2022/75: The Dark Between the Trees -- Fiona Barnett

The wood was a liar, but beneath that was buried something true, and fascinating, and the wood was telling her what it was, if only she could tune into it properly, or decipher it. [loc. 829]

In 1643 a small company of Parliamentarian soldiers is ambushed on a hillside somewhere in Northern England. Their only hope is to seek shelter in nearby Moresby Forest. Never mind that the locals tell stories about terrible secrets among the trees...

In 21st-century England, five women pass through the boundary fence and into Moresby Forest. Dr Alice Christopher, historian, has devoted her career to the lost soldiers. Why did seventeen men enter the wood, and only two emerge? Dr Christopher is accompanied by Nuria, a PhD student; Sue, from the Ordnance Survey, who haven't published a map of the wood for fifty years; and Kim and Helly, representatives of the National Parks authority. The women have GPS, and phones, and metal detectors: and it's not a very large wood ...

This was slow and spooky. I was inescapably reminded of The Blair Witch Project, though for reasons of ambience and forestry rather than anything more specific. The narrative cuts between the women and the soldiers, which heightens the suspense. It quickly becomes clear that there is something unnatural about Moresby Forest, and the two parties each recount tales of witches, of a medieval charcoal-burner whose family might have died of plague, and of a fearsome beast known as the Corrigal. Around them, trees appear and disappear. Gradually, each party – the all-female expedition and the all-male military company – diminishes …

Some interesting themes here: the different ways in which leadership works in the two companies are especially well-drawn, with Alice’s obsessive curiosity in strong contrast to Captain Davies’ sense of duty to his men. The women are dismayed by the failure of their technology: the men turn to prayer, which is as good an option as any.

There are evocative descriptions of the forest in both narrative threads, but – perhaps because of the aforementioned oddities of that forest – there is very little sense of season. Anyone who’s walked in a forest knows it’s a very different place in spring than in autumn: but the forest that the characters are walking through is timeless, reminiscent of Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, and seems to manifest its own microclimate. I didn’t get much sense of the characters’ physical appearances, either, or of their lives outside the forest: even Alice, perhaps the most detailed of the characters, was described more in terms of academic grudges than everyday life. I think that sense of isolation was part of the story, but it made the characters less engaging. And I didn't find the (fairly abrupt) conclusion wholly satisfying, but it was logical.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for this honest review. UK publication date is 13th October 2022.