Cala

by Laura Legge

A brilliantly original coming-of-age story from a new and powerful literary voice. Perfect for readers of Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure and Daisy Johnson's Everything Under.

Cala, a stone farmhouse on the edge of a village in the Outer Hebrides, is home to four women – witches the locals say – who scratch out a living on its land. But after ten years of relative harmony, fractures are beginning to appear among them.

Eighteen-year-old Euna is tired of Cala's rigid hierarchy and arbitrary rules – the women must wear plain dress, attend strict rituals and consume only what they grow or gather with their hands. Sick of scavenged seaweed and thin soup, Euna decides to go in search of a different way of living.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Witches, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

281 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2019

Reviews

[Marchpane]

Cala has an intriguing premise, and I was initially willing to see where the author would take things. Mostly atmosphere and not much action, I read the first third and decided to leave it there, as the book was not holding my attention and the writing style wasn't to my taste. I could see some readers falling hard for this book but unfortunately this one wasn't for me.

[Inside My Library Mind · Rating 4 out of 5]

More reviews up on my blog Inside My Library Mind

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

I Loved the Writing
First of all, this was really beautifully written. Laura Legge has this really distinct and atmospheric writing style that is really imposing and it’s really memorable. The way this was written really fit the story well, and I absolutely loved the way she wrote this story. The writing style is by far my favorite thing about this novel, and I am so excited to see what Laura Legge does next. I think she has a really distinctive voice and I truly think that she will do amazing things with her writing in the future. I had a hard time choosing my opening quote, so I leave you with a couple of others, so you can get a feel of her style:

“Her fear had a form, of a wave moving over her, polished and black.”

“Kneeling in the dirt, she was reminded just how non-fish she was. How woman. She had all these parts, stinking, leaking parts, ruled by inner drives, never by sheer will. She was ashamed to be this creature. Though she had learned to bear the other women’s earthliness, hair under the armpits, herb stalks stuck in their teeth, she had been raised by a father obsessed with neatness, restraint. And that had yet to leave her.”

I just found the writing to be stunning and it really spoke to me and I am so glad I got to experience it.

The Main Theme
I absolutely loved the way womanhood and female relationships and community are portrayed in this novel. We start from a coven which is ruled by very strict rules and I think the dynamic between the four women in the coven – Muireall, which is the sort of matriarch, Grace, Lili and Euna was written superbly. It was one of my favorite aspects of the novel and I wish the whole book explored this dynamic. The women love and hate each other and they resent Muireall, who is at times cruel and who shelters them from the world and other people, but they also adore and worship her. And in turn, Muireall is cruel and mean, but she is also at times kind and caring. It was infinitely fascinating and I loved reading it.

Moreover, this moves on from the coven, and we follow Euna as she leaves the coven, but we still get this really strong theme of women living together and helping each other and it’s a really powerful theme and it’s handled really well.

The Perspective Shift
There’s also a perspective shift to a man in the middle of the book, which was really interesting. I quite enjoyed the contrast between the two parts and in this second part, we follow Aram, who just got out of prison, and who is important to the story and ties into Euna’s journey. I did like the perspective shift, specifically because I felt like it really contrasted the sense of community we saw in the first part with the sense of a man with a single-minded person who even with other people feels quite lonesome. So I really enjoyed that. And I loved how this book, in the end, sort of grounds itself in the concept of community and togetherness and spirituality. It was handled really well.

However, that same perspective shift left me wanting to know more of what happened with Euna and how she got to the place we see her in the second part. I felt like while the perspective shift made sense and was interesting on its own, it left something lacking for me. I felt like I did not get closure and so I was a bit detached from the second part, even though everything came together really well in the end.

This Did Not Fully Grip Me
And ultimately, this did not grip me fully. And that’s more of an “it’s me, not you” issue. I feel like for me to love a book, I need characters to latch on to. It’s just the way I am programmed. Whether I am reading Fantasy, or Crime or Romance, I need to love the characters because that is where I connect with books. That is where I get involved. And while this was beautifully written and explored really interesting themes and was a well-thought-out concept, I cannot get attached to a concept. And while the characters weren’t badly written, they served the concept and the themes of the novel more than they stood on their own. They did not really feel fully real and separated from the core themes, so I was really detached from them, which ultimately led to me not enjoying this fully.

To Sum Up...
I think this is a really amazing debut, with wonderful writing and great execution. And although this did not fully work for me, I would still wholeheartedly recommend this one.

[Ygraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is such an alien book, and a hard one to read coming out of a period of intense dissociation & depersonalisation; it sits a little queasily in my brain, twists sinuously out from between my fingers when i grasp at it. it is a story about a coven of witches, living on an almost barren farm in the outer hebrides; it is also a story about isolation, and the ways that love, protection, abuse and silence can be woven into the fabric of the families we are born into, and the families we make for ourselves. it becomes a story about euna, who leaves, and the things she must confront and the people she comes to trust in in the world beyond the one she's known, the women she gathers around her, the various forms in which she encounters and re-writes womanhood and motherhood. and then it becomes the story of aram, who comes from a place that he's never known how to find on a map, who has spent years imprisoned and is struggling to reconcile the man he was before with the man he is becoming, who plays out the contradictory, often uncomfortable, impulses of masculinity.

the elliptical histories of the characters, their disjointed, sometimes bizarre, interactions with each other and the places they inhabit, the lurking awareness of dread or anger or trauma or violence that never fully emerges from subtextual shadow, the strange seen-through-glass quality of the narration are all stylistically effective; they recreate the alienated experiences of the characters, they create moments of linguistic beauty by defamiliarising language and the world.

but i felt like i was drowning. perhaps i was too sensitive to the ways legge's writing played on my own sense of unreality and lack of solidity. perhaps another reader would be better equipped, at least in this moment, to handle the disconnectedness, the deadening and distorting lens through which the reader is forced to experience much of the book - because i think legge is doing something aesthetically interesting, and conceptually worthwhile, and it's a shame that, even when i felt conscious of the truth of those feelings, i couldn't truly sit with them. i just wanted out, to breathe something fresh and find my way back into my own skin.

[anautumnaldream · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know those books wherein everything works perfectly within the context of the book but nothing really touches you? Have you ever had that feeling? I am sure you have had it at some point and with this book, I got the same feeling.

“Fear had such a loud way of speaking. Maybe all of these acts had been tender, plucking the plant, striking the flank, and the violence had not in Muireall’s hands but in Euna’s mind.”

The novel starts with the island called Pullhair in Outer Hebrides and it is very, very atmospheric and when you read it, it’s almost as if you are there feeling every weird thing that Euna is feeling and that is one of the major plus points of the book, if I am being honest. Of course, even that didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped for.

Euna hasn’t always lived at Cala, she used to live in the outer world but the outer world didn’t understand her or want her and so she came to Cala. From the time she was seven, Cala is all Euna has known, with its residents loving and hurting at once and its history of it being a witch’s house. Euna has had questions over the years as she grew up but at eighteen, her questions are bursting out of her at any given moment and disturbing the entire household. The fact that this is set in contemporary world should have only enhanced this almost magical way of living but sadly, it really didn’t.

Perhaps I was mistaken into thinking that this story would be very atmospheric from its blurb and in a certain way, it was atmospheric but not in the way presented in the blurb. There’s the question of Euna being the main character. Even though she seems to be, there are other characters given more importance, then to top it off, in between with their personalities changing, it made for a confusing read for me. I fear to even talk about Aileen, I might not end up being favourable at all so, you can read the book to experience that. I wish Aram’s story wasn’t done in the way it was, sure it helped the plot along but that didn’t mean that it was the best course of action.

I did enjoy the fact that one of the major themes of the book was female relationships and how they were presented in a realistic way. These four women did love each other in their own way but there was no shortage of hate or dislike as well, they did spend an awful lot of time together and it showed in their almost there but not quite hate. I think overall, this book is beautifully written but none of that grabbed me or touched me in a way that made me invested in the characters and their journeys.

I am so sorry this review is all over the place (basically a mess) but even after almost a week of finishing it, I am not able to place my thoughts in a good way. I gave this one three stars and they are totally deserved, I just wish I was able to be more invested in the book.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm immensely impressed by this little gem. In her first novel the author offers up a beautiful and clear-headed style in recounting a tale full of hardship and austerity, as well as simple joys.

The tenderness of Cala is at once as present as its contradictions and hypocrisies.

The characters are alive and present while the book still draws in a lingering sense of wonder, at times even surrealness, perfectly placed in the Scottish highlands.

To me it was the little details that made the book such a special read. The story just sings with attention to its finer points.

The book reveals and revolves around themes of how much care goes into community, how much we depend on each other for our own needs to be met, how protecting the boundaries of our own homes can go darkly astray for each of us. Yet through it all characters really try for each other. They seek atonement and to find harmony.

