Sparrow Hill Road

by Seanan McGuire

May 6, 2014 · DAW

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Genre: Urban Fantasy

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Sparrow Hill Road was a 4 1/2 star Top Pick in the May 2014 RT Book Reviews magazine that Amanda and I recapped, and I was curious, in part because I didn’t recognize it. I know McGuire’s other series (Adam really likes the October Daye books) but this one had escaped my knowledge. I found the audiobook, narrated by Amy Landon, at my library, and I inhaled it. I got so much done because I would invent chores to keep listening.

The book is a collection of short stories that form a cohesive whole, and form a time- and narrative-jumping puzzle. The organization of the world in which Rose hitchhikes is reflected by the organization of the chapters and sections of her story: in Rose’s world, she can interact with the Daylight, or the living world, but also drops down into the Twilight, a world only accessed by the dead, ghosts, and other similar beings. Time passes at a different rate in the Twilight, and sometimes Rose will resurface having spent a few minutes in the Twilight while in the Daylight, years have passed.

Similarly, the individual stories jump forward and back in time, and the larger narrative threads will sometimes leap ahead and other times move forward in tiny increments. I really liked listening to the stories because the time jumps were easier for my brain to follow, I think, in audio rather than in text. There are tiny pieces of information in early stories that become extremely important later, and I was delighted every time I thought a character or piece of information would be more crucial in a future scene, and I was right. Also, the narration was excellent.

Because she is a hitchhiking ghost, Rose’s compulsion is to keep moving, to find another ride to whatever destination she has in mind, or is being pulled towards. Sometimes she ends up guiding a newly-dead person to the afterlife or saving them from a fatal accident. Some stories reveal how Rose senses a person’s imminent death, and some are about the larger quest that haunts her: avoiding Bobby Cross, the man who ran her off the road and caused her death. The book has three sections, and there’s a progression to Rose’s narration as she’s dead longer and spends more time among the modern living. She died as a 16 year old in the 50s and she’s permanently 16; by the time the book progresses to the final sections, which take place around 2015, Rose is more crass, more prone to anger and sarcasm, and more prone to be matter of fact about sex. When her narration changed, especially at the start of Part III: Scary Stories, I was a little startled, but it made some sense when I thought about it. The change is Rose’s perspective is subtle until it’s not.

This was a perfect read for this time of year, when the sun is getting lower in the sky and the light is changing. Sparrow Hill Road is built from ghost story layered upon ghost story, starting with Rose’s own ghostly origins. If you’ve ever heard a story about a young girl hitchhiking, borrowing a coat or a jacket, then disappearing when the driver reaches the address she gave (or when the driver is found in the wreckage of their car, dead and alone) leaving the borrowed coat behind, then you’ve heard the legend upon which Rose is based.

But embellishing the legend with motivation and reason – why is she hitchhiking? Where is she going? Why does she turn up in different places, always borrowing a jacket, always disappearing? – locates Rose in a larger universe of folklore, with different mythologies rubbing up against one another. There are lots of different ways from many different cultures to describe the dead; they all live together here.

The aspect of this book I appreciated most and am still thinking about, was that a lot of the tension in each story, and in the book overall, is about stasis and change: Rose is forever 16, sometimes stuck in the prom dress she died in, but she’s also changing. The worlds around her, the Daylight and the Twilight, change and yet remain the same, much like the legends about Rose. The details may change, but the core of the ghost story – the hitchhiker, the jacket, the road, the disappearance – remain constant. There is always death; there is always life.

I was so happy to have discovered (re-discovered?) this book (thanks RT!). It was spooky and thoughtful, hopeful, clever, and exactly the right level of haunting. It’s a series, so its got some unfinished narratives both large and minuscule, and there were developments in the last section that I wished there had been much, much more of, but that’s part of the enticement to keep reading into the next book.

– SB Sarah