The Five Fathoms

Signed by the author.

When the gods have love affairs, they unfold over many centuries. A wandering deity—by turns a woman, a salmon, and something else entirely that it is difficult to talk about—decides to revive her affections for the ancient Celtic god of the sea, Mannanan Mac Lir, and heads for the shoreline:

‘She’s not a Branwen or Angharad, she’s not a long rooted, long versed story of lake or hill, she is a mover and a waker and a shaker, a loose-hipped Zanzibar priestess of the blown fuse of the sacred everything, a prophetic wanderer, even if her migrations take centuries to complete. She is a great clatter-bash of gnostic lightning. Wherever she is, she can remember a place before that. She has charisma in every setting.

In the morning her mind is full of fur and light.’

‘This little book is some wild kind of extended poem or story or something else again. I can’t be sure at the moment. Every time I put her down, she moves to another part of the house. I just follow the perfume…’

Also available as an audiobook/musical collaboration: The Five Fathoms Audiobook.