Spells for Forgetting

“Again, my eyes trailed to the book of spells. More than once, when I’d woken from the nightmares or when I was eaten up by loneliness, I’d considered coming here and opening it.”

In this moment, the narrator alludes to a hesitancy, almost a taboo, surrounding the family spell book. It raises questions about why the narrator stopped herself from alleviating her pain and what the potential consequences would be. This dynamic between the dark and light aspects of the island’s magic is a recurring thread throughout the novel.

“The orchard was in our blood, my grandfather said but to me it had always been just a curse.”

Connection to the land and The Influence of Ancestral Heritage are some of the major ideas in the novel, and they present both positive and negative elements. In this moment, August recognizes his inborn connection with his family’s land as an unbreakable tether. His family heritage gives them power over the town, but it also demands their lifelong service.

“Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Emery in a way that I was both too young and too naïve for. I could see that now. But the tangled roots of it were still buried deep beneath the surface of me.”

August compares The Power of Love and Obsession to the draw of Saoirse Island—both are both rewarding and demanding, with the potential to lose oneself in it. The novel is filled with metaphors and similes that tie the story to the natural world, creating an overall atmosphere of botanical horror. Here, August’s love for Emery is presented as an inextricable part of that darkness.

“He ran a hand through his hair, taking on that air that he used to have when we were teenagers. Like he was in control, even though we both knew he wasn’t. And just like back then, I let him have it.”

This moment highlights the unbalanced yet complex dynamic between the two central male characters. There is a clear distinction of power and status, and yet there is also an affection between them. Dutch attempts to match August at his level, and August lets him in to preserve their friendship.

“There were more layers to this than wanting different things. After August and Lily were gone, we were the ones left behind. It was suddenly just the two of us and when you took away everything else, it had really just been the fact that we were lonely.”

Emery’s moment of introspection illuminates the foundation of her and Dutch’s romance. Theirs is a relationship of comfort and security after being at the center of a devastating scandal. They found solace in each other because they were able to share with each other what they had lost and accepted this connection in place of real love.

“The truth was my future had been planned out and written in stone while Dutch’s would never be certain. Not until he was out from under his dad’s mistakes and making his own way in the world.”

Although August and Dutch come from very different backgrounds, there are parallels between their reluctance to embrace or be tied to the path that was set for them. Each pushed back against what was expected of them, instead taking a nontraditional path. Ironically, Dutch ended up taking the job meant for August, while August left for college as Dutch had planned to. In this way, their fates are unexpectedly tangled together.

“It was a full moon. I remember that, because she lifted a finger into the air and traced it on the black sky. It was bright, its edges yellowed like old paper, and giving way to the color of warm copper. The blood moon.”

The description of the moon parallels a description used elsewhere in the novel for the yellowing, old paper of a curse from the Blackwood spell book. The concept of a “blood moon” is a very old one, suggesting both ritual and sacrifice. The framing of this description of the natural world sets up the entire scene as an act of spell work.

“Samhain was right around the corner, and I could smell the decay of fallen leaves and fermenting fruit in the air. It was the season of death.”

The cycle of Pagan holidays is referenced numerous times throughout the novel (here as well as in the following quotation), with Samhain given particular importance. Samhain is the old Irish name for Halloween, which originated as a harvest holiday to honor those recently passed. Additionally, this description is given a lyrical and poetic quality with the alliteration of “fallen leaves and fermenting fruit” and the parallel consonance of “smell the decay” and “season of death.”

“There were things I would miss. The little rituals that made this place strange. Bonfires at Imbolc, harvests under the moonlight, the sound of my mother whispering over the tea leaves in the shop.”

Contrary to many of the darker elements that arise as a result of the island’s magic, this moment highlights some of the more positive aspects of growing up in a magical community. Emery describes “little rituals” that bring the setting to life and encourage the reader to immerse themselves in it, enhancing the novel’s overall aesthetic.

“Lily, August, Dutch, my parents, Eloise, Nixie…I was beginning to think there wasn’t anyone on this island who hadn’t lied about something.”

Secrets and lies are a recurring motif throughout the novel. At this moment, Emery realizes that secrets aren’t so much a conscious choice as a pervasive culture. This suggests that their compact society has become infected by this spiraling dishonesty and manipulation.

“For a moment, as I sat across the table from her, I’d felt like I was seeing her clearly for the first time. For a split second, I even hated her.”

Emery and Lily have a complex friendship that developed more out of proximity and shared heritage than real connection. Emery acknowledges that she’d never really seen more than what Lily presented on the surface. Once faced with this reality, Emery understands that their friendship was never what she believed it to be.