The book wasn't flawless and at times the connection and intimacy seemed to have evolved beyond what was warranted by the limited interactions described between certain characters. But overall I would say this is truly a triumph and a deeply special work.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know Cala might not be to everybody’s taste- there are some questionable morals and even more questionable main characters in this book- but nevertheless I really enjoyed it. Set on an island in the remote Scottish Hebrides, Cala follows Euna, a young woman who defies the coven with whom she lives and sets out to find her own destiny. Legge’s prose is dreamy and vague, and reading this book feels rather like seeing the world off-kilter: it’s refreshing, and strange, and watching the relationship dynamics of the characters shift as the book goes on is absolutely fascinating.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

CALA
Laura Legge


Set in the Scottish Highlands there is an old farmhouse called ‘CALA’ inside lives four women - witches.
Living a basic lifestyle in the 20th Century, keeping to their own, believing that the outside world hates them.

When one of the women, Euna meets Aram a fisherman, she finds out that there’s more to the world than she’s been lead to believe.



I found this had a rustic, earthy feel/theme to it which made it its own.


I didn’t love it, but I don’t hate it either, it’s one of those books that sit in the middle.

CALA is an easy read - and by that I mean I found myself hating to put it down, and having to find out what happened.

It has a lure that draws you in.


CALA tends to jump scene to scene suddenly, and halfway through POV change; this made it a bit disorientating when working out what was happening. It gave it a weird flow.

I liked how it was written despite written above, and the story it was telling, but I feel like it needed something more... I don’t know.

Girls finding freedom and spreading their wings is always something great to read, it was refreshing it a way.


3/5*

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of adjective I could use to describe this book: fascinating, enthralling, atmospheric, engaging and even entertaining.
It was a really good book, one of the those book you cannot put down once you start it.
I love the well written and fleshed out characters and I loved the atmospheric setting.
The plot was fascinating and it kept me hooked till the end.
I had some minor problems with the style of writing as it made somehow difficult to understand when a character was speaking and there were some slow paced part.
A very good debut, I will surely read other books by this author.
Many thanks to Head of Zeus and Netgalley for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all opinions are mine.

[George1st · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, as this is I believe Laura Legge's debut novel, praise should be given to her for producing something that is a bit different and for a willingness to experiment in her prose, characterisation and plot lines. All to often now there is an inherent sameness that proliferates much of new fictional work so it was a refreshing change to come across something that had elements of originality and daring about it. There is for instance the intermingling of Gaelic, English and the Scottish dialect and the absence of speech marks. It may not altogether succeed and there are in my opinion some issues regarding the veracity of the plot at times but the exuberance of the writing makes up for this. Legge has created a world that straddles between the familiar and the unfamiliar where mythology, ritual and the occult are indelibly bound up with the natural world.

The main location for the novel is a small island called Pullhair situated in the outer Hebrides where living in a stone farmhouse called Cala in isolation and outside of the small island community are four women. The locals call them witches and indeed their subsistence scavenged life style is dominated by obscure rituals . This "coven" is ruled over by the controlling, manipulative and often cruel figure of Muireall who is clearly unbalanced. Living with her are ex-lover Grace and two eighteen year old cousins Euna and Lili who have been there some ten years after being abandoned by their families and ostracised by the local community following a church arson attack. How the local authorities would allow two eight year old's to be left in the care of the clearly deranged Muireall is one of the many troubling and bizarre occurrences that we encounter.

After the increasingly unsettled Euna meets and falls for Aram who is from the local fish farm and it transpires is an illegal immigrant who is subsequently taken to the real life Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre in South Lanarkshire , the scene is set for Euna to leave Cala and seek out a new life with or without Aram.

Ultimately you have the impression of viewing an alternative world and I can see that it may appeal to those who like the fantasy genre. At times gripping, at times baffling and absurd I was never bored and would certainly recommend this to someone who would like to experience something out of the norm.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited by the storyline and couldn’t wait to start exploring the outer Hebrides and characters within this book.

However I found this a very difficult book to read and I was put off partially by the lack of speech marks when characters were speaking. It may be quite a minor thing to some but for me it made the text clumsy and confusing.

The characters lacked depth for me and their actions were at times bizarre. The plot was difficult to follow at times it appeared as though key points had been omitted.

I’m afraid it was a DNF for me which disappointed me as I felt this could have been s wonderful book.

ARC copy received through NetGalley.

