Review: Tunnel of Mirrors by Ferne Arfin

Tunnel of Mirrors by Ferne Arfin

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I would first just like to say a big thank you to Ferne who was kind enough to send me a copy of her book to review!

Tunnel of Mirrors by Ferne Arfin tracks the lives of Rachel Isaacson, a girl growing up in New York, and Ciaran McMurrough, a storyteller and fiddler raised in rural Ireland. Arfin focuses more closely on Rachel’s childhood and the book definitely feels slightly more centred around her story with Ciaran’s narrative being there to enrich and intersect with Rachel’s. Her character has an almost magnetic presence both in relation to the other characters and with the text itself as though the story is constantly looping back to her. This is epitomised with Ciaran ultimately being drawn away from his much loved hometown across the Atlantic to the unknown, and to Rachel.

I really enjoyed seeing the relationship between Ciaran and Rachel develop and the way they slowly opened up to each other. Their love story is quite gentle and almost timid in a way. It is a love born from two people searching for comfort and peace in a life that has been laced with so much strife. One thing I will say however is that the two don’t meet until well past the halfway point and I did have that slight feeling of wanting to rush through the middle to get to their first meeting. The pace of the book can be fairly slow although the atmosphere and writing is so beautiful that it creates the feeling of a smoothly flowing narrative. Think Sally Rooney, not a lot of huge plot points for a while but a really intimate look at the characters psyches. That worked well for me for most of the novel, but I do wish they had met a hundred pages earlier or so! To be fair Tunnel of Mirrors isn’t actually classed as a romance book so that’s probably just my soppy wee self, getting over excited for the romance aspect! I guess really what I’m saying is that I loved Ciaran and Rachel’s relationship and I just wanted more of it.

There is a lot of focus on the two characters’ respective cultures which I found very interesting. Ciaran is a key part of a tight knit community in rural Ireland and is deeply immersed in the lore of the land. He is shown to be a natural born storyteller from a young age and feels a deep affinity to the land and sea he was raised on. I found the myths and folktales so interesting and the blurring between Ciaran’s stories and his perception of the world added a mystical atmosphere to his narrative. I was especially curious about Rachel’s culture as I haven’t read many books with Jewish characters living fairly stable lives. From my experience, it seems that most fiction featuring Jewish characters tends to be either set in, or closely related to the atrocities of World War Two. Although that is obviously an incredibly significant and important topic, I found it really quite lovely to read about Jewish characters living in a vibrant community and creating the lives they desire. Reading about all the traditions and customs of Jewish communities was very enlightening and felt like a celebration of Jewish culture. Seeing Ciaran and Rachel exchange customs and learn from each other was quite beautiful and created a real depth to the narrative. Overall, I found Tunnel of Mirrors to be a very engaging read filled with beautiful poetic style and a very intimate vibe.

Love, Grace xx