Charlotte Kersten

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.

When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.

Review

Silver in the Woods is a sweet, dreamy and lush little novella, like a folk tale that’s part happy and part melancholy. Atmosphere and beautiful writing are two of its greatest strengths – you can practically smell the green growing things and hear the rustle of leaves while you read. The magical woods are ancient, full of power and mystery and tales half-forgotten and I wouldn’t have minded spending a whole book exploring and wandering Greenhollow with Tobias.

He’s a rather stolid, hulking main character, a wild recluse with a painful past and a gentle heart. As I discovered with Grim in Dreamer’s Pool earlier this year, this is one of my favorite types of character and consequently I loved spending time with his ponderous thoughts and fierce protectiveness for the woods. Silver is also a lovely character with his earnestness and eager curiosity and they make a very sweet couple although I would have liked it if their relationship had had more time to develop. I also loved Silver’s tough monster-hunting mother and Tobias’ dryad friend Bramble.

I think this could be seen as a story about how damaging relationships reach out from the past to paralyze you, hurt you and scare you away from loving in the present, and Tobias’s challenge is to finally bury that past where it belongs and find a future with more hope. I’m delighted that he succeeded, and I’m equally delighted that what looked like it was going to be a case of Bury-Your-Gays ended up being a near miss with a happy ending instead.

I mentioned that I think the central romance could have been more developed, and to that I’d also add that the summary of Tobias’s time in the city with Mrs. Silver felt very, very rushed. As with each of the wonderful novellas I’ve read this year (all of them queer too), I mostly wish that the story had more space to breathe.