Review: Under a Watchful Eye by Adam Nevill

Adam Nevill is unpredictable. Unpredictable but never boring. He plays ball in all horror subgenres, and he plays it hard, merciless and oh so delightfully f***ed up. And his prose is so stylish he makes the likes of James Herbert look positively infantile.

I’ve read Under a Watchful Eye twice (so far), simply because the horror in it is in places of such an uncanny, eerie dreamlike quality that stays with you less in what you saw but more how it made you feel, the way you wake from a nightmare, shaken and scattered by it all day but only able to remember snippets - probably just the tip of the iceberg wreaking havoc in your subconscious now. Which makes the book utterly re-readable, leaving you to discover new bits each time you touch base with it again.

You wouldn’t think a picturesque Devon seaside town would give you the heebie-jeebies as much as a dilapidated house rented out by a psycho live-in landlord in a poor part of Birmingham. But fear not – when successful writer Seb spots an oddly floating figure staring at him from a distance, one that looks unpleasantly familiar to someone he had escaped decades ago, the sunny beachfront soon turns into a creepy negative like the intro from Tales from the Darkside.

The figure keeps popping up in his path, out of thin air and coming closer and closer, just to disappear again, making Seb question his sanity. Until it appears in his drive, the disturbing figure of his uni housemate Ewan, a man so filthy and unkempt, Nevill’s description practically makes you gag, with no redeeming features whatsoever. He’s far from a hobo with a heart of gold – he displays delusions of grandeur and psychopathic traits and plants himself into Seb’s classy house like a human tick. You might wonder why Seb just doesn’t chuck him out – but once you’re exposed to the threat and mind-twisting manipulation he endures, you feel as trapped as him. 

And not just that. With Ewan, things appear in the house. Things from another Arthur-Machenesque plane that followed him there and start stalking Seb, as well. Things so unspeakably horrible, images Nevill plants into your head like demonic seeds that will sickeningly blossom before your inner eye just as you turn off the lights. Lost creatures, barely human, in a nightmarish fog. Condemned spirits and souls lost in a hellish dimension after dabbling in a cult practicing astral projection. A cult that soon starts stalking Seb, as well. And Seb’s life begins to crumble as he desperately tries to find out what Ewan has let loose on him, that he needs to get involved with that cult in order to find a way to free himself of the demonic forces in his life, just to get entangled deeper and deeper, with no hope of any human forces to rescue him.

By the way, those who read Nevill’s privately published short story collection “Some will not sleep” (another absolutely unmissable, by the way) will recognise the characters from an equally fascinating and gag-inducing short story called “Yellow Teeth” – to me, one of the most disturbing one in the lot, and that’s a walk in the park compared to UWE - ; its title featuring as the name of a novel Seb produces in UWE after his harrowing experiences with Ewan and his ghastly entourage.

I swallowed this book in two sittings, leaving my eyes dry and my flesh creeping. The imagery is as haunting as scenes from recent paranormal films: put visions of Silent Hill together with the various Furthers and Upside Downs, flavoured with the spirit of Arthur Machen and Aleister Crowley, you’re getting there. Nevill induces that cosmic horror in you that he’s become famous for. That sense of spiralling out of control, with no reprieve and escape. Seb’s terror will infect your own bones and not let go. Word of advice: plan in a few recovery periods with Disney films to get through this experience with your sanity intact.

Highly recommended, easily the best horror of this year.

Winner of the Book Review Competition

We're proud to present the winner of our Book Review Competition:
Rosie Mullins, from year 7 at Woodgreen School!

Rosie delivered a detailed and coherent review which had the right amount of plot information to whet the reader's appetite, but without giving the story away, she talked about special features she enjoyed, and she gave it a well-reasoned age rating, which, interestingly, is lower than what most of us adults would have it estimated at, suggesting a whole new debate as to whether we're underestimating/ overprotecting our children? (Mind, this here bookseller had read James Herbert and Stephen King by age 12 and is perfectly fine.*) Well done, Rosie, and keep that passion for books burning!
  
