Synopsis
Conor’s mum owns the pub on the wet and wild Gwent levels, just below the Sea Wall. On the other side of the wall the great river Severn, or Hafren rages, its tides surging, eager to claim back the land that was once hers.
Conor meets Meurig, a musician with a problem. Meurig is the guardian of the Sea Wall, but he believes he is under the river’s curse; she has enchanted his soul into a small white candle, and if it is lit and burns away he will die.
When the candle falls into the hands of his enemy, Hafren, she demands that he allow her to flood the levels. Desperate, with only Conor and Sara to help him, he sets out on a terrifying journey into the tides of the estuary to recover the candle.
With a ghost-boat, a dangerous cat and a woman made of water, the story is a strange and eerie web of storm-lashed adventure.
Winner of the Tir na N-Og Welsh Children’s Book Award
Now re-published as the first of the Firefly Classics from Wales series.
ISBN 978-1-917718-14-1
BUY FROM FIREFLY PRESS
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Read an article about the book, written by Catherine Fisher →
Response to the book
‘Terrifying and eerie..’
– The Times
‘As eerie a book as you’ll find…wonderfully engrossing… draws the reader into its terrifying, watery world.’
– Books For Keeps.
‘The book is highly atmospheric, with extraordinary descriptive passages; this is an excellent read for fluent readers.’
– Junior Education
‘Throughout the book there is a poet’s economy and forcefulness in the use of words which makes both feeling and event so strong that they cannot be disbelieved.’
– Times Ed. Supplement.
‘The overwhelming power of the natural world is the constant theme of the book and it gives a remarkable unity to this most satisfying novel. The sense of place so indelibly stitched into The Candleman, and the power of its poetic evocation of nature’s force made this novel our unanimous choice for the Tir na nOg Award of 1995.’
– Llais Llyfrau.
‘There is never a dull moment in the whole book…’
– New Statesman