My first Susanna Kearsley was The Shadowy Horses, and I fell and fell hard: for those shadowy horses, and for the characters in that novel, and for the lush, almost mythic prose with which Kearsley brings worlds to our fingertips. Season of Storms, much to my surprise, is slightly later than The Shadowy Horses, but at least in this reading, my first, it felt much more like an early novel than does my beloved Horses.
Many of the foundational Kearsleyisms are present in Season of Storms: there’s a woman with a difficult family tree (and a shit sense of direction). There’s a brooding, tragic hero. (His name’s Alessandro, don’t you know, but he goes by Alex, which felt very what the fuck to me.) There is a poignant, painful depiction of found family: sometimes the most important families are the ones we build ourselves, and Kearsley gives them to us here. There’s even a wise older woman, and a new-found parent (no, for real), and even though I guessed at that latter revelation, by God was it satisfying.
Season of Storms, much like The Shadowy Horses or Bellewether or any number of Kearsley’s other works, carries with it an element of the ghost story, and an element of mystery. The ghost story, for me, works. I believe that there is a haunting, and that the house itself is haunted by old grief (and probably old writer’s block from an ancient lech of a playwright and poet, let’s face it). I actually quite liked the dreams with which our heroine must contend, and the ways in which layers of reality are slowly peeled back. Kearsley does a magnificent job, here, of peeling those layers back one at a time, from the first moment we meet our heroine Celia’s now former roommate’s tarot cards and get a reading of danger: “‘Celia, you mustn’t take this job. There’s something bad there, something evil….'” Throughout Season of Storms, as the layers are revealed, those words haunt Celia—and the reader.
I loved the ghost. I could have done with considerably more of her, to be honest. I think, had the interspersed memories of the “before” timeline come largely from the ghost Celia the First’s perspective, I probably would have liked them better. As it was, I skimmed them. Fast. I didn’t much care about the maundering of an aging lech. Similarly, though the hero was definitely Hot and Stoic and kind of Tragic, I could have done with seeing a bit more of his actual human emotions, beyond just longing gazes and tender pats to the heads of his greyhounds.
Season of Storms feels like a much earlier novel than it is, or like, perhaps, the ghost needed to say a lot more than she was allowed. But, either way, the novel is still a Kearsley, and I still tore through it, savoring every word.
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