Bleak landscapes, flurries of snow, and frozen lakes set the scene for Shaw’s first novel, winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize, The Girl with Glass Feet (Henry Holt and Co., 2010), where winged cows and albino dragonflies flutter around the remote island, St. Hauda’s, “icy bogland”. A melancholy, truly beautiful novel about a cursed girl, slowly turning to glass from the feet up, who turns to a boy with a hard heart for companionship, resulting in a heart-aching tale of love. Shaw’s prose...
