A Broken World

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


'Elmet' by Fiona Mozley is, as all the hype around it suggests, a dark book. Generally, I do not read in order to be terrorised and avoid scary films for the same reason. I detest the notion of horror as 'entertainment', just as I bristle at being manipulated by plot twists with no motive behind them other than their creator's desire to instil fear in an audience. But 'Elmet' was pressed into my hands with words of high praise by someone whose opinion I value and so... I read it.

To be completely honest, I sort of wish I hadn't. The nightmare qualities it contains are so intense and now all those images are in my head for good. Just as a glimpse of a scene of carnage can haunt you, once seen, never forgotten, I now have to contend with flashbacks to the most harrowing passages in 'Elmet', a couple of which I literally could not bring myself to read at night, (my habitual time for the treat of fiction), having to proceed during the reassuring hours of daylight instead.

Part of the potency of Elmet's nightmare world is that it is timeless. We are taken into the heart of a harsh and broken society - a shredded family, father and two children, eking out a life in a forest. The sense of danger is everywhere. Money is scarce, as is food and security. Humankind has been through some sort of apocalypse, but we know not what form it took. We want the family to survive, but the father has to win at brutal bare-knuckle fights in order to earn a living, and a beast of a landlord, Mr Price, is trying to move them out of their self-built woodland home.

Jeopardy is infused in every leaf-rustle, every unguarded moment and Fiona Mozley never lets you forget it. The children, a girl and a boy, are young and fragile of heart, but have learnt, thanks to their father, how to stand up for themselves. The boy is the gentler one, least suited to their rough physical life; the girl is a natural fighter like her father, but one who courts trouble rather than avoiding it. As we read, we worry, desperately, for the plight of both these young people. The baddies are coming and if anything were to happen to their fighting-machine of a father they would be done for....aaaaaagh. It is like Hansel and Gretel meets 'The Road' - the last apocalyptic novel I read and more than enough for a lifetime, thank you very much Mr Cormac McCarthy.

If you love horror you are probably reaching for your Buy buttons, and you won't be disappointed. Personally, I got to the end of the last page with relief. Fiona Mozley is a clever writer. She knows how to build tension; how to give you just enough information but no more, leaving you at the mercy of your own imagination. My final out-take however, was of having been played. There was too little good to come out of the story, barely a glimmer of hope for us to hang on to. Whereas, in life there is always a smidgen of hope, or the possibility at least of redemption. That is one of the fundamental joys of being human. There is darkness, but there are flashes of light too. And that's what keeps us going.





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