[Allyssa (Book Ally) · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a very slow book and I felt like I was just waiting for something to actually happen but it never did. I also find the life Euna ended up having to be very odd and actually kind of silly. I felt half way through it that I didn't want to carry on but I pushed myself to finish it incase something happened but now I kind of regret continuing it. Next time I will go with my gut and stop when I feel like it's not a book for me.

[Blair]

Take the idiosyncratic female-centric community at the heart of The First Book of Calamity Leek; add the bleak and isolated setting of Little Eve and the shifting, muddy nature of Everything Under; and you’d end up with something like Cala. This is a strange, slippery novel, a cacophony of creative language that only occasionally comes into focus.

Cala is a farmhouse on the Hebridean island of Pullhair. It’s home to a tiny commune consisting of ex-lovers Muireall and Grace and teenage cousins Euna and Lili. The relationships between the four women are tangled and odd, their rituals obscure and apparently random. (Others believe them to be a coven of witches.) The text seems to skip over much of what, in another book, would be the pertinent details. Yet jewel-like sentences kept catching my eye: Under the world’s grey roof, she was the only bright furniture.

The plot follows Euna as she grows dissatisfied with the coven and travels to the mainland in search of a new life. As I read on, it became obvious that the strange relationships were not confined to Cala itself, but are in fact a hallmark of the book. Everyone behaves so bizarrely and implausibly, and often in ways that are borderline disturbing, towards everyone else. I often felt like I was reading a fantasy novel set on some far-flung planet, not a story situated in modern Scotland.

I made it to the 40% mark and couldn’t take any more of the characters’ weird interactions. I do think this book has the potential to be really popular, though. It possesses a poetic and emotive style that’s in vogue at the moment, a way of evoking myth and magic within a nominally contemporary narrative.

Review copy received from NetGalley.

[Rebecca Ambrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cala is a novel which intrigued with its description but fell somewhat short of the mark for me.
Fantasy, magic, female led and blending modern day with age old mysticism - these elements are what this novel is interweaving. All topics that are quite popular now and potentially make for a wonderful story. Legge has identified a type of novel that could do so well with modern readers. However, the novel doesn't quite live up to the sum of its parts.
I did like Euna as a character in general, and her voyage of discovering herself and the wider world from very unusual circumstances was interesting, but all of the characters together were a bit chaotic. Chaotic also were certain scenes in the novel, where things were happening but I had to read and reread in order to fully make sense of what was unfolding. Set in modern day, I couldn't help but feel that it would have made little difference to the story if it were set fifty years ago, and this may have actually added something more to it if it were. I did enjoy the Garlic elements of it as they add a level of authenticity to the character dialogue.
Worth reading for its uniqueness.

[Rach Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me this was quite an obscure book, in which I could appreciate some decent and well-constructed prose style, and the somewhat plausible development of characters. Compared to the descriptions and blurb that I read prior to delving into the novel, the book was not what I expected. Legge builds an interesting alternate world around the female characters and offers readers some pondering concepts about how we live, sexism and how culture or society may dictate the way we behave. Longings for escape juxtapose well with the continued references to the learned behaviours and rituals the women face day in and day out, thus being the main source of engagement for readers. Perhaps as a lesser fan of the fantasy genre which this seems to lend heavily from, I am somewhat easily dissuaded from the overall success and appeal of this book. it just wasn't what I expected.

A read, really, for those who appreciate the imagined worlds and oddities of fantasy fiction; think along the lines of Pratchett or Gaiman, with perhaps what we could call a more serious undertone. Overall a well written book, which has purpose and conviction in the world and characters it presents. It just was not what was anticipated.

#Cala #netgalley

[Karen Benge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much a book about Scotland written by someone from North America. Language was inconsistent between Scots, gaelic and different dialects of English and some references to Scottishness felt clumsy and ornamental in attempting to romanticise Scottish and gaelic life. Otherwise the story was interesting and well told enough but not particularly special or memorable, with characters that grabbed your interest but lacked the depth to hold it. I'm sure Laura has a decent book in her, but this felt too green and not well edited enough.

[Vivienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

My thanks to Head of Zeus for an e-ARC via NetGalley of Laura Legge’s debut novel, ‘Cala’ in exchange for an honest review.

The women of Cala are introduced in this striking early scene: “The four women of Cala sat in its dining room on the autumn equinox, wearing garlands of ash and hazel, visible to one another only by candlelight.”

‘Cala’ is set in the Outer Hebrides. In the small village of Pullhair, the stone farmhouse that the four women call Cala, haven, is known by the villagers as Gainntir, place of confinement. Legge makes it clear that the novel takes place in the 21st Century yet all modern implements, including electricity, are banned at Cala. The women identify as a coven.

