The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie

by M. Rickert

Meet Quark, a giant of a man carrying scars literally and figuratively, on his return to Bellfairie, as he searches for his father and clues to his mother's mysterious death. But no one goes to Bellfairie on purpose, it's always a wrong turn in someone's life. As Quark will soon learn. Like Frankenstein's monster, The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is a vibrant, emotional and humane amalgam. A fantastical crime mystery with a soupçon of magic that brings to mind not only Shelley's creation but A Confederacy of Dunces in its exploration of flawed and tragic characters. "Fans of M. Rickert's singular blend of the mundane and the monstrous will be drawn deep into the briny, haunted world of Bellfairie." - Sofia Samatar, Author of A Stranger in Olondria, and Tender "The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie by M. Rickert is a powerful evocation of an imaginary place, both magical and mundane; the tribulations of a good-hearted hapless giant; and a compelling mystery. Dark and humorous and deep." - Jeffrey Ford, Author of Big Dark Hole "Awash in sea rain, ghosts and the stories they trail, the sound of submerged bells from offshore (or their echo, or their memory), Bellfairie and its denizens are M. Rickert creations through and through-meaning magical, mournful, mysterious, profoundly human." - Glen Hirshberg, Author of The Motherless Children Trilogy "The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is a dark, dream-like, psychologically astute novel about the outsider as threat and victim, about the power of crowds, and the betrayal of innocence, replete with uncanny secrets, signs, and symbols that echo and reverberate, intimations of an unseen, sublunary world."

Genres: Fantasy, Magical Realism, Novels, Fiction, Horror

212 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 3, 2021

About the author

M. Rickert also writes under the name Mary Rickert. How did this happen and why, you might ask. It is a reasonable question but that does not mean the answer is reasonable as well. There was a time when M. was a young writer, scribbling in notebooks and on the back of envelopes, who thought she wanted to disappear behind the stories she wrote. (She still feels that way, and rather enjoys writing about herself in the third person as if she were someone else.) After years of rejections M. began publishing under the mysterious moniker, and was happy doing so, until she began to feel that she was repeating herself, or (and this is the weird part) repeating someone else who she once had been. At the age of 51 she decided to go back to school and earned her MFA as well as the rest of her name. She also wrote a novel, The Memory Garden, to be published in May, 2014.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undertow Publications is one of my favorite presses when it comes to dark fiction. They simply can do no wrong. And now they've upped the stakes with The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie. It's dripping with atmospheric tension, right from the very first page, and contains a deliciously unreliable protagonist.

Quark, so named for a strange hypothetical star, is a bumbling giant of a man who's returned to his hometown in an attempt to locate his Old Man who was recently reported missing. Upon Quark's return, his old friends and neighbors start wondering what role his presence is playing in the sudden deaths of some of the townfolk.

Set in a sea-fairing town said to have been built from the very bones of ships that crashed into its rocky cliffs, it's oozing with local legend, haunted by ghosts of the past, and prickling with deciet and deception at every turn.

Trust me. You gotta pick this one up.

[Francesca Forrest]

This was a gift. I feel honored that the giver thought this was a tale I'd not only penetrate, but appreciate, and feel chagrinned to not even have managed the first thing very well. But I'm giving up about a third of the way through.

There are things I appreciate about it: some of the observations (including a central one: "grief is a ship without a captain") are beautiful, and there's a kind of sestina-like quality about it, the way sensory details repeat in new contexts (e.g.: the main character pulls a blanket back from a dead body, "releasing a sour odor"; a few pages later, a neglected feast is described as "emit[ting] a slightly sour odor"), creating a shifting pattern. But the story's particular mix of familiar and the fantastical is hard for me to settle into--everyone behaves in ways that are hard to understand, including the poor protagonist Quark, whose viewpoint we follow. He has problems remembering things, but at the one-third mark it's not clear why; he's been mercilessly bullied as a child, and by his father--oh, but his father isn't really his father but his grandfather--and yet when that (grand?)father dies, Quark's full of grief and decides to prepare a burial at sea. I get that people can love people who have been cruel to them, but the situation is just so unhappy-making. And Quark takes to drinking, further compromising his viewpoint's reliability, and I'm so far out of my depth, so sad and confused for and by the main character, that I just need to step away. But the tale is clearly a labor of love with a message about grief, and I hope it does find its audience.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. This book was written beautifully. Each sentence was crafted very well. The story however fell flat for me, and I found the ending unsatisfying. What I did appreciate the most was the main character and his grief and confusion/memory gaps. However without a proper resolution to the mystery, I am left feeling like I’ve eaten half a meal. Sometimes mysteries are meant to be left unsolved, but with this book I felt like it definitely needed to be. It would’ve honored Quark a lot more. I would still recommend this book if you like an atmospheric, well-written novel.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was approved to receive an e-Galley ARC of The Shipbuilder Of Bellfairie, authored by M. Rickert, cover artwork by Tithi Luadthong, cover design by Vince Haig, interior design, editing and layout by Courtney Kelly and proof-reading by Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly, from Edelweiss and Undertow Publication. What follows below is my honest review, freely given.

