Kirkus Review

Crispin Clare, an anthropologist who seems to have had nervous-breakdownish sorts of problems abroad, returns to Suffolk to live in a small cottage near his sister and her children. Then, while Clare is playing the ouija board one night, a sprite named Malkin appears--and in short order Clare is host to various manifestations, along with tales of other centuries-old apparitions and legends. The most charming of these: the story of a merman who is caught in a fisherman's net and put under military guard, where he becomes deeply fond of his jailer. Also rather diverting: the tale of the au-pair girl who turns out actually to be one of the storied and libidinous ""green children"" spoken of by William of Newburgh in the twelfth-century Historia Rerum Anglicarum. Stow, at first with too preciously a literary style, has some fun flashing these paranormal/ mythic shards up into the contemporary light; yet his little book--less a story than a wee collection--seems to have a heart of eccentric research and no lungs whatsoever. Overall: deft but terribly slight. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.