The Devil has been here since before anyone came, passing endlessly from one thing to another. He's in the rain and the gales and the wild river. He's in the trees of the Wood. [loc. 4913]
John Pentecost returns, with his pregnant wife Kat, to the Edgelands -- the isolated, self-sufficient rural community where he grew up. His grandfather the Gaffer has died, and as John mourns he remembers the rituals, the traditions, and the secrets that the old man imparted to him. John, like many rural teenagers, was desperate to leave his birthplace, and the superstitions that ruled it: chief among them is Devil's Day, when the locals lure the Devil with stewed lamb and fiddle music and blackberry wine.
John looks forward to Devil's Day 'more than Christmas'. Kat is not so keen. She's horribly out of place amongst the hearty, plain women of the Endlands; she's a vegetarian ("How long have you been like that, love?"); she's eager for the funeral and the mourning to be over, so that they can leave. But John has realised that he belongs here, and that this is where their child should grow up.
Hurley's prose draws me in -- "The afternoon came to a close in ribs of reddened cloud over the fells. Blackbirds chuttered in the beech trees and the river was loud." [loc 3538] -- and the gradual exposition of John's childhood, in half-glimpsed fragments, is intriguing. There are more recent tales, too: young Grace's missing father, the ruined Lodge, the figure on the moors. The horror here is implicit, not explicit, and more unnerving because never stated outright. In one sense, not much happens between the beginning and the end of the novel: in another sense, it's all already happened, and there's an inevitability about John's choices.
In some ways Devil's Day feels like a practice run for The Loney, and especially for Starve Acre: the rural locations, the bleakness, the sense that there is something mysterious, magical but not especially wholesome happening just out of sight. John's immersion in the Endlands, his deep sense of belonging and the history of his family, differentiates this from Hurley's other two novels.
Incredibly atmospheric, quietly horrific, and closely observed: an ideal read for Halloween. Made me want to wander in the woods on an autumn afternoon (though if I had followed through on this urge I'd have startled at every shadow.)
No comments:
Post a Comment