Wild Fell by Michael Rowe
My rating: 4/5 cats
OH MY GOD, THIS BOOK MADE IT INTO MIDNIGHT MASS!!
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this is a very typical ghost story in some ways, and a very atypical one in others. it has all the hallmarks of classic horror: secluded house with a dark past, small town whose history continues to haunt its residents, uninformed stranger arriving to shake things up, ghostly childhood playmates, mysterious accidents, nightmares, and some brain trauma and memory loss to keep it good and ambiguous. but it brings new things to the table like a preoccupation with gender identity and a surprising conclusion which will affect and maybe even infect the entire preceding tale, making you want to go back to the beginning and approach it with new eyes. or, rather, a new understanding. you can keep the eyes you have.
i had heard great things about rowe’s first book, Enter, Night, and how it rejuvenated the vampire story and made it viable again. and i meant to read it, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but seeing what he did here with the classic ghost story, i am very eager to give it a read now.
at the end of the day, there is nothing truly revolutionary here, until the ending comes to getcha, but that is enough. it is an engaging ghost story with a highly sympathetic main character in jamie, as it slowly leads you through his lonely formative years with his loving father, his unloving mother, and his one friend: a tomboy named lucinda who goes by hank. he also has a secret mirror-friend named amanda, but after a horrific accident which he believes she is the cause of, he effectively banishes her and forgets all about her.
but amanda is patient, and she has a long memory.
all grown up now, jamie comes into some money, and decides to buy the large estate crumbling all alone on blackmore island, off the coast of alvina, ontario, to turn into a bed and breakfast. once he arrives, he experiences troubling episodes both in the house itself, and back on shore with the townspeople.
things escalate, as they do in a ghost story, and jamie learns that the past can certainly be forgotten but forgetting doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
i enjoyed his writing style, and the pacing is exactly what you want and expect form a psychological suspense/supernatural story. very slow and deliberate until it isn’t. it is playing for more than scares, though, and it is full of sadness and all the various quiet horrors of childhood, adulthood, and death itself.
I want to teach you about fear.
indeed.
