite the (hopefully fictitious) coming apocalypse, The Sunlight Pilgrims is firmly rooted in realism.

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