The Seven Skins of Esther Wildling

A book review without spoilers

This book has flown into my top 5 all-time favorite novels.

The Seven Skins of Esther Wildling isn't even available in the US yet, but I tracked down a copy from a secondhand bookshop in the UK because I knew I wasn't going to wait until FEBRUARY to read Her. I first found Holly Ringland's work through the TV adaptation of her first book, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and I ended every episode breathless, my hand over my heart, ready for the next. Which then led me to pick up the book itself and slowly dissolve into the desert world of Alice Hart.

There's a line in Alice's story that says, "The desert's an old dream of the sea," and having now read both of Holly Ringland's novels, I can tell you that, together, they embody that idea. Esther is to Alice what the sea is to the desert. Both are rippling with archetype and mythological depth while maintaining a sense of being anchored here and now. There's something profound and complete in how she tells a story and it leaves the reader feeling like they themselves have traveled a long distance in order to find themselves.

In The Seven Skins of Esther Wildling we find loss, guilt, self-destructive patterns, fear, disassociative trauma responses, and bit by bit we also find healing. The story begins with Esther's older sister Aura walking into the sea one day and never returning. Her body is never found and her story - as well as the stories of her family and friends - is left incomplete and raw.

Aura had a lifelong fascination with mythologies that centered around the skins, or the agency, of women. She gravitated to seals and swans who are found inside old legends as truly being women in possession of their Wild Nature. Often their skins are stolen or taken, forcing the women to wither away on dry land, always longing for the return of what belongs to them. So Aura's life followed the map of old fairytales - from Tasmania to Copenhagen, to the Faroe Islands -leaving her searching for a way to reclaim and repair. And when Aura had gone, leaving a chasm in the lives of her family, the map fell to Esther.

In both of her novels, Holly shows other white authors how to write from a lens of intersectional feminism. She researches, interviews, and bows to the guidance of Aboriginal sources, giving way to the depth, richness, and reverence of the space she occupies. I'm sure most of us have witnessed the ongoing conversation around how white authors need to represent characters of color without pretending to write from their experience. I have deep respect for how Holly has done exactly that.

I hope you'll discover the worlds of Alice and Esther if you haven't already. I hope you'll follow everything Holly Ringland has written because she is clearly just getting started and we still have terrain to travel together. Here's to Esther and her swan soul, her great sense of humanity, her pain and her repair. May we ourselves claim what is ours, selkie or swan, and "wear our hearts on our skin in this life." (Sylvia Plath)

You can pre-order through my bookshop.org store where I've gathered as many of my favorite books as possible. They're organized into categories and every purchase helps both my family and a small Black-owned bookshop in Portland. In this one small way maybe we thwart the beast of Amazon and help resource each other instead. ⁠

⁠Love you. Keep reading. It’s how we transform 🤟🏻⁠