Evie Gaughan’s “The Story Collector” weaves a captivating tapestry that deftly blends historical fiction with a touch of the supernatural. Set in the enchanting backdrop of rural Ireland, this novel explores the liminal spaces between reality and folklore, past and present, grief and healing. Through dual timelines—one in 1911 rural Ireland and another in contemporary times—Gaughan invites readers into a world where the boundaries between the seen and unseen are delightfully permeable.
Like her previous work “The Lost Bookshop,” Gaughan demonstrates her talent for creating immersive settings that feel both authentic and magical. However, while “The Lost Bookshop” transported readers to a whimsical Dublin bookstore, “The Story Collector” delves deeper into Irish countryside traditions and the complex relationship between locals and their folklore.
The Dance Between Past and Present
The novel opens with Sarah Harper, a woman fleeing her broken marriage and painful memories, who impulsively boards a plane to Ireland instead of returning to Boston. What begins as an escape transforms into a journey of discovery when she finds Anna Butler’s diary hidden in a tree hollow—a diary that chronicles the young farm girl’s encounters with an American anthropologist studying Irish fairy lore in 1911.
Gaughan masterfully alternates between these two narratives, creating a rhythm that pulls readers deeper into both women’s stories. This parallel storytelling reveals how two women, separated by a century, navigate similar emotional landscapes of loss, love, and self-discovery.
What’s particularly striking is how Gaughan uses this structure to explore cultural continuity. The fairy beliefs that were beginning to fade in Anna’s time remain powerful symbols in contemporary Thornwood, suggesting that some traditions resist the march of progress, remaining embedded in the landscape and the people’s collective memory.
Characters That Breathe
The characters populating “The Story Collector” are vividly drawn and deeply human. Anna Butler, a young farm girl with an unresolved grief over her lost sister Milly, is especially compelling. Her journey from naïveté to wisdom unfolds organically, and her voice—captured in first-person diary entries—rings with authenticity. Her relationship with Harold Griffin-Krauss, the American anthropologist, provides the emotional core of the historical narrative, moving from professional respect to something deeper.
In the contemporary timeline, Sarah’s character development is equally nuanced. Her gradual awakening from emotional numbness to engagement with her surroundings and the people of Thornwood feels earned rather than contrived. The supporting characters surrounding Sarah—particularly Oran, Fee, and young Hazel—are fully realized individuals with their own struggles and perspectives.
Where Gaughan truly excels is in depicting how past trauma shapes present actions. Both Anna and Sarah carry deep wounds—Anna from losing her sister, Sarah from losing her unborn child—that influence their relationships and choices. Yet neither character is defined solely by her pain, and both find paths toward healing that feel emotionally honest.
The Supernatural: Subtle and Unsettling
The supernatural elements in “The Story Collector” are handled with remarkable restraint. Rather than overwhelming the narrative with spectacle, Gaughan introduces the otherworldly through small, uncanny moments—a mysterious old woman appearing and disappearing, a swarm of bees materializing at a critical moment, eyes peering from a sketch that weren’t drawn there.
This subtle approach mirrors the way folklore functions in rural communities—not as fantasy but as another layer of reality, accepted and incorporated into daily life. The most memorable scene in this vein involves George Hawley’s death, where the boundary between natural explanation and supernatural intervention remains tantalizingly blurred.
Gaughan’s research into Irish folklore traditions shines throughout the novel. The details about fairy beliefs—from the significance of hawthorn trees to the practices surrounding changelings—feel authentic rather than imposed. This attention to cultural accuracy gives the supernatural elements credibility within the story’s framework.
Prose That Captures the Landscape
Gaughan’s prose is evocative without being purple, particularly in her descriptions of the Irish countryside. Consider this passage:
“The land was so green, just like the picture postcards of Ireland on sale in the gift shop at Newark Airport. The river gurgled past her and as she turned at the bend in the road, she spotted a rather grand entrance to the woods, with two large stone pillars either side of a dirt track.”
This straightforward yet sensory language captures both the physical landscape and Sarah’s perspective as an outsider encountering it for the first time. Similarly, Anna’s diary entries feel period-appropriate without becoming inaccessible to modern readers.
The dialogue, too, rings true across both timelines. Gaughan captures the cadence and vocabulary of rural Irish speech without resorting to phonetic spelling or stereotypical “Irishisms.” This authenticity extends to the American characters as well, with subtle differences in speech patterns that feel natural rather than exaggerated.
Thematic Richness
“The Story Collector” explores several interconnected themes with depth and nuance:
- The power of storytelling: Stories in this novel aren’t mere entertainment but vehicles for preserving cultural memory and processing trauma. Harold’s mission to collect fairy tales is portrayed as an act of cultural preservation rather than appropriation.
- Grief and healing: Both Anna and Sarah must confront their losses before they can move forward. Gaughan depicts grief not as something to “get over” but as an experience to integrate into one’s identity.
- The tension between tradition and modernity: Ireland in 1911 was experiencing significant cultural and political shifts, which Gaughan captures through references to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and changing attitudes toward folklore. This tension echoes into the present-day narrative with debates about preserving natural landmarks versus development.
- Female agency: Both Anna and Sarah must navigate societies that limit women’s choices. Their parallel journeys toward self-determination, despite the century separating them, highlight both progress and persistent constraints.
Where the Narrative Falters
Despite its considerable strengths, “The Story Collector” occasionally stumbles. The resolution of Anna’s story, learned secondhand through Oran’s grandfather, feels somewhat anticlimactic after the detailed intimacy of her diary entries. Readers who have become deeply invested in Anna and Harold’s relationship may find this distancing unsatisfying.
Additionally, some plot developments—particularly the coincidence of Sarah finding Anna’s diary—require a significant suspension of disbelief. While these coincidences could be read as part of the novel’s larger theme of unseen forces shaping lives, they occasionally strain credibility.
The contemporary romance between Sarah and Oran, while tender and well-developed, sometimes follows predictable patterns found in similar novels. Their relationship hits familiar beats that readers of women’s fiction will recognize, though Gaughan does infuse it with genuine emotional stakes that elevate it above formula.
Final Verdict: A Captivating Journey Through Time and Myth
“The Story Collector” succeeds as both historical fiction and contemporary women’s fiction with supernatural elements. Its greatest strength lies in how seamlessly it blends these genres, creating a reading experience that satisfies on multiple levels. Gaughan’s evident respect for Irish folklore traditions and her skill in depicting complex female characters make this novel stand out in an increasingly crowded field.
Like the hawthorn tree at the center of the contemporary storyline—which forces a modern motorway to change its course—this novel suggests that sometimes the old ways demand acknowledgment, that the stories we tell about ourselves and our communities have power beyond words on a page.
For readers who enjoyed “The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris” and “The Lost Bookshop,” this novel offers a deeper emotional journey with equally enchanting prose. Fans of contemporary authors like Sarah Addison Allen, Susanna Kearsley, or Kate Morton will find similar pleasures here—a blend of the historical and contemporary, the mysterious and the everyday, all infused with a touch of magic that feels entirely plausible.
At its heart, “The Story Collector” reminds us that stories—whether passed down through generations or newly discovered—have the power to transform us, connecting us to both the past and each other in ways both profound and healing. In Anna’s words: “If we lose our stories, we lose ourselves.”
Strengths:
- Evocative dual-timeline narrative
- Authentic integration of Irish folklore
- Well-developed female protagonists
- Beautiful sense of place and atmosphere
Weaknesses:
- Some plot coincidences strain credibility
- Resolution of the historical storyline feels somewhat distanced
- Romantic elements occasionally follow predictable patterns