#BlogTour ‘The Wolf And The Favour’ by Catherine McCarthy

About the book…

Ten-year-old Hannah has Down syndrome and oodles of courage, but should she trust the alluring tree creature who smells of Mamma’s perfume or the blue-eyed wolf who warns her not to enter the woods under any circumstance?

The Wolf and the Favour is a tale of love, trust, and courage. A tale that champions the neurodivergent voice and proves the true power of a person’s strength lies within themselves.

My thanks to the wonderful Zoe of Zooloo’s blogtours for the invite and gifted review copy of ‘The Wolf And The Favour’ by Catherine McCarthy which was published in paperback and e-book formats, October 2023, by Brigids Gate Press.

This is a beautiful novel that has at its heart, the nature of hope embodied by a 10 year old girl, whose value is being defined by the world at large, rather than her actions and beliefs.

Hannah has Down’s Syndrome, her mother, Emily, has left her to grow up with her father, Bleddyn whilst she makes a living pretending to be anyone other than her mother.

Deciding to move to Wales, where Bleddyn is from, to give both himself and Hannah a better chance at a more settled and supported life, the decision to move countries is not one which is taken lightly.

He knows this will be a massive period of adjustment for Hannah, but just as much as this he is aware that soon Hannah will no longer buy the excuses which Bleddyn makes about why Emily doesn’t want to be around her…there is a heartbreaking scene early on in the novel where Hannah begs Bleddyn to take her to see Emily on stage in My Fair Lady, it just shows the type of parent which Bleddyn is, that he would take Hannah to see her mother pretending to be someone trying to better herself for a public audience whilst she is still unable to accept her daughter.

This is what is so interesting, it’s the mother who is struggling with who her daughter is, and Emily is written with compassion where it would be so easy to dismiss her.

Bleddyn means ‘wolf’ in Welsh, and his protective nature proves a contrast to the usual portrayal of wolves as the bad guy , and when the family arrive in Wales, the folklore and myths of our country come into play creating a fantasy , almost magical realism experience for both the reader and Hannah through whose eyes we see the majority of the book.

Wish fulfilment and bargaining are natural motifs in so many legends and stories which we tell to our children-‘I will give you x if you do y for me’- and it comes through so clearly in Catherine’s resonant prose, the bargain, the favour, and the choices made for, and by, Bleddyn and Hannah are natural, understandable and infused with love.

I really loved it and found it accessible, dream like and so engaging that it sweeps you away almost effortlessly.

The difficulty with having a child narrator is in infantilising them or alienating the adult reader, but I found Hannah a truly delightful character to spend hours with

About the author…

Catherine McCarthy is the author of the novellas ‘Immortelle’ and ‘Mosaic’ and the novel ‘A Moonlit Path Of Madness’.

Her short fiction has been published in various anthologies and magazines, including those by Black Spot Books, Brigids Gate Press, and Dark Matter Ink.

In 2020 she won the Aberystwyth University Prize for her short fiction, a competition judged by the assistant editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

A former primary school teacher, she now weaves dark tales from her farmhouse in West Wales. Time away from the loom is spent hiking the Welsh coast path or huddled in an ancient graveyard reading Dylan Thomas or Poe.

Twitter @serialsemantic  @ZooloosBT @BrigidsGate