The pleasure is in how she leads us to it and, of course, where she then takes us. This early revelation is no real revelation because Dunmore has steered us towards it from the outset. Later, she meets Elvira's brother, and the adventure takes on a whole new dimension. One day Sapphy sees her brother at the cove in conversation with someone half in and half out of the water: Elvira. But, in order to survive, their mother decides - or, more accurately, circumstances dictate - that life must go on. To accept that a man who knew 'every wrinkle of the coast' has been taken by the sea is impossible. They are convinced that, as long as they go on thinking he's alive, there's hope. Their father disappears, believed lost at sea. And these two actually live there, lucky devils!īut the luck runs out. With spare prose, Dunmore evokes everything wonderful about Cornish seaside holidays.

They visit it most summer days, swimming, diving, exploring, picnicking. Sapphy and Conor have 'their own' cove, reached via an overgrown path, a cliff and a perilous jumble of huge black rocks. The modern-day Trewhella family live by the sea, both in the sense of proximity and by virtue of the fact that Mathew is a primarily a fisherman, tending lobsterpots and taking photographs to sell to tourists. Centuries later, the father of Ingo's narrator Sapphy, and her brother Conor, has the same name. Legend has it that she fell in love with a local villager, Mathew Trewhella, having heard him singing in the choir. This time, the story opens in the church, and with its famous wooden carving of a mermaid.

Here, Dunmore returns to Zennor, the setting of her adult novel Darkness in Zennor. And she's sure she can hear him singing across the water. But not only is Sapphy intoxicated by the Mer world, she longs to see her father once more. He pleads with her to ignore her craving for the sea and stay safely in their cottage up on the cliff. Ingo blood runs strongly in Sapphy and Conor fears she will leave the Air world for good. She must let go of all her Air thoughts and embrace the sea and all things Mer.Īfter her first visit she is entranced – merely the sound of running water makes her yearn to be in Ingo once more. He takes her to Ingo and introduces her to a world she never knew existed. She goes to the cove to find him, but instead meets Faro, an enigmatic and intriguing Merman.

The following summer her brother Conor keeps disappearing for hours on end. When he is lost at sea she can't help but think of that old myth she's convinced he's still alive. Sapphire's father told her that story when she was little. She swam up the stream to hear him sing, then one day he swam down it and was never seen again. She fell in love with a human, but she was a Mer creature and so she couldn't come to live with him up in the dry air. You'll find the mermaid of Zennor inside Zennor church. Tags: fantasy adventure paranormal magic myth & legend

Helen dunmore ingo series