The Sirens

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, physical abuse, sexual assault, and death.

“She knows she is safe in her dark cave, with its slick rocks and its steady drip of salt. But the sea is hungry and it must be fed.”

The Prologue establishes two prevalent ideas: the importance of safe spaces to harbor women, especially during vulnerable moments like childbirth, and the combined allure and danger of the sea, described with the imagery of a hungry animal. The opening scene of childbirth foreshadows the story of Baby Hope and establishes a mystery surrounding the mother’s identity and the child’s fate that will not be completely answered until the Epilogue.

“There’d been a dream, she remembers now: cold water licking her skin, stones digging into her feet. The scrape of rock against her skull. A man’s hot breath in her face, his fingers digging into her flesh—fear warring with the desperate need to fight, to survive—”

The dream Lucy has the night she tries to strangle Ben is full of ominous imagery that suggests Lucy, not Ben, is the survivor of something. The image also foreshadows Mary’s assault by Byrne and, later, Jess’s by Cameron. The shared dreams, which Jess also experiences, establish the first link in the connection between all three of the female protagonists and contribute one of the fabulous aspects of the novel.

“She’d known then that she wanted to be a journalist. She wanted to be the one speaking into the microphone, unraveling a story like a spool of knotted thread. She wanted to be the one to fight injustice with the only weapon that matters: the truth.”

Lucy’s interest in journalism is a defining aspect of her character while also contributing to the plot, as her curiosity allows Hart to introduce backstory about the disappearances of the Eight in Comber Bay. This interest will lead Lucy not only to investigate the deaths of the missing men but also her own history by locating Jess’s diary while also emphasizing the importance of