When it comes to horror a Gothic tale has something that with all likelihood always will appeal to me. Add a mysterious family haunted by an entity just called "her" and I'm sold. THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD instantly appealed to me with its fascinating cover and interesting description. Iris and her father live in a lonely old mansion on Dartmoor and he warns her that she should never fall in love because strong feelings bring on "her" and when she comes, brutal death will follow. Nevertheless, Iris does fall in love and with that, a series of events begin that lead Iris to learn the truth about "her."

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I'm in the minority with this one according to the other reviews. I finished it but I didn't really want to. The writing style was uncomfortable for me and I wasn't able to connect with the characters. I got a bit more into it towards the end, but not much. So, this one wasn't for me. But, I will absolutely read this author again. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2021/03/2021029-rawblood-catriona-ward.html ( )

This is in the first place an attempt to write a classic gothic tale.A family, living in a lonely manor on Dartmoor,is haunted by" something ".All the right ingredients for a gothic success story and yet...the first part, although confusing due to several different timelines, was mysterious enough to keep one's attention but then the book becomes even more incoherent and messy and seems to lose all purpose...
The story  ( if ever there was one) is completely lost. Too bad because it has the right building stones.... ( )

Deeply atmospheric, creepy and slightly disjointed in presentation, this is a novel where everything connects. If you love rabbit holes that delve into darkness, madness, haunting and the unexplained; this is the book for you. It is not for the squeamish however. Without going into really squidgy detail, Ward adds to your feeling of unease with scenes featuring madhouse conditions circa 1917, vivisection from the 1880s, multiple miscarriages and pasts peppered with all manner of abuse. It culminates in one woman; Iris. A girl raised in isolation and fear.

The story is presented in multiple timelines all centering around the Rawblood estate - once owned by an English family and lost, rescued by Italian, Don Villarca. Is it cursed, haunted or is there just madness in the family? Is it from the Italian influence or has it been there all along? Thanks to the family tree, you can see how people are connected, but the anticipation of how exactly they will connect is a nice touch. There are many instances of foreboding and free-falling into the unknown. Usually I need more concrete plot and explanations, but with this book I just went with it.

We start with Iris and her childhood friendship with farmer’s son, Tom. It is a clandestine friendship because her father, Alonso, has given her rules she must live by in order to stay safe from a hereditary family curse/disease. One that caused the deaths of his parents and ancestors going back generations. An infamous “She” who kills when a person in the family loves or feels strong emotion. The rules keep her isolated almost entirely - she has no friends and doesn’t attend school. The big estate has no servants except for one man called Shakes, but he is hardly adequate and brings nothing to the raising of a girl in the early 20th century.

The story is mostly Iris’s, but we get storylines from her mother, Meg; father Alonso; Meg’s brother and Alonso’s friend Charles, and finally Alonso’s mother, Mary. Pay attention, take notes and don’t discount anything as incidental.

The affliction Iris’s family endures is mysterious. At first I thought it was something blood-borne that Alonso was trying to cure. But clearly it’s supernatural, too. Werewolves? His and Charles’s experiments with heredity and vaccination put all sorts of ideas in your head. Through a pivotal scene we are told that Charles has died and also his sister (Iris’s mother), but we don’t know who dies first. If Charles did, is this how Meg comes to be at Rawblood?

Then there’s the tit-for-tat drugging - first as students Charles drugs Alonso in his part of their 50-day-free-for-all-use-me-as-a-guinea-pig experiment; then 20 years later at Rawblood with A drugging C with morphine. Now they’re both addicts. Of course it’s to “protect” him against “Her”, but still - ick. C confronts A and calls him a psychopath. Later in another strange tete-a-tete C says that he caused A’s morphine habit when they were students on purpose, to bind him to him so he wouldn’t leave him (C fears that A isn’t a homosexual and would leave him eventually). He fears that Alonso is not as much of a deviant as he is. Twisted for sure. It reminded me of women who get pregnant in order to hang on to their men. So desperate. Before, during and after these escalations and confrontations between Charles and Alonso, “She” scares the hell out of C over a series of disturbing nights, he hangs himself and so we know that he dies before Meg.