I rated this novel 5 stars. This is a title I pre-ordered, and it has arrived before release date; I want to mention how gorgeous the physical copy came out! The craftsmanship and care the publisher put into the title helped bring this story to the height it deserves to reach, just a beautiful pairing.

This is a novel that leaves a soreness that radiates like a bruise perpetually pressed by an unseen hand, a wound from which your emotion fountains, a forever weeping part of you now. The main character Quark is the lost child that can be found in so many of us, where a bruised smile and faraway eyes are part of the everyday dress. To hear remarks to the more painful remembrances of his childhood from Bellfairians, not even uttered with affection or apology, more almost in an offhand way after not seeing him in town for years, it just gouged something from me. The impression, this claustrophobic panic that grips you as the reader, is that you can never escape the corner you’ve been backed into when you’ve live in a small town. Even if you have left, as Quark did, all that is reset to how they remember and treated you. And he is a disadvantage, poor Quark, a gentle giant without emotional armour to deflect even the softest of volleys. But as his initial reason for returning to Bellfairie lead to an unexpected result, and then dubious happenings cause the town folk to look to him in distrust, the volleys do not remain soft, growing barbed and poisoned.

The author’s voice is magical and mournful in turn, I found myself swept up in the ‘truestory’ of Bellfairie with Coral one chapter, and rudderless beside Quark turning over a new corner of his own forgotten history the next. “Grief is a ship without a captain” will be a phrase I remember to the ends of my nights, even now it brings a prick of tears to my eyes because it immediately causes me to think of Quark, tipping his hat. His hat, oh how my heart dropped over his hat too (when you know, you’ll understand)! Even now, I am horrified, broken by the indecision I have over Quark. And that final chapter, leading me to the most poignant, just brutal final two sentences. They ended the book so beautifully, I adore and abhor them with the very essence of my being, I am that extra over this, when I finished the book and I honestly just teared up again dammit. I closed the book and couldn’t do anything for several minutes, I didn’t want to end the moment. This is horror that is tied to our humanity, it will not shake from your shoulders easily, but you may find you welcome it as I did. The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is a modern classic of horror, mark my words, and M. Rickert will be a lasting voice.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A misunderstood protagonist living in an ancestral home, ostracized by the town, subject to suspicious mutterings. Low level, creepy harassment. A fire occurs.

Is this Shirley Jackson's 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'? No, it's a woman who may have inherited her title (and has won the award named for her), Mary Rickert.

Mary has been described as a horror writer, but that's true only in the sense that it was for Jackson: psychological tension with a hint of supernatural doings is her stock in trade.

Unlike the famously unreliable first person narrator of 'Castle', this book has third person narration, but with a limited point of view of Quark, the hulking man who has returned to his home village when the man who took care of him goes missing. The intriguing part of Rickert's construction is that we still are limited to things that Quark thinks, or sees, or thinks he sees. Is he reliable? Is he even reliable to himself? He's been damaged in the past, is missing chunks of memory, and has 'fugue' episodes where he doesn't remember what happened. Could those suspicious mutterings have some basis in fact?

Rickert plays with our emotions masterfully. We are naturally invested in Quark and see how bad he is at interpersonal communications. His gestures scare them, his utterances puzzle them, as theirs puzzle him. Because of the POV narration we understand why Quark does and says what he does, but we easily understand how the townspeople misunderstand as well. Just when you think the climax is building to pitchforks and torches, a twist appears. Then in the denouement, the book ends in a stunner.

Bravo, Ms. Rickert. This book is a minor masterpiece in plot development, character building, and manipulating our expectations to achieve an unexpected result.

[Bret Praxmarer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I was expected. I bought this because I read a short story by the author that was a haunting powerful horror story. This book had comparisons to Frankenstein which I love so it seemed like the perfect read. I loved this story, but I am not sure how to categorize it.

This book felt like a mashup of a ghost story and a murder mystery blended with the story of an outsider coming home after years away (the outsider was very much Frankenstein's monster). Quark, the main character had one social misunderstanding after another throughout the book that lead to confusion for all of the characters. I took me way too long to realize that Quark was on the Autism spectrum, but once I did, the story made much more sense.