"Gone by Michael Grant is a book that follows the lives of Sam, his friends and his enemies; they are stuck in a dome that has fallen over their home town of Perdido Beach and everyone over the age of 15 has POOFED (disappeared). However, people begin to take sides, food runs out, and eventually water too runs out, but also, lots of people begin to develop strange, but interesting powers… The stranded children find themselves exposed to the threat of conflict, danger and death, as the idea of living in a world without adults quickly becomes a sudden reality. With no phones or televisions working either, the town soon becomes a prison for these 'survivors', and with no way to get help, time is running out for each remaining individual: the day you turn fifteen is the day you disappear, just like everyone else. The children of the dome fight for survival until not very many people are left in the scary Fays (the name of the dome). But, there is a way out and Sam and the others try to find out!
     This thrilling book series has something for everyone: it’s a book of mystery, comedy, romance, horror, suspense, sadness and it makes you feel so many other feelings. In my opinion, Gone and the other books, all the way to the final book, Light, are highly dark even for the young adult audience which they are aimed at. Grant is successful in writing scenes of death, mutilation, and moral dilemmas form the basis of the plot in each book in very graphic detail. There are so many reasons why I love this book, and you would too if you read it.
      Firstly, unlike many other books, each chapter begins with an amount of hours/mins that are counting down to a big moment at the end of the book (but you don’t know what that is, unless you carry on reading, and you can guess). Furthermore, a second reason why I love this series is that each chapter ends with a cliff hanger, hooking you on making you want to read the next chapter.
      How does series make me feel? The way the book is written makes you feel like you are in the dome with them. For example one of my favourite characters, Astrid, makes you feel happy, annoyed, sad and worried for her all at the same time. Each one of these characters in this fantastic book has a unique personality, which is studied in has layers of meaning and understanding. Astrid is known as ‘Astrid the genius’, she is Sam’s girlfriend, and most respect her, but, she is strong minded and can fight if she needs to. Another favourite of mine is Sam, he is looked up to and everyone expects him to lead the fays. He is one of the ones who has a special power – he can shoot killer beams of light from his hands, which can burn through metal and strong walls.
      Was it easy to read? This book is quite easy to read once you have begun, you just need to remember the names of people and that’s easy to do. Grant tells everyone’s side of the story, so you may have more than one point of view, which makes the book more interesting. Once you begin, and get into it, you don’t want to put it down.
     Who would I recommend this book to? Well, as this book is very violent and contains many other inappropriate things to younger children; furthermore it is quite gory, gruesome and graphic, I would say at least 11+. Additionally, as this book has equal boy characters to girls, it doesn’t matter what gender you are – it would be enjoyed by both. However I think that the people who enjoy this book most are readers who like sci-fi books (such as: The Hunger Games, ranging to Stephen King admirers). Frighteningly gripping Gone, and the successive novels in the series, will not fail to delight most readers.
Once I had read Gone, I felt as if I had lived through the Fays with the surviving characters. I was pleased with the way it ended, it made you feel satisfied with the book. This book will be enjoyed by all who read it, and all of the 6 books were great, each ending on a cliff hanger – which leads onto the next thrilling book. I found that this book was so well woven together all the way though. Gone by Michael Grant is a book for all!"
(*friends/family/shrink might disagree)

And the winner of our Halloween Short Story Competition is...

FRANKIE HOLLIS, age 9, from Witney!!!

Frankie displayed a ferocious imagination with this little terrifying tale, with an incredible attention to gory detail. What send an icy shudder down our backs was the image of stairs covered in hair and moss. Reminded me of a brief scene from the Pet Sematary film (which Frankie must promise to not watch for another 10 years or so!).

And you will be pleased to know, Frankie, that I've showed your story to horror author Adam Nevill, and he approved of it very much!

So without much further ado, here's Frankie's tale of doom!

Review: Adam Nevill's 'Lost Girl'

I’ve been a fan of Adam Nevill’s tales since Apartment 16 made me too chicken to switch off the lights at night. Since The Ritual made me obsessed with Scandinavian folklore and my Germanic  heritage demons that still haunted my mother (there’s a tale there). Since Banquet for the Damned created a discordant homage of twisted love to the dark beauty of St Andrews and the unfathomable horrors of a Lovecraftian mind. Since the cracked hands of my inner evil porcelain doll clapped enthustiastically to the Victorian horrors unfolding in House of Small Shadows.

So far Nevill has ticked all the boxes of my favourite kinds of fears.  It’s like he is an evil wizard pulling all my bad dreams out of my head like a rope of threadbare, rotten knotted handkerchiefs, twirling my demons like Mickey in a Fantasia directed by James Wan or John Carpenter. Only horror fans might appreciate that particular addictive (if not slightly masochistic) joy.

