A Marvellous Light

Freya Marske uses books and libraries to illustrate fundamental aspects of her protagonists and to expand on the relationship between them. In Penhallick’s library, Robin sees Edwin in a moment of relative peace and comfort, and begins to notice his attraction, seeing Edwin develop a “delicate, turbulent, Turner-sketch attractiveness that hit Robin like a clean hook to the jaw” (480). Edwin, too, thaws in this setting, admitting to Robin why he uses string to guide his spells. Robin sees himself as not particularly intellectual, but he notes the connection between the book of fairytales and the Last Contract, insisting to Edwin that “if magic exists than surely the fae do” (99). Edwin comes to accept this hypothesis after the trip to Sutton cottage, indicating a real intellectual partnership between the two of them in addition to their romantic bond.

In emotional moments, both Edwin and Robin think in literary metaphors. Overcome with his developing feelings, Edwin admits that he imagines them as a text, thinking “he had the ludicrous urge to ask Robin to write them down, to bind them up and give them to him on paper” (262). In the intimacy of Edwin’s bedroom at Sutton, Robin has a similar thought, declaring that he “wanted to make a leather bound book of his belief and hand it to Edwin” (358).