Harold, The Story Collector about whom the book is titled, is an American student traveling through Ireland in 1911 to collect stories about fairies for his thesis project. He is introduced to the Butler family and hires their daughter, Anna, to be his assistant in her small town of Thornwood. She introduces him to neighbors who can share local stories with him and also serves as his translator. All is well until they agree to attend a party at the elite Thornwood House. Meanwhile, 100 years later, Sarah is grieving and makes a spontaneous decision to travel from New York to Ireland and ends up staying at the old Butler Cottage where she finds Anna’s diary and begins to piece her life back together.
While Sarah was a far less sympathetic character than Anna, I appreciated and liked both of them and found myself really interested in their stories and how they converge over sharing stories about local fairy legends. I also enjoyed the secondary characters, particularly those in Anna’s story.
One thing I don’t think worked was Anna’s diary because either Anna was an aspiring novelist, or truly has created the most detailed diary ever written. I found it impossible to believe her diary held so much detail including conversations, details about the stories she and Harold gathered, particularly because diaries are supposed to be private for the writer - her diary entries feel like they are written for someone else to read... Just write those chapters from Anna’s point of view and be done with it. Harold’s book could have served as the connective tissue, and frankly would have been a better fit to the title. That said, I enjoyed Anna’s story FAR more than I enjoyed Sarah’s as it was just more interesting. I also felt the ending to both stories was rushed, which was particularly frustrating with such a slow start.
Still, I loved the story enough to recommend the book, just pack your patience when you read it.
As with Evie Woods’ other novel I’ve read, The Lost Bookshop, the dual timelines were used effectively—this time to reveal two fairly parallel storylines set in different time periods. Both Anna’s and Sarah’s stories were interesting to me but I favored Anna’s richer tale. Sarah’s emotional state at the beginning required a little time to be understood.
I enjoyed the characters, the settings, and the fairy stories. I was charmed, really, by the whole thing. And the fairy “magic” felt appropriate, authentic, and fun throughout. Being nitpicky, I did pick out an instance where it was obvious the author was Irish when her American character used a word that isn’t used by Americans the same way it is for Europeans. It was just a point when I was taken out of the story for a moment to think about the author. My only other point of complaint was that Anna’s diary was way too detailed and well-written to be a diary. But it served the purpose of this story so I let myself just enjoy the ride.
Likewise, the audiobook narrator, Heather O’Sullivan, was obviously Irish despite her excellent American accent (in multiple voice tones!) because of some slips in pronunciation a very few times. But she was a terrific narrator for this novel with a versatile repertoire. I give her an A.
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