2024/145: Barrowbeck — Andrew Michael Hurley

There wasn't much in the way of entertainment in Barrowbeck. But I began to see that living there was all about distraction, warding something off, evading something, and that I'd been doing it myself without realising it. [loc. 2053]

Barrowbeck is a village somewhere on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border: a river runs through it, and the fells enclose and overshadow the houses. It is not the kind of place that attracts tourists. Barrowbeck is a series of thirteen stories, vignettes of life from the founding of the village (by refugees from a violent invasion) to floods and collapse in 2049. I suspect that the germ of the stories can be found in the shaman's pronouncement in the first tale: "All this would be theirs. The gods wanted nothing in return. Only that the valley-folk should always remember that they were custodians here. No. Servants.' [loc. 253]

And yet, after that ominous beginning, the events of the stories are not especially horrific. There's a stranger who's blamed for bringing ill luck to the village, a girl who may be possessed by something in the river, the ghosts of the fallen raising their voices in Easter hymns after World War I... Each story stands alone, unconnected to other characters or phenomena, and each has a unique ambience. Barrowbeck is very definitely folk horror, the horror of ... well, of folk: of people whose motivations are obscure and perhaps unnatural, of the times when the villagers' moods coalesce into a single urge, of the sense of some terrible power at the edge of vision.

I did enjoy Barrowbeck: Hurley's style is subtle and flexible. But, having read the author's three previous novels (The Loney, Devil's Day and Starve Acre), I'd expected more overt horror. Perhaps the real horror is most evident in the last couple of stories: the irreversible effects of the climate catastrophe, the world we will have lost.

Many of these stories appeared, in somewhat different forms, in the BBC Radio 4 series Voices in the Valley. I'm planning to listen to them soon.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 24 OCT 2024.