This book is out of my league. I have read several reviews, which helped
somewhat. I know that there are two
stories here, centuries apart, and they both involve a variety of locks—Covid
lockdown, being locked in a room, being locked in the stocks, and a female
blacksmith named Ann Shaklock. A young
girl, who will eventually become an excellent blacksmith herself, when told
about Pandora’s box on page 192, says, “There was not a good enough lock on
that box.” Now, what does it all
mean? I have no idea. The modern-day story takes place during the
early days of the Covid pandemic. It begins
with the narrator, Sandy, getting a call from a college acquaintance, Martina, asking
for her help in deciphering the meaning of words she heard from a mysterious
voice: “Curlew or curfew. You choose.”
Then Martina’s twin daughters seek out Sandy and basically become
squatters in Sandy’s home. These daughters are Covid deniers, forcing Sandy to
move into her father’s house while he is in the hospital so that she can avoid
contracting the disease from the twins.
Then we abandon this story and move on to the story of the talented young
blacksmith, who is branded as a vagabond.
This second story involves both a curlew—a bird that is a companion of
the young blacksmith—and a curfew that has been imposed due to the Black
Plague. The choice then is between being
free as a bird or having a time constraint?
I think we would all choose freedom, but sometimes freedom, especially
during a pandemic, may endanger other people.
Is that the point? Probably not.
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