This is probably a book you either love or hate, since it's definitely off the beaten path and takes a bit of getting used to. I highly recommend perseverance!Ever since childhood, Andrew has been fascinated with dolls. Later in life he becomes a collector and dollmaker himself. Through an ad in a collector's magazine he gets in touch with Bramber, who is looking for information on Ewa, a dollmaker from the past. They start a snailmail correspondence in which we get to know their characters and

Another novel that took a while to get seriously into, but once I passed the 20 pages or so mark, I just couldn't put it down until the excellent ending; charming, great characters and very interesting as a story too, though with patches of (almost unexpected) darkness that we discover as we go along - the book while a first-person narration from the very short (almost a dwarf) Andrew Garvie, the dollmaker, employs both first-person letter writing from his pen-pal and doll aficionado, Bramber, a...

Many thanks to Other Press for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest reviewi tried to find a creepy old doll we used to have but it seems to have disappeared...| Goodreads | Blog | Pinterest | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram

★ THE BEST BOOK OF 2019 ★After falling in love with Nina Allan’s work over the past year, The Dollmaker was undoubtedly my most anticipated book of 2019. You might think I’d have been eager to start reading the second I got my hands on a copy, but actually I was quite nervous about starting it. What if it didn’t live up to my sky-high expectations? What if it was just good rather than wonderful and perfect? I needn’t have worried. This is indeed a wonderful novel, and though I know it’s a bit si...

The Dollmaker bears all the hallmarks of Nina Allan’s fiction: it’s an orchestral piece of multiple harmonies, delicately stitched together out of different genres of story. Like the dolls that its central characters love and make it is much more than the found, borrowed and crafted materials from which it is made. Allan specialises in a kind of storytelling that I can best describe as resonant. Motifs, themes and imagery move through her work in a way that is intuitive rather than thematic. I r...

My first thought while writing this review is, how can it possibly be rated at 3.47? I can only imagine that some readers were misled by the title into believing that the story might somehow be cute, or at worst a bit spooky. The blurb, too, does not warn you of just how bizarre parts of this story are. Personally I loved it! I devoured every page of writing. The prose was complex, weird, deliciously dark and, at times, twisted. As a writer myself, Nina Allan is one to learn from.I loved the mix...

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review purposes. Thank you!Nina Allen’s The Dollmaker is a strange novel. It contains a jumble of elements: a boy, then a man, interested in making dolls, his long-distance friendship with a mysterious woman, conducted by the means of letters, short stories written by a (purportedly) Polish refugee, concerned with strange events, dolls and dwarfs, and the way fiction and “real life” permeate each other. There are many pieces

I was drawn to this book because of its reviews. They promised stories within stories. I got that. There was a very clear central plot thread, and many blatant messages about marginalized individuals. I felt that most of the characters were easy to sympathize with. Overall it was very well done, except for a few minor mishaps.Personally, I felt that about 30-40 pages might have been trimmed. The interpolated dark fairy tales were sometimes more interesting than the central narrative. The weaknes...

3.5 stars!

Whilst providing a challenging structure, Nina Allan writes a wonder of a luminous novel littered with dollmakers throughout. It is complex, magical, multilayered, and interspersed with the dark tales providing the reader with stories within the main story that fray and blur the edges of reality. I came close to giving up at the beginning but was richly rewarded as my persistence began to pay off as I got caught up in the atmospheric, magical and deeply unsettling storytelling that whispers of o...

I was initially attracted to The Dollmaker by the cover and the description but it turned out to be quite different from what I expected. The book has an unusual structure: an episodic first person account by Andrew, a collector and maker of dolls, of his journey to the West Country to meet Bramber; letters from Bramber to Andrew from the institution where she resides; short stories with a dark, fairy tale quality purporting to have been written by dollmaker, Ewa Chaplin.I found Andrew's narrati...

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.Highly unusual structure, beautifully written - a nice change from the norm!Okay, I'll be straight with you here. At first, I was bewildered with this book. I didn't know at all what to make of it. Then, all of a sudden, it sank in. I realised how very clever it was, and also how wonderfully elusive (how I love books that don't hand everything to you on a platter, but let you draw your own conclusions). And despite b...

"Like if there was another version of reality right next to ours, a version of the world in which the quarry never closed down, and so the trains kept on running. And maybe sometimes people in our world can hear them, the way you can sometimes hear people talking through the walls in the house next door."No book is perfect since perfection doesn't exist. But there are books that would almost deserve this praise, because you don't only love them despite their flaws, you literally cannot think of

After turning the last page of this novel I had no idea what to think. The first thought that popped into my mind was: ‘What did I just read?’ I wasn’t able to state if I liked or disliked this story. Even now days later it is quite hard to have coherent thoughts about The Dollmaker. While reading, my husband asked a couple of times what my book was about and I couldn’t even give a decent synopsis. I just kept saying: “I am not quite sure.”And honestly I think that is the best judgement that I c...

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for a review. My opinions are my own.I discovered Nina Allan slightly more than a year ago, and I fell in love with her writing in The Rift and The Race; they were some of my favourite novels read last year, so I was beyond excited to get ahold of her newest novel, The Dollmaker, even though the description didn't really appeal to my taste. And really, the novel was both what I love about Allan's writing and what made me wary

I had never read any of Nina Allan’s books, but when I saw The Dollmaker on Twitter, there was just something about the cover that spoke to me, something in the blurb that drew me in, so I dashed to NetGalley and requested it. When I was approved I was over the moon! Then I started reading it, and to be perfectly honest: I thought I’d made a mistake in requesting The Dollmaker, that maybe it wasn’t one for me. But me being me, I decided not to count my chickens before they hatched and give it a

Originally posted on The Nerd Daily | Review by Carolyn Percy9 / 10Andrew Garvie has loved collecting antique dolls since he was a child, so much so that he now makes his own. Dolls that are very much like him, miniature (Andrew has proportionate dwarfism) but graceful, with plenty of hidden depths. One day, he answers an enigmatic personal ad in his collector’s magazine: “INFORMATION (biographical / bibliographical / photographic) on the life and work of EWA CHAPLIN AND/OR friendship, correspon...

‘’In 21 cases there was death but no burial; in 10, funerals but no burials; in 8, funerals but no death.’’Dolls never found a top spot in my favourite toys list. My mum didn’t like them at all but my grandma was a collector and tried her best to convince me to love them. I just couldn’t. Their cold faces frightened me and the feeling that their unblinking eyes were watching me was horrible. The discomfort and fear of those moments returned while I was reading Nina Allan’s The Dollmaker....This

The Dollmaker is award-winning author Nina Allan's third novel and being the epitome of strange it rather defies classification or categorisation. I have always been drawn to weird or absurdist fiction so this was right up my street. It follows protagonist Andrew who fondly remembers falling in love with a doll, Marina Blue, when he was just a boy leading to his lifelong passion for dolls. He strikes up a friendship with another doll aficionado, a woman who he hopes could be interested in a rela...

A beautiful, yet painful, read, The Dollmaker tells the story of two unique people trying to find their way to each other. Set on Cornwall's moors, this moody, compelling story is interwoven with several short stories; each of which packs a powerful punch on their own. Untangling themes of art, longing, misfits, taking chances, and healing from childhood trauma, Nina Allan writes a tale that both tugs at your heart and satisfies your literary cravings. Bravo!