The Story Collector

These chapters deepen the novel’s central argument for The Healing Power of Storytelling by framing the motif of story collecting as a multifaceted act of preservation, confession, and recovery. Woods gives Harold’s academic mission a personal context through his thesis statement: “If we lose our stories […] we lose ourselves” (176), elevating his work from anthropological curiosity to an act of cultural and individual salvation. For example, Jimmy Lenihan’s tragic account of fairies stealing away his wife Rosaleen provides a framework for processing unbearable grief, transforming a sudden death into a mythic quest that, even in its failure, provides meaning. Anna, in turn, listens as a seeker, hoping Jimmy’s experience might contain a key to rescuing her own sister, Milly, reinforcing the idea of stories as dynamic tools used by characters to navigate trauma. In the present timeline, Sarah embodies this theme as she transitions from a passive consumer of Anna’s story to an active creator. Her sketch of Butler’s cottage is a non-verbal story she offers to Oran, initiating his own healing process by reframing the cottage as a place of life and recovery.

In this section, Woods makes the fantastical elements of the story increasingly prominent, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality within the world of the story. Anna is drawn to Cnoc na Sí by a hope rooted in folkloric belief, and it is there that her fateful, injurious encounter with the Hawley twins occurs. One hundred years later, Oran recounts how his own daughter, Hazel, was drawn to the same hill to search for fairies, demonstrating the persistence of belief and the landscape’s enduring mythic charge. The uncanny appearance and disappearance of a creature’s eyes in Sarah’s sketch of the derelict Thornwood House escalates the sense that supernatural forces are at play throughout the narrative. As Sarah holds “the sketchbook up to the light,” she sees that “the smudge had eyes. Defying all belief, there was a creature peeking out from behind the tree trunk. A creature she hadn’t drawn” (176). This detail also serves as a visual metaphor for the unseen historical forces haunting the present, underscoring The Lingering Influence of the Past on the Present through the house’s dark legacy.

The characterization of George and Olivia Hawley explores the corrupting influence of social class and isolation within the historical context of the Protestant Ascendancy, the period of Irish history in which a small Anglican ruling class held a disproportionate amount of economic and political power over the Irish working class. The Hawley twins' menace is both personal and systemic, rooted in the power imbalance that defines their interactions with the villagers and socioeconomic politics of the time. Anna’s mother articulates this dynamic with stark clarity, warning her daughter that men of George’s station “have a talent for breaking hearts” (164), framing his charm as a predatory entitlement. George’s actions at Cnoc na Sí and within Thornwood House underscore his aristocratic privilege; he physically carries Anna, pays her doctor, and presumes an intimacy that transgresses the rigid social boundaries of the era. Olivia’s cruelty springs from the same source, as she contemptuously dismisses Anna as a villager (159).

Woods complicates the Hawley twins' roles as antagonists, humanizing them through Harold’s external analysis. He observes that they are “so very isolated up there” and “completely cut off from the rest of village society” (182), suggesting their psychological instability is a product of their hermetic upbringing. This portrayal situates their personal cruelty within a broader socio-historical decline, presenting them as the damaged products of a fading and morally bankrupt social order.

The folkloric motif of the changeling and its associated beliefs function as a lens through which characters interpret inexplicable tragedy and cruelty. While the belief that the Hawleys are cursed is rooted in this concept, the stories collected by Harold in these chapters expand its application. Jimmy Lenihan’s account of his wife being taken by fairies on their wedding night exemplifies the ways folklore provides a narrative structure for processing sudden, traumatic loss. The supernatural explanation is more palatable than the reality of a fatal medical event, allowing his grief to be externalized into the realm of myth. Anna’s investment in these tales is intensely personal; she filters every story through her hope of recovering Milly, believing that “Fairyland” (194) is a tangible place where the dead might still live. Harold’s scholarly interpretation—that this “invisible world” (194) is a “realm or a place containing the souls of the dead” (194)—provides a quasi-scientific validation for Anna’s faith.

Throughout these chapters, the novel advances Woods’s thematic exploration of The Interplay of Fate and Personal Agency, using key symbols and uncanny events to suggest that human choices unfold within a larger, guided pattern. Woods’s narrative is punctuated by moments of inexplicable synchronicity and supernatural suggestion—the fleeting vision of the old woman in the black shawl, the mysterious eyes in Sarah’s sketch—which disrupt a purely rational reading of events. These occurrences imply the presence of unseen forces subtly influencing the characters’ paths, reinforcing the idea that while individuals must make choices, those choices are often guided by a destiny woven from the threads of the past. The lone hawthorn tree, a symbol of the supernatural, becomes the object of Sarah’s conscious pilgrimage. Her decision to leave a coin as an offering is a deliberate act of engagement with folklore, a personal choice to participate in an ancient tradition. During Anna’s repeated visits to Cnoc na Sí, her agency is expressed as a form of faithful waiting, hoping for a fated intervention.