Gwenni Morgan is surrounded by secrets. Secrets, and the stories they try to hide, twine around Gwenni’s life in a small Welsh town, making the space around her echo with everything that is not being said. Gwenni is an unusual little girl, though, and she lingers in those quiet spaces, eager to hear the stories that the town has tried to bury, determined to help those she loves.  Mari Strachan’s The Earth Hums in B Flat is an exemplary début, a novel of innocence and discovery, a story of girl searching for truth, and love, and understanding.

Gwenni’s life is filled with magic and terror.  The cracked paint in the kitchen transforms to leering faces as she stares; the Toby jugs on the mantel peer malevolently at the family at meal times; and, at night, she flies over the town in her dreams, watching the land as it sleeps. Her family is a tumultuous mix of love and fear, the kindness of her father, and the erratic behaviour of her mother. Gwenni spends her time wandering, asking questions, paying attention, looking for stories:

I stroke the slate beneath me with my palm; it’s been rubbed smooth and silky by all the children who’ve sat on it waiting for something or another to begin in the vestry…I can trace some of the letters with my finger but too many of them are worn away for me to work out what they say. Some of the old tombstones tell a long tale of the life of the person buried in them, but I can’t read this story. There must be hundreds of secrets locked away in the tombs and the graves around me.

Soon Gwennie is searching for a story, for an answer, for a reason why Ifan Evans would have disappeared, leaving his wife and family behind. She canvasses the town, imitating her favourite detective novels, and looking for the clues that will lead her to the truth. But this isn’t a detective novel so much as a novel of discovery.  A novel where Gwenni learns that the truth is both elusive and dangerous, and that following stories to their heart can reveal more than she ever dreamed and have consequences beyond her imagining.

Strachan’s touch with Gwenni is deft and caring.  Gwenni sees signs and portents all around–and is constantly trying to interpret them in ways that would allow her to help her friends, family, and others who have earned her loyalty.  The bright colours and sinister watchers that overlay Gwenni’s world mirror the secrets and hidden agendas of the adults around her. Gwenni may be a child, but she is a perceptive one, and her eccentricities highlight both the compassion found in most of the townspeople and the struggles in Gwenni’s own family. They also call into question what it means to be “odd” and whether the truth that everyone knows is really that different from the truth that Gwenni sees.

It isn’t that they lie, it’s that they tell a different story. How can we know which story is the true one?

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