This was a beautifully written story about the struggles of social norms and trying to fit in as an outsider. It was a great read. I highly recommend it.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie by Mary Rickert is a haunting tale set in the bleak seaside town of Bellfairie, a place discovered by “wrong turns”. Its residents are severe and judgmental, and they unite in their contempt when their least favorite citizen, Quark, returns to the town upon the news of his father’s disappearance. Quark is plagued not only by the town’s cruelty, but by his own narrative which he has formulated without the benefit of an intact memory. The story unfolds as people mysteriously begin to die, and Quark becomes the town’s scapegoat and prime suspect. The story weaves myth, sea adages, taxidermy, and ghosts into a heartbreaking story of an isolated man. Rickert’s telling is poetic and skillful, a tale told with stark beauty and the lyricism of a sea gull’s flight.

[Jordi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended.

[Julia Rust · Rating 5 out of 5]

“His name was Quark, and the worst thing he ever did was nothing at all.” So we are introduced to this large, befuddled, kind son of Bellfairie, a town birthed from a shipwreck. Quark is someone whose hand you’ll gladly take and keep until the very beautiful, perfect last line on the last page. It’s a mystery, steeped in questions from the very start, as our guide, Quark, returns to his home town to help find his Old Man. The town is steeped in mystery—how it has survived within a level of decrepitude—how the people of the town, mostly known to Quark, speak of many things which Quark doesn’t understand and can’t remember. This is one of the few books I’ve read where the last line gave me both chills and a strange joy at its perfection. An excellent read, beautifully written, and beautifully designed. Kudos to M. Rickert, Undertow Publications, Tithi Luadthong and Vince Haig for the gorgeous paperback cover.

[David]

In The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie, M. Rickert has written a genuinely tragic novel of great beauty and compassion.

Ricket’s fiction is frequently peopled with misunderstood innocents, outcasts or outcasts-in-the-making whose aspect and habits trouble and unnerve their less imaginative neighbors. In Quark, Rickert has created a different kind of misunderstood innocent.

In Quark, Rickert has given us the chance to feel over the course of an entire novel what it would be like to live inside a mind that processes the world differently. Quark lives on a different wavelength than the rest of us, one that allows him to tune in to moments of awe and beauty, but also cuts him off from the people around him. The thousand misunderstandings that occur almost every time he opens his mouth, with almost every gesture he makes, all pile up and weigh him down.

As the story went on, with Quark’s every misstep or misunderstanding, I found myself wanting to call out and warn him, to stop him before he dug himself in too deeply, even after I understood that it was too late.

As in all of Rickert’s work, the writing is glorious. There are lines in this book that literally stunned me with their insight and grace. In the chapter where Quark bathes the body of the man who raised him, I felt like I was witnessing a sacrament.

While Rickert does provide Quark with a few friends who make an effort to reach out and protect him from the fate he’s inevitably moving toward, in the end it’s the author herself who gives Quark the unconditional compassion and understanding he lacks in his fictional life. That compassion and understanding hovers above every word on the page, making this very painful story bearable, even beautiful. It’s a gift that Rickert has given to her character. And to us.

[Sheena Forsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Well, you know how mourning is. Grief eats up hours, and if a person isn’t careful, entire years are consumed”.

“Bellfairie was named after the doomed ship on which it was founded. Crashed on the rocks, she sank with her cargo of bells that still rang from the depths. The survivors decided to stay, using ship remnants for lumber. This, the old man said, made the sea angry. She’s unforgiving”, he used to rant. “No one was meant to live”.

“His name was Quark, and the worst thing he ever did was nothing”
—————————-

Holy crud. It’s rare that I find a book as engaging, beautiful inside and out as this one.

It begins with a giant crying and locals hoping for his forgiveness.
-Part mystery, part more empathetic Frankenstein & entirely Rickert’s own wondrous melancholy tale. This story weaves a beautiful tapestry of lingering sadness, folklore, mystery, intrigue, small town prejudices, magic and an unreliable MC. It’s been weeks, and the cockles of my heart are still being haunted by a certain giant named after a type of star❤️
I need to get my hands on more M. Rickert books😍

[Edithe Swensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In all her works, M. Rickert creates prose of rare beauty and power, where a single sentence can capture and convey profound insights into the human condition. Her latest release, The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie, is destined to be a classic. Like Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein, an unforgettable outcast is persecuted for what is out of his control, or all possibility of changing. Rickert’s tragic hero Quark demands our pity and our horror, as an entire town sways between pitying him and persecuting him, but almost no one comes near to understanding him, and it breaks our hearts. In the final action, we can’t be sure if they’ve converged on his house to put it to the torch, or to offer apologies for past cruelties.

