Hello everybody! Today, I’m so pleased to be part of the blog tour for Finbar Hawkins’ Halloween-set new release Stone, hosting a guest post from the author. Onto the post!
Magical objects
We all invest objects with importance – whether it’s a hand-me-down item from a parent, a piece of flotsam brought from the beach, or the milk teeth of our offspring. As humans there’s something innate about this need to empower things. We wrap our memories around objects, we put them in boxes, ready to enchant on next emerging; we create monuments and symbols, places of pilgrimage and prayer. Objects fire our imagination, imbued with our love, our sense of ourselves, marking the passage of time and our own mortality: I will pass away, but this object will continue, carrying a piece of me.
This idea of continuance in objects, that something can lay buried for a long time, only to be discovered and empowered again – this sense of then and now, is a deliberate connection from my previous book, ‘Witch’ to my latest, ‘Stone’. A powerful, magical object coveted by witches in the 17th century is discovered by a teenage boy in the modern day and its power awakens to his touch, his emotions, his desires. Stonehenge, Avebury, the White Horse carved into the hillside – why were these incredible places created, what was the reason for these objects? We can only imagine, and we continue to imagine as we visit them over and over. We may have lost the understanding to manipulate them, but we have no doubt to the latent power of these objects, their magical effect upon us.
The central character in the book, Sam, has intense memories of visiting the White Horse with his father. It is this profound, shared experience that channels both his grief and his love; he imprints his soul, his psyche upon it. The chalk curves of this beautiful piece of artwork are freshly scoured every year, as they have been for centuries. Without humans investing importance in this object it would simply disappear beneath the grass, its power would diminish and die. Yet we keep it alive, and we don’t really understand why, but we know our lives would be all the less without it. And so the magic continues because of us, we impart ourselves into these objects, knowing that when we pass, a part of ourselves will continue, like the White Horse galloping through time forever more.
STONE by Finbar Hawkins is out now in hardback (£14.99, Zephyr)
Thank you so much for reading! Have you read Finbar’s books, or are they on your TBR? Which significant items do you have in your life? I’d love to have a chat in the comments!
Amy xx
Golden Books Girl 