Next is how she came to be at Rawblood and after first meeting her I’m not surprised Iris goes nuts. She was in the “care” of some couple after her and Charles’s parents died. He basically had nothing to do with her and the abuse she suffered affected her badly. She has really strange ideas and fancies herself a witch. Does she really have psychic powers? Just before her escape from the awful couple, she join minds with C at the moment of his death. He senses her there as well. Oy.

Next up is Mary Hopewell, the woman who loses her hold on Rawblood due to penury. She is packed off to Italy with a hired companion by poorer relatives. This is where the Villarca connection comes in and it is sinister, albeit colored by her companion, Miss Brigstocke’s narrow, warped viewpoint. Don Villarca is more than strange; he’s a little vicious, aggressive and has odd manners and mannerisms that verge on the violent. He brings out the worst in Mary and she relishes in this forbidden freedom. In the end, when it becomes clear that Mary and Don Villarca will get together Brigstocke tells her this - “As I held your ring, moments ago, between my fingers, the sight came upon me. I have never felt such living evil. This marriage will bring sickness and death. It will lay waste to generations. It will grow black flowers in the black land...You will not live. I implore you, do not do what you intend.” p 267

Well that pretty much sums it up. The ring belonged to Mary’s ancestor and so it seems that hereditary evil or hauntings or madness of two family lines will come together with this marriage. It’s in this Italian vignette that we meet the mysterious and ultra-loyal Shakes who is the only servant remaining at Rawblood by the time Iris is a young girl. The tale carries on through Mary’s marriage to V and their move to the newly-rescued Rawblood. Alonso is born and things go off the rails. Bit by bit, Mary goes blind and loses her mind to the horrors of “Her”. The end is gut-wrenching and awful. Again, it’s unclear whether she is mad or if “She” has killed again.

By this time, Iris is well and truly out of her mind. We are always brought back to her thread. She connects with Mary at the point of Mary’s death in a similar way that Meg connected with Charles. She is observer, participant and victim. It’s crazy and convoluted and a lot of fun. Things fold over, weave and connect in every way imaginable. In this scene Iris not only observes “Her” tormenting Mary, but becomes “Her” and threatens Mary’s child who is Alonso and also Iris’s father. See what I mean?

Now we jump back to Meg (Iris’s mother) and a scene with Robert the butler at Rawblood. They are in the kitchen and he is sharpening knives. It is rigid with tension and a very eerie scene. Robert is the brother of a nearby farmer. When he was a child, he mistakenly ate some nightshade berries. This was during the time that Alonso and Charles were at Rawblood committing their horrific vivisection experiments. Alonso refused to treat him or let Robert into the house and this is what basically makes Charles realize how sick A really is. Anyway, I have no idea why Alonso later hires Robert as butler, but he does and R has an affair with Meg. She basically forces his hand so to speak because she needs to sweeten him so she can sacrifice him to make her baby (Iris) live. We know from earlier Iris scenes that Robert is dead, his brother is pissed off and Tom thinks he’s his uncle.

It’s insane, of course, but Meg still pursues her witchcraft and knows “She” must be appeased. When her labor starts, she makes for the little cave on the property, the one that for time out of mind has been used by the locals for offerings and sacrifices to some god or other. She gets into difficulty and it is the ever-present Shakes who comes to her rescue. He brings A and she actually delivers Iris in the cave. The same cave where, years later, Iris and Tom go and Iris has her first experience with “Her”. We know from a previous timeline that Tom is Robert’s nephew, but now we actually find out he’s Robert’s son by a maid at Rawblood. She is paid off and gives the child to Robert’s brother to raise. Which makes me wonder if Alonso forbade Iris to see Tom because they were ½ siblings.

So as if this wasn’t lunatic enough, it goes to eleven. There’s a section called the Unknown Soldier set in 1919. Even though Tom has gone off to war - it’s not him. All of his letters are being kept from Iris because she’s in the insane asylum (for killing her father with an overdose of morphine, or a jab to the heart with the needle, it’s unclear). Ok, so after a bit of reading this Unknown Soldier’s narrative, it’s clear it’s Iris. Seems she has escaped the asylum, stolen a soldier’s uniform and is going home. When she gets there, she and “She” merge into one and she passes through every encounter we’ve seen so far in every timeframe...right back to her own birth in the cave.

Picture a snake swallowing itself and you pretty much have it.

I can’t untangle it. It’s crazy and ingenious and unfathomable. I enjoyed it immensely. ( )