Andrew Michael Hurley

This is a folk-horror story with extremely light (possibly nonexistent) supernatural elements. John Pentecost, who grew up on a farm in the north of England, has returned for his grandfather's funeral, which happens to coincide with a local tradition known as Devil's Day, in which the three farming families perform rituals to confuse/sate the devil so he'll sleep through the winter and not bother them. John brings with him his newly pregnant wife Kat, who is from an upper middle class family from the south of England. Over the course of the book, variously eerie, disturbing, and criminal activities ensue, interspersed with flashes backward and forward over the course of about a century.

So I really loved the description and atmosphere. It is extremely slow-moving, but Hurley writes beautifully and hauntingly about the land, the plants and animals, the weather. He is clear-eyed about not idealizing farm work and does not shy away from the unpleasantnesses it can involve. It is kind of a cliche, but the setting really was like another character, the best-developed character in the whole thing, really.

Unfortunately, most of the human characters are not very well developed. Particularly within the farming families, the supplemental characters all blend into one another (except for a disturbed teen girl). This on its own would not be a huge problem, as I think it feeds into the theme that personal desires/will are unimportant or powerless in the face of larger forces, like "tradition" or an ancestral tie to the land. This notion is at the heart of the book, and I felt that Hurley was critiquing it fairly clearly throughout.

But the last 30-40 pages really muddied the water. (now some spoilers!! be warned) One of the main plot points deals with whether John's wife, Kat, will agree to give up her job and move to the farm. She repeatedly tells John that she has no intention of coming to live there. ("I don't give a shit about the farm.") Yet, lo and behold, there she is at the end, living on the farm, eating meat (she's a vegetarian), and incubating their second child. We jump ahead to this resolution, a driver of major conflict within the narrative, without any explanation or further discussion! What happened?

I feel like the author wants us to choose between 1) Kat changed her mind because she came to see that tradition was more important than personal desires [does not fit thematically with the rest of the book] or 2) Kat's rational nature was challenged by something unexplained she saw while lost on the moors that shifted the bedrock of her belief/sense of self [strongly implied but not warranted by prior character development]. A third sleeper option is that 3) Kat is possessed by the devil (that might explain her complete change in personality!). I think the author's desire for an ambiguous ending undermines his ability to build and develop a cohesive theme. Kat's reversal feels like a lazy deus ex machina, not a satisfying conundrum.

Also, I have a weird feeling that John murdered his son at the end of the book? It is not clear, but he encourages a 9-10 year old blind boy to jump into a freezing river, on the very spot where many years earlier John killed his childhood bully by drowning him. (If I've completely misunderstood what happened and a father and son just went skinny dipping together, I apologize. But a grim and horrible ending fits better with everything that went before than the apparently hopeful "resilience of the human spirit" type language of the last few paragraphs.)

I am very conflicted about this book. It frustrated me in some ways but showed incredible skill in others. I think I would probably try his other books in the future.… (meer)

So, I'm probably the outlier here, as I have not yet read The Loney as yet. This is my first taste of Hurley.

As a horror novel, this is very quiet. Sleepily quiet. You'll learn about small, well-removed rural communities and the day-to-day of managing a farm...probably more than you want to...

...but here's the thing: Andrew Michael Hurley's prose is mesmerizing. Hypnotic. I listened to this on audio, and there were times where I just got lost in the story and had no idea where or how far I'd walked while I listened to the story.

The horror elements creep up on you silently, much like Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, so don't come in looking for screaming horrors that grab you by the throat. Hurley's horrors whisper, and just graze you with their fingertips.

Like others, however, there were hints to what the ending could be, but never was, and I found that a touch disappointing. I wasn't looking for a big bang ending—not from a book like this—but I did expect a bit more that I got.

But for all of that, a good read.… (meer)

After the recent death of their son, the mother is taking things very hard. It's been three months and she sleeps in his room and swears she can see him. The family is worried for her.

The book starts in one direction and slowly takes us to another involving a field where a giant oak used to be on the parent's property. This is a slow burn and a quiet horror for the most part. The shock is left for the last page and it certainly shocked me. I thought the book was ok but not a lot happens and what does happen is all told in past events. A decent read.… (meer)