Fen * Daisy Johnson

The Fen is a liminal land. Real people live their lives here. They wrestle with sex and desire, with everyday routine. But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt.

This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a, well, what?

In a town, where a girl wastes away into something peculiar. A woman gives birth to something inhumane yet feral.

Where one woman wrestles with the conspiracy theories and prophecies of her fisherman husband, and where a young girl becomes infatuated with a wall - is anything reality for much longer?

Where hope, fear, love and sexual desire all become mingled into one. Where life ceases to live and hardly exist at the same time. Where chaos and beautiful, wonderful things come together as one, and then nothing all at the same time. 

There is only one place, one strip of land where it belongs. The Fenland.

Fen by Daisy Johnson, is the second novel from this wonderful and brilliantly talented young, man booker prize novelist.

You all know how much I loved and raved about Everything Under last year, and has since then become one of my favourite books of all time. 

Fen is a mixture of short, wonderful stories all of which seem to focus around main key points. I feel that these are strong female sexuality, head strong women, with a touch of anxiety and depression. The stories are all unique, though in someway attached to each other, but by only a small fraction. The imagination in the book is exceptional, the words alone manage to creep up and under your skin, pulling you in more and more.

At times I must admit I did feel a bit confused, going from one story to the next. Though I loved it non the less. I think my favourite story would be the one with the girl and the wall, or the very first one in the book. There's just something about the story telling that captured me and drew me in.

Johnson's books never fail to amaze me, there is something so strange and peculiar about them and her writing style is gorgeous. They're ever so quirky, magical and downright strange and that is precisely why I love them. Whilst I did love this book, I don't know if I loved it as much as Everything Under, but she has quickly become a favourite author of mine. 

I will be giving this book 9 out of 10