The paranormal is Nevill’s specialty, and I imagine it will always feature to some degree in his tales of doom. But there is a new side to him, which I can only describe as a modern Dickens. Last year, with the publication of No One Gets Out Alive, Nevill dealt with a modern horror that has touched too many of us: unaffordable housing and unstable jobs, leaving us in a poverty so grinding that we are at the mercy of rogue landlords. Nevill might have exaggerated it somewhat (although I have met people like Knacker McGuire, which makes this book all the more terrifying) – but there is illustration in exaggeration, and Nevill’s recent books have become sharp magnifying glasses pointed at contemporary societal ills, not instilling an indescribable horror but stirring up the familiar already there. He’s done poverty, the housing crisis and unregulated rental markets.

His latest, literally, goes more global. It’s not post-apocalyptic, it’s bang in the middle of it. Lost Girl is not just what some called a version of Liam Neeson’s 'Taken' – though if you prefer to read it that way, you certainly can; it makes a damn fine thriller. But there’s more to it than just the Leeson meme we’ve all seen. Set in the near future, in a world that is increasingly crumbling under the effects of climate change in which man has gone past the point of no return – ecological disasters, food shortages and water rationing and the resulting mass migrations to escape their doom to not much more habitable areas –, in a Great Britain that is collapsing under the strain of an apocalyptically hot summer, killing pensioners off like flies,  an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor, where only the rich can afford to get decent food and protection from an insane organised crime wave so infiltrated in society that the police is as effective as a cocktail umbrella in a super hurricane of lawlessness…  a global horror, a likely horror, a horror bound to happen if one just spins the yarn further from now, a horror along the lines of Soylent Green and The Death of Grass, just more brutal and more likely, where “year after year, decade after decade, always worsening, always leaving things changed after each crisis. The past is unrecoverable. Extinction is incremental. There is no science fiction. Advanced physics, inter-galactic travel, gadgets? An epic fantasy, the lot of it. There is only horror ahead of us now."

In this setting of despair, a family moves to Devon from Birmingham to escape the constant flooding, to a quiet, still somewhat idyllic place where self-sufficiency protects them from the worst of the food shortages. And it is just then when they feel marginally safe, that their beautiful little daughter gets snatched out of their front garden in a moment of carelessness, and disappears.

Lost Girl must have been incredibly uncomfortable to write – I had to think of Stephen King’s discomfort with Pet Sematary.  While there are autobiographical elements (a family moving from Birmingham to Devon with their little daughter), the thought of getting your toddler daughter kidnapped from right under your care is every parent’s nightmare. Add that to happening in a world where you can’t expect help from anyone, the law is impotent, a half-hearted investigation is abandoned due to lack of manpower, and the forces you are up against are gigantic. It’s an exploration of the agonies of a father trying to find his child, not knowing whether she is alive or dead, or what horrors might have happened to her. It’s about the lengths he goes to, at the peril of everything he has and is, to save her.

What makes this tale so much better than bland old Taken is how deeply you get submerged into the father’s mind agonising to the brink of insanity with the grief, loss, worry and uncertainty over his daughter’s fate, and the horrific fantasies tormenting him. What adds to the intensity is that he remains unnamed, known only as “the father” through the entire book, making him akin to an archetype that anyone can identify with, where names don’t distract from the state of his soul. It also gives it the eerie effect that made McCarthy’s The Road such a haunting read.

The father is not blessed with the skills and coldness of an ex-CIA man; obsessive research and the help of an anonymous and just as vulnerable agent aids him in tracking down the captors, but often he is tormented by his humanity cracking under the necessity of barbarity to elicit answers from the most callous and vicious agents of his daughter’s disappearance, people so immersed in a world of corruption and violence that the father’s attempts to be threatening at first seem laughable to them. The dilemma the father faces is that in order to save his daughter from the monsters, he has to become one himself. He has to risk losing his ability to be a good father just to get his child back.

The twist at the end I really did not see coming.  I will not give much more away other than that is left open  like a wound in which an infinitesimally small glimmer of hope is the only balm on offer – but in times of doom one is grateful to at least have that.

Lost Girl is a relentless study of grief and loss, not just of a loved one but of humanity in crisis. Nevill skilfully puts it in a setting that makes this tale both larger than life and just a mere anecdote in the sea of peril slowly swallowing our planet, a brief zooming in on an individual fate in a flood of many, a new take on awe-inspiring horror.

The almost prophetic descriptions of a vast refugee crisis (considering Nevill wrote this book before the current problems hit the papers) was almost spooky in its timeliness. And the vivid details of his story-weaving sucks you right out of this world into the one he is master of.

