Spirited Away

In Avinuo Kire's assured new novel, magic trumps realism by curing profound grief and repairing loss

- Samrat Choudhury

It is her mother’s first death anniversary, and Vime, a young schoolgirl, sadly walks down her favourite crumbling, cobbled path, past the old village gate into the surrounding fields where a majestic old tree stands. Here she falls down, and then goes to sleep. When she awakens, to her bewildered dismay, the path is not where it ought to have been. A lost and alarmed Vime is directed back to the path by Tei, an elfin girl who suddenly appears. Tei takes her hand and walks her around the tree, to the path right where it was earlier, but Vime had not found it in her searching.