This is a lovely quiet portrayal of a very unusual family where nothing much happens. The writing is very good and includes many beautiful descriptions of nature. At the beginning the hunter is lonely, something elegantly depicted through describing the beauty of the things he sees but lamenting that he has no-one to tell about them. As it goes on he forms a friendship with a mermaid, I really like how this is done from learning of language to wonder at things that seem perfectly normal for the other. Their sharing of cultures is not symmetrical, she can engage in his much more than the other way around but her observations often paint humans as the oddity of nature. Later they gain more family member in the form of a bear, a lynx and eventually a boy. This strange family live very happily together through mutual support and respect and a sense of humour and playfulness suggesting Tolstoy was onto something when he said "all happy familys resemble one another".

There is a lovely scene late in the book where the mermaid talks about the dilemma of being caught between two places something a huge number of people will find relatable. This would make a good class novel for most ages, the writing is lovely and its themes of multiculturalism are presented in a way that would be very accessible to children of all ages.