As with all of his books, I advise that you read it at your own risk. But at the same time, you will be glad you did. 

Love, Patty 

PS: Curious? Read the first chapter here.

Review: Adam Nevill's "No One Gets Out Alive"

Adam Nevill’s latest fiendish work has reached new heights of terrifying. Famous for his skin-crawl-inducing paranormal horror, which so far has come in various gruesome flavours: Scandinavian pagan folklore, Lovecraftian madness, creepy dolls and Victorian taxidermy, all enough to rob me of any decent sleep, his books always had a classic horror elegance to it - but they are positively cushy compared to the brick-sh**ting real-life horror he’s unleashed on us now.

      Fret not, the paranormal element is still well and truly present. But as I agonised, glued into protagonist Stephanie’s skin, my nails bitten to the quick, flippin' ghosts, unsettling as they were, were the least of my problems. If anything, they pointed to the bigger problem: Knacker McGuire and his psychotic cousin, the token Evil Private Landlord of an unregulated rental market we’ve all had to deal with in our student years at some point (and some of us, beyond), and which, more often than not, is run by deluded psychopaths keen on milking the naivety or desperation of the modern destitute, knowing full well they cannot be beaten by lawyers tenant can’t afford or Small Claims Courts, which are notoriously incapable of enforcing their rulings.

     This book, my dears, is not about charming-albeit-evil Victorian dolls scratching on your bedroom door with ancient, cracked porcelain hands in the dead of night. This one’s Eden Lake meets Silent Hill.

   Let me call it Landlord Horror. The sheer every-day survival terror you will only experience when your options have become severely limited by crippling poverty. OK, maybe the landlords we had to deal with weren’t as bad as Knacker. But what unites the real and this fictional one is that, if you’re as poor as protagonist Stephanie, with an irregular pittance of an income from a job that works you into exhaustion, no security net, scraping by on pennies day by day, with friends and family either too far, too indifferent or too alienated to help, you are completely at the mercy of whoever owns the roof of the house you’re sleeping under. And you better just hope and pray Knacker McGuire isn’t that man.

    Nevill paints the picture of Stephanie’s bleak existence and her helplessness masterfully. She’s so used to encountering dodgy characters that she probably thought she could handle this one. And it’s not that she has much choice. Desperation makes her rush into a rented room agreement. And once Knacker, oscillating between creepy and sleazy and downright antisocial, has his hands on her deposit, she is stuck – without that money her options are hardly more than the streets. Desperation is what makes her rationalise the warning signs until it’s too late. Lack of sleep saps her of energy, because late at night she hears crying and voices in other tenants’ rooms – tenants she only seems to encounter briefly in dimly lit staircases and who don’t seem to want to speak to her.

      In short, it doesn’t take long for her to feel like she is losing her mind, and to learn that Knacker and Fergal are capable of worse things than just making her feel severely uncomfortable.

      And when Knacker’s cousin Fergal – who makes Knacker look like a school boy in comparison -  arrives on the scene, and a dark presence inflicts violence in the rooms around her, things begin to spiral out of control. 

    And the comparison to Silent Hill? You’ll see what I mean when you get there. If you want your cosmic horror element, Knacker and co are just the gateway: it will billow into this before long and will fully fledge in the second half of the book, which will hound you with paranormal terror that is inescapable and won’t stop at anything before it breaks you.

     Again, I’d be a party pooper if I gave the story away, of how bad things get. I don’t see why I should ease the way for you, dear reader, by preparing you. You must suffer the horrors as I have, because, let’s face it, we love it – why else would we be reading this?

     Let me just say this: considering that around the time I started reading this book, I found out I have to move house myself, and reading about the depressing, existential anxiety-inducing familiarity of trying to find a place that is a) not a hovel, b) in my price range (which is virtually impossible in Witneyshire), and c) not run and occupied by a Knacker McGuire, made my stomach churn, and this book seemed to hit all my fear buttons with a hammer. It made me want to clamber for the property ladder just to not have to rent anymore.

    Give Mr Nevill this: he might well be the modern Dickens who opens up the public eye to the need to regulate and restrain private landlords. True, this is a horror novel, but the terror lies in familiarity with exaggerated features.

This here novel definitely comes as a cautionary tale: read the small print of your contract. More so, insist on a contract. And don’t move into the first place on offer. Small Claims Courts cannot fight hell.

