'Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source.
'Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home—to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.
'Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant—but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unravelled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from.
'Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him?'
I made a pretty big mistake when I started reading Gallant, I assumed that I'd be able to read a chapter or two in bed before falling asleep and that that would be it; but when it came to it I just kept reading and kept reading until I was halfway through, it was two in the morning, and I'd dropped the book on my face because I was so tired. I should have known that this would happen, as I can't remember a time I've read any of Victoria Schwab's work and it hasn't demanded to be read in a single sitting. Gallant is one of those books that you're going to have a lot of problems putting down.
Gallant tells the story of Olivia, a young girl who has spent her life growing up in the Merilance School for girls, a place where orphans and poor girls can train up to become maids, cooks, and housekeepers. Olivia has been there as long as she can remember, and the only thing she has that can tell her of her life before Merilance is a battered old journal that belonged to her mother, a book filled with strange writing and beautiful but strange illustrations.
Olivia can't speak, and has spent much of her time in Merilance alone and isolated from the other girls. They see her inability to talk as something strange about her, that sets her apart from the others. Little do they know, Olivia does have a secret about her that sets her apart as different. Olivia can see ghosts, odd shades of half formed people that she refers to as Ghouls. Despite their disturbing appearance, these creatures have never caused Olivia harm, and she's since learned to live with them.
When a letter arrives at Merilance one day, from her long lost uncle, Olivia finds herself having to say goodbye to the only home that she has ever known. Now she's being shipped off to go and live with her family in their remote estate, Gallant, a place that Olivia has seen written about in her mothers journal in warnings. Upon arriving at Gallant Olivia is shocked to learn that her uncle has been dead for a year, and that her last living relative is her cousin, Matthew, who wants nothing to do with her. As Olivia settles into her new home she starts to uncover strange truths about Gallant, her family, and the dark things that are lurking just out of sight.
At its heart Gallant is a story about a girl trying to find a home, a young woman who has grown up alone and isolated, dreaming of a family that she can call her own, finally getting the chance to have that. Whilst this on its own would be a harrowing enough experience, it's the dark secrets that Olivia finds waiting for her at Gallant that really push her to her limits.
Olivia is a strong character, someone who's grown up the target of mockery and abuse thanks to her inability to talk. She's had to grow tough just to survive, and this makes her surprisingly adept at handling all of the strange, terrible things that she encounters over the course of this story. She finds a cousin who wants nothing to do with her, who demands that she be sent away from Gallant as soon as possible. This is the family that she's been dreaming of for years, the connection to her long lost mother; but instead of allowing this reaction to break her, to have it crush her hopes and dreams, she refuses to give in. Olivia has an inner strength that allows her to keep on going, to refuse to be cast aside by Matthew and pursue the thing she wants.
Unfirtunately, it's partly down to this refusal to give in that leads to some of the issues in the book, along with the fact that Matthew refuses to fill Olivia in on everything she needs to know. So, Olivia doesn't know how dangerous certain things in Gallant are, and ends up getting into heaps of danger. I'm sure that there will be some people who look at this and say that it's a trope of the dark and spooky YA genre, that if only Matthew had talked to Olivia things could have been avoided; but as someone who loves these kinds of tropes, who really enjoys these stories, I think it works brilliantly here. Schwab isn't just relying on the idea of the characters getting pissed at each other, of refusing to communicate out of anger and spite in order to push the plot forward. Instead, Olivia's inability to communicate with Matthew on a practical level plays a part of this. Olivia can't speak, Matthew can't read, and whilst she can use sign language he doesn't understand it. This means that Olivia can't just ask him questions, but has to find creative ways of getting across the idea of what she's saying.
One of the ways in which Olivia manages to communicate is by drawing. Art is something that's an important part of Gallant. Olivia's mothers diary is filled with strange illustrations that she's spent years looking at, trying to decipher. These images end up playing an important part in the story, and once we learn the truth about them we're able to start picking meaning out from their abstract qualities. These images aren't just simply described in the book though, we get to see them. Thanks to the amazing work of Manuel Sumberac these images have been lovingly brought to life, and readers get to see them in all their glory throughout the book.
These artworks are absolutely gorgeous, and look like a wonderful mixture of ink painting that reminds me of Rorschach tests, where you're left to pick out shapes and assign them your own meaning. And this is something that you'll be able to do as you read the book, and the first chance you get to do so you'll probably come to some conclusions about the art that will later get challenged the second time they come around, when we have more context and things suddenly seem to mean something a lot different. I was lucky enough to receive one of the ARC's for the book, which came with art cards featuring the images; and they're a work of art. Sumberac has gone above and beyond with these pictures, and they make a big difference to the story actually being there.
I absolutely adored Gallant as I read it. It was a book I read very quickly because the story kept making me read on, telling myself 'just one more chapter' over and over again. Schwab has proven time and time again that she's a writer who can turn her hand to both adult and children's fiction to deliver amazing work; and this is no exception to that. I think long time fans of her work are going to love Gallant, and those coming to her afresh will find a deeply engrossing and wonderfully creepy read.
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