The leader of the coven is Muireall, who is controlling and manipulative. Their lives are governed by the ‘Life Grammar’, a book compiled by Cairstìne Bruce, an ancestor of Muireall and an alleged witch. It contains two hundred rules for a coven that Cairstìne had always wanted to run.

One of the younger women, Euna, feels increasingly unsettled. While running an errand to a local fish farm she meets Aram and is strongly attracted to him and vice versa. However, Aram is an illegal immigrant. When he is detained in Dungavel Castle, an immigrant detention facility, Euna stealthy leaves Cala in order to visit him.

‘Cala’ is written in a very lyrical style and Legge utilises some unconventional techniques such as not using quotation marks to designate dialogue and mixing English, Scottish Gaelic and some dialect. It took a while to get used to this.

I was quite interested in Euna’s journey of self discovery but was less taken by Part 2 when the narrative focus shifts to Aram. Also, I had hoped for more exploration of the mystical elements of the setting.

So overall I found that my response to the novel was mixed. I admired elements and felt connected to some characters but the whole felt somewhat disappointing.

[Han · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an enchantingly strange book (in a good way). Cala is beautifully written and I loved the rejection of speech marks and the inclusion of Gaelic which draw you into this somewhat real/ somewhat fairytale world.

The book has a flowy, ethereal and at times unnerving quality to it but ultimately it felt quite quietly magical and at times trance-like. Whilst the plot can be a little confusing at times, my sense is that this is a book you read for the feeling/tone more than the story itself. It feels somewhat like a fairytale with magical and darker moments.

I wasn't entirely sure about some of the ending - I wanted more information about Muireall and I was confused about some plot elements. However, I liked how this book explored female friendships/love/community versus the possible isolation of male community (or lack of). I also liked how the characters were all quite morally ambiguous.

Overall this is an excellent debut from Laura Legge but probably quite a marmite book for readers - I found it quite soothing but I do understand the other reviews on here from readers who didn't enjoy it. I personally would probably read more of her work in future.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The setting & blurb about this book looked very promising. Set on an island in the Outer Hebrides, four women live of what they can scrape from the land. Led by a very unpleasant woman who dictates how the women behave, who they speak to & how they dress. When Euna, one of the younger women meets Arum, a fish farm worker, she is initially looking for food but is fascinated by him. After the Home Office catches up to him & detains him as an illegal immigrant Euna goes in search of him.

The style of this book is quite unique. The lack of speech punctuation was confusing & I often struggled to follow what was going on. I didn't enjoy this as much as I hoped, but I did stick with it because I wanted to find out what happened. This is a book for someone looking for something that bit different. I'll be interested to see where the author goes from here.

[Lucsbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is short read that reads like a fairy tale, a very dark scary fairy tale.
The story and characters are interesting enough, mainly when it came to all the Gaelic culture that was entwined with the story but what I really liked the most was unique way Laura Legge has of telling a story. The way she played with the structure of the story, dialogues and punctuation make me really curious to read whatever she is writing next.
Thank you to NetGalley and Apollo for this ARC.

[Gemma Barton · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was really quite erratic and random, there seemed to be tight bonds between characters who had met once, a majority of it was these ridiculously long journeys that didn’t result in much.

Liked the scottish landscape descriptions, wish there was more witchy vibes, very dislikable characters, some nice sense of homecoming but overall bit jumbled and confusing?!

[prescribed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A totally unique coming of age story about a girl who grows up isolated in a coven in the Outer Hebrides. I love how Scottish folklore and the Gaelic language are integrated into this otherwise contemporary story. And what a cover!!!

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The blurb of this book really caught my attention, however not much of the story made sense to me - no apparent purpose to what was being said, nor any loose ends tied at the “end”. I use quotation marks as it seemed like another chapter was needed just to explain the last few things.

[Harriet Bentley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I see what Legge was trying to do with this narrative, the imagery is often stunning and she brings across the beauty of the Hebrides in great detail. However, the plot was too slow at times and a bit pointless. I found myself skimming quickly over paragraphs wishing the pace would pick up.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf:/ first bit in Cala group was interesting, couldn’t get past that

[Sarah Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to get into, then got better, then ending was hard to finish.

[karathebooklover16 · Rating 1 out of 5]

what on earth was that?

[Julie Lowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just didnt get the characters or what the book was about. Gave it to page 66, then gave up.

[Els Willems · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review in English on https://www.whichbook.net/book.aspx?t...