The Dollmaker by Nina Allan

A wonderful novel of a dollmaker travelling to meet a woman whom he has fallen in love with who lives in a kind of home for people who are suffering from mental illnesses. The novel combines the story from Andrew Garvie’s perspective, the letters Bramber writes to him telling her about her day to day life and her past, and the beguiling short stories Andrew is reading by the fictional author and dollmaker Ewa Chaplin.

The short stories are original in the way that they leap straight into the stories as if they are almost novels in their own right, and they are full of magic realist wonders, transgressive love stories and populated by little people and people with disabilities and disfigurements. Andrew himself is exceptionally short and I think the way that the characters are portrayed is really well executed. Andrew comes to wonder if the stories are actually influencing his own plot as he sees the similarities in the stories he is reading with what he is currently doing.

Whilst Bramber is afflicted by a sense of guilt Andrew has his own demons to contend with - I liked the parts where he has discussions in his head with the doll ‘the Artist’ who orders him around. This is a magical book I devoured.