Lately, we’ve not followed any themes for picking our books, instead each of the group pitches one title of something they’d like to read or have read, then we pick one at random. Our October read turned out to be a suitably seasonal folk horror novel, so fulfilling another read for RIP XXI too. Now to the book…
Richard and Juliette Willoughby had inherited the gloomy old house of Starve Acre on the Yorkshire moors from his parents, but it’s also where their son Ewan, who was five-years-old, died. Both parents are grief-stricken but process it in different ways.
Juliette weeps continuously, and inhabits Ewan’s room, she can’t believe he’s gone – and enlists the help of the Beacons, introduced by family friend Gordon to Mrs Ford, a medium, and her adherents. The seances with Mrs Ford seem to be working on Juliette, when something happens that totally spooks Mrs Ford, and she refuses to come any more.
That something is occasioned by Richard, who has been taking his own grief out on the barren field opposite the house. He is searching for the remains and roots of a legendary oak tree that grew there before. The tree had a sinister use as a hanging tree, but Richard keeps digging, eventually unearthing the mummified bones of a hare, which he excavates and brings into the house and I shall say no more on that subject!
We also have flashbacks to young Ewan, discovering parents in denial at how–I’ll say troubled rather than outright evil–he was. There were scenes of animal cruelty, which one of our group had wished she’d known about. Not nice.
They really they should have known better to move into a big old scary inherited house with a barren field and a village that had hated their family – but hey ho! Although a difficult book to ‘enjoy’, we found it well-written and cleverly structured, and we liked the crescendo in the plot as it moved towards that ending! We also asked was Mrs Ford a charlatan or a real sensitive? Personally, I tend towards the latter, loving folk horror as a genre. It was grim though, but the novel was a good choice for the season and provoked some great discussion.
One of our group told us a bit about the 2023 film with Matt Smith which has a different ending and is full of murder – more inspired by rather than adapted from it seems… I may have to watch it now, as Matt Smith is always very watchable. (It’s available on BFI Player, or to rent/buy on Amazon).
Source: Own copy. John Murray hardback, 2019, 243 pages. BUY in paperback at Amazon UK or Waterstones.