Like Shirley Jackson, M. Rickert writes with familiarity about the weird, dislocating energies flowing below the surface of quotidian life, threatening to bubble up and unmoor us at any random moment. For fans of metaphysical horror, this is a must-read.

[Tomasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big man, taxidermist named Quark comes back to his home town built - as the legend goes - from a shipwreck as his Old Man is missing. Is this a coincidence that at the same time people start dying? Wonderful, oneiric story of mystery, family legacy, ghosts of the past, grief and social exclusion.
I am impressed with Rickert's ability to create hazy atmosphere of a small seaside town and its community. The protagonist is a character built so well that I am sure I won't forget him unless I get struck by lighting. Trust me, you have never encountered a figure so sympathetic, lost, pitiable and at the same time comical.
Chapeau bas to Mary Rickert and Undertow Publications!

[Linda Raedisch · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could, I would give this book 3 and a half stars. I toyed with giving it 4, but because the publisher, Undertow, advertises "unique genre fiction of exceptional literary merit," I feel like I have to hold them to a higher standard--one the editors didn't live up to. Here are some tips to make it easier for the next reader: "the Sheriff" and "Healy" are the same person. "The Old Man" and "Thayer" are another same person. It took me a bit to figure that out, so there you go. It's mentioned quite late that Quark wears a hat. It's mentioned even later that it's a stovepipe hat. A main character who wears a stovepipe hat? That's something I would've liked to know right away. (When it comes to the randomly placed commas, you're on your own. Again, I blame the editors. That's what editors paid for, after all. They're also paid to know the difference between lie and lay, especially when it comes to an impeccably spoken man lie Quark, so that was another half a star off.) Is the cover pretty? Oh so pretty! But it's totally wrong for this book. The cover said to me, "Long-haired adventurer in boots and a cloak is going to take you on a magical journey." That ain't happening. What happens is a lot more unexpected, and perhaps even more interesting, but instead of going on a journey, I felt like I was walking in circles. There is some really lovely writing and really lovely imagery here, but I felt that the "literary merit" was distancing. I wanted the story to tick along, I wanted to really get under Quark's skin, and that didn't happen, though the author did do a good job of Quark's relentless, unwitting descent into disaster. This is the second Rickert book I've read. The first was her recent Lucky Girl, published by Tor, which I enjoyed very much, and I'm looking forward to reading her short stories. The town of Bellfairie had some really intriguing details: the sour smell of the sea, the masked Christmas giftgiver, the ship-related superstitions, the bird man statue in the middle of town. A longer book might have given me more of what I wanted, which was for Bellfairie to be fully fleshed out like Phil Rickman's Ledwardine. (Perhaps Undertow, like many independent presses, has a strict max word count?) I found myself comparing Bellfairie to Phil Rickman's early horror novels, too. Rickert does creepy as well as Rickman, but this story wasn't as firmly grounded. I wanted it to be either a horror/fantasy novel with a murder mystery wrapped inside it, or a murder mystery with speculative elements that couldn't be quite explained. But then, I'm not sure Rickert intends the reader to know "who did it." It is definitely "unique genre fiction" as Undertow promises; it was just too many genres for me and trying a little TOO hard to be literary. Favorite character: the Old Man. Favorite scene: the Old Man's last appearance, which is Rickert at her creepiest creepy best.

[Frank Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding work. A central character that immediately grabs your attention and dosen't let go. A town that seems to be an illusion yet familiar at the same time. A plot that leads you on a journey for which you can only guess the destination. This is a character driven storyline, pulling you relentlessly to its profound conclusion. Don't miss this one.

[Uudenkuun Emilia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very different from what I was expecting (my mistake for not looking further into it before reading), and it just wasn't for me. The writing was lyrical, but I just felt too much sadness for Quark and the terrible misunderstandings that kept happening for me to like it. I also think I wasn't in the right mood for this.

[Lewis Housley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. It made me think of my experience as an outsider in small towns, the unreliability of memory, and the strangeness of life. Beautifully written.

[Wheeler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Narrator is too unreliable and the last points seem too contradictory. The foreshadowing was ???. Book really dragged. Needed to be half as long.

[Kahlia]

Beautiful at an individual sentence level, but absolutely suffocating as an overall novel.

[Derek Buker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy it because of the reviews but I did not find it as enchanting or haunting as everyone else. The summary implies a murder mystery and a urban fantasy with parallels to Shelley's Frankenstein but it is unsatisfying. The murderer's identity is implied, the fantasy is buried in the past and the Frankenstein parallels are hamhanded.