A captivating magical & haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award The remote island village of Neverness is a world far from our time & place The air hangs rich with the coconut-scent of gorse & the salty bite of the sea Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline The villagers' lives are inseparable from nature & its enchantments Verlyn Webbe born with a wing for an arm unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull & dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms haunted by horses & her father's wishes As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation their earthy desires resentments idle gossip & painful losses create a staggeringly original world Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore but entirely wonderfully her own Zoe Gilbert's Folk is a dark beautiful & intoxicating debut