“The island gave us the magic, but there were some whose hands couldn’t be trusted with the work.”

Here, Albertine describes magic as “work” rather than the more conventional art, craft, or gift. This implies that she sees magic as a tool through which its practitioners are bound by honor or duty to use it for good. There is also a reference to trust, which suggests that the island is offering power as an exchange.

“My mother said that the island would always call us back. That anyone who left would feel that pull for the rest of their lives.”

This concept is echoed several times throughout the novel, most notably in the final line: “the oldest of Saoirse’s legends: That if you left the island, it would always call you back” (346). This moment acts as foreshadowing for the novel’s closing scene, and it also deepens the story’s overall sense of place.

“I set my back against the wall of the barn, staring into those god-forsaken trees. They were like poison. And with every drop of blood in my veins, I wanted to cut them from the earth.”

The image of the island as poison is repeated several times and highlights the dual nature of the setting. On one side, it is magical and wondrous, allowing its residents to do impossible things. On the other, it appears to bring out the worst in them. August compares the orchard to his own blood, demonstrating an awareness of his own ancestral heritage.

“It was as if Saoirse had heard him say it. I was sure that she had.”

Despite being predominantly a setting, Saoirse Island is often personified as a supporting character. Here, Emery refers to the island as “she,” most likely unintentionally, recognizing its conscious, goddess-like aspects. This positions the spirit of the island as a local deity, an approach that is further explored later from the island’s own consciousness.

“I’ve thought so many times about how you think you know your child, and then they do something that terrifies you. Something that opens a darkness.”

This line, written by a character whose death set the events of the plot into motion, appears twice in the novel. The irony of the moment is that August’s action was a response against darkness rather than an invitation to it; it’s through destroying the orchard that he was able to sever his connection to the darkness of the land.

“In that moment, she reminded me of the Lily I’d run barefoot with through the woods. The one who laughed all the time. Sometimes, I forgot about that version of her.”

This line deepens the complex relationship between Emery and Lily. Although their friendship was largely a relationship of convenience, there were moments of joy and love as well. It also shows Lily’s tragic journey in which she left that part of herself behind, instead becoming wrapped up in her own insecurities and darkness.

“He’d always been a lonely creature, in love with a woman who either didn’t love him or couldn’t be with him. That didn’t stop him from looking after both August and Eloise like they were his own.”

Several characters in the novel suffer from unrequited love, and it often drives the actions they take. Jakob is a complex antagonist who both loves and hates August for what he represents. This observation gives his character a sense of tragedy and helps the reader understand his substance use disorder.

“If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.”

Drowning becomes a pivotal plot element later in the novel. Water in general plays an important role throughout the story, and here it is used as a metaphor for the intensity of overwhelming love. Conversely, air is used as a metaphor for clear thinking and emotional distance.

“That godforsaken family had had us under a blade for years, wielding the orchard over the town to maintain the power they held. Now, almost every Salt was a rotting corpse, the last of them just waiting to be shot from the sky.”

In this moment, Leoda compares the Salt family to a flock of hunted birds. This is the opposite of personification (which could, in this context, be called de-anthropomorphism); she removes the humanity from the family and renders them commodities. This illustrates how far removed Leoda has become from her own humanity.

“There were two times a year that the veil was thin. Beltane on May 1, and Samhain, which was coming in only a few days. It was said that on those nights, spirits walked back and forth over the crossing to the Otherworld and I’d seen my fair share of strange things to believe it.”

Another reference to the Pagan holidays, this moment highlights how deeply entwined Emery is with her magical beliefs. Samhain and Beltane are considered reflections of each other; Samhain, or Halloween, is about honoring death, while Beltane is about honoring life. Setting the scene around this autumnal energy heightens the overall atmosphere of the novel.

“But there was one thing that Lily had forgotten—that the magic belonged to me.”

This is the only first-person line spoken by Saoirse Island. It positions her as a reigning spirit of the land with her own motivations and pride, similar to traditional mythic stories of the gods. This line also reveals one of the novel’s dynamic questions: Who killed Lily Morgan? The answer is both unexpected and entirely fitting.

“It had taken a lifetime but I’d done the thing I’d sworn to do. I’d lived to see the orchard untethered from the Salts. And by the time I was laid to rest in that cemetery, I’d rest soundly knowing I had fulfilled my purpose.”

Although Leoda is a villainous character, she is one utterly devoted to a precise, narrow goal. Like many villains, she sees herself as the hero of her own story, pursuing a noble cause. By portraying this scene through her perspective, the author shows the reader how single-minded and self-justifying she has become in her quest.