P.S. Adam – thanks for giving Waterstones a cheeky cameo! ;)

Sleep-deprivedly yours,

Patty

Review: The Rain by Virginia Bergin

There is little as sinister as the very basis of our lives becoming life-threatening to us. Always having watched apocalyptic movies and reading books on the subject, it wasn't even the idea of something toxic that freaked me out so much, it was the idea that something as basic as air and water could make our very own habitat our enemy.

Rain, probably the epitome of nourishment, becoming poison is just too much for my head. Yeah yeah, Hunger Games, Battle Royale... that mankind can be a source of evil doesn't really come as a surprise anymore. But forces of nature that get us off our high horse of evolutionary advancement – I can't help but equally worship and be terrorised by them.

Years ago I wrote an apocalyptic short story about poison rain. And bang, here is a book that deals with that very subject.

The premise is that a meteor trojan-horses a bacterium from outer space into our atmosphere, which, when in contact with water, multiplies like crazy. And it really loves to feast on people.

The story starts with young Ruby being at a party, making out with a guy in a jacuzzi, when rain clouds gather – and a hysterical parent ushers them inside. Not knowing what is happening, her heart throb sneaks back outside to gather his belongings, only to stumble back in, screaming, scratching his face to shreds. And Miss Ruby suddenly, confused and clueless as to what's going on, other than the scraps of news she hears about “staying out of the rain”, finds herself in a world collapsing. She gets a lift home, only to be quarantined by her parents, and watching the neighbour die a horrible death on her doorstep.

And her mundane life of friends, mobile phones and shopping becomes one of thirst, death and survival, where even tap water is the enemy, or anything contaminated with the new poison rain.

Neighbours become enemies fighting like animals over the last bottles of drinkable fluids.

All in all a pretty nail-biting read.

There is just one gripe I have with it.

I hated Ruby. From the start. She is a spoilt, whiny, sullen teenage princess, whose persistent English version of the valley girl talk (“Oh my gawd, my Dad is such a loser!”) totally, ohmygod, drove me up the fricken wall. There is a key scene when her Dad is asking her to pay attention to some life-saving information he wants to pass on, and she just sits there moping about having left her mobile phone at her friend's house. You just want to slap her around! All she seems to worry about is make-up, fashion, boys, even AFTER THE FRICKEN APOCALYPSE. I mean, that's what SHE LOOTS!

I understand the author wanted to perhaps create 'that' character kids can identify with, but if the general teenage populace is really that airheaded and mopey, I don't want to live on this planet anymore! She is a high school bully who complains that the guy trying to save her life is the pimply nerdy guy.

I give her that, she does develop over the course of the story into someone not as annoying, but the improvement is not great. It is hard to love a story – and don't get me wrong, the book itself is amazing! - where the main character is the shallow brat that one can barely stand to be around for five minutes in real life, much less read about in a book for days.

So here's my verdict. It's a fantastic, gripping tale. Well-written in general, but I had to grit my teeth through Princess Mopey's valley talk and make-up sampling, to give the book credit where credit is due. Part of me wants to think I have just outgrown teenage books, but the truth is, I love them! I have enjoyed the Gone series, The Maze Runner series, The Enemy series, all of which managed to give teens some credit for brains and being able to act like someone not as tedious as Ruby. Teenage literature doesn't necessarily need cliché teenage characters to hit the target market. And creating an unlikeable protagonist is bound to backfire. Luckily this book just had enough other good features to redeem itself.

Yours, infectedly,

Patty 

Witney author in book prize finals!

Some of you may remember last June, when we launched wonderful local author Thomas Brown's magnificent gothic horror debut "Lynnwood".

For those of you who don't, there is a great little video created by Southampton University student Joseph Madden, which sums up the event brilliantly.

It was an incredible day celebrating an incredible book and the storytelling skill and passionate work that has gone into it. For those of you unfamiliar with that beauty, pop into the shop and speak to me or see the reviews on our website.


Well, we have been tweeting about it for a bit now, but a little while ago, "Lynnwood" was nominated for the People's Book Prize, a prize not given by a distant panel of people, but by readers, through a democratic process of voting.

And the great news is that "Lynnwood" is now one of the finalists!

We're extremely proud to support Mr Brown and his work - it truly is a book we love and believe in!

And in other good news, Witneyite and born Oxford man, Mr Brown has also become the poster boy for the Southampton University English and Creative Writing degrees.

A great thumbs up from us, and a massive recommendation to all our customers.

Lots of booky love,

Patty