I forget where I heard about this book, but I'm glad it was brought to my attention. If Margo Lanagan's writing is always as lyrical and haunting as it was in this book, I'll be happy to read more of her work.

Rollrock Island is a remote, fishing island, much like any other. The people are clannish and life is often cold, hard, and bleak. When a young witch offers the fishermen of Rollrock their very own, beautiful sea-wives for a price, it's no wonder they gladly pay it. Soon, no ordinary women remains on Rollrock. They leave in disgust and dismay and soon all who remain are the fishermen, their sea-wives, and the sons born of these unions. Daughters can never be kept. Instead, they are cast back into the sea to return to seal form or waste away and die on land.

The sea-wives, separated from their true forms by Misskaella the witch, are kept ignorant to the location of their seal skins, but they never stop yearning to return to them and to the sea. Every year they become more despondent and, despite their marriages and homes, despite the love they have for their sons, Rollrock wears a shroud of melancholy felt in the sighing songs of these sisters.

This is more than your run-of-the-mill fairy story. Without spoiling the plot, this novel - written in seven, separate voices - is an unflinching look at the unflattering aspects of basic, human nature.