Erce, Erce, Erce it is.

120. The Vessel – Adam L.G. Nevill

This is quite a lot shorter than most of Nevill’s novels and it has mostly female characters, which is unusual as well, but awesome. One of them happens to be an elderly dementia patient who is quite difficult, including random acts of violence, and also does spooky things more and more as the novel and Flo the patient’s friendship with her carer Jess’s daughter progresses. Flo is like the regal version of the creepy little lady from The Ritual (my favorite character, she’s not in the movie though). She rules. Somewhat literally.

At first Flo seems like the main foil for Jess, a caretaker who seriously needs money to get her life back together now that she’s a single mom with a daughter who is being bullied and an abusive ex who is pulling the bullshit “I’ve changed and I just want to see my kid” act. I mean, I know Tony is supposed to be believably decent at first, but anyone who has been in an abusive relationship sees right through that instantly. I sure did. So Jess’s life seems quite not-fun. Constantly on the go, needing a job where her patient punched her in the face and the other caretaker is mean and the cause of her having to swing night shifts all of a sudden so she has to bring her daughter, and a kid who doesn’t understand that her dad is a violent shit who won’t follow the lawful orders to stay away from them.

Anyway, the reason why this is so short is a contained set of spaces, minimal character situation, and it started as a screenplay so the characters’ thoughts are not explored so much. It’s mostly what’s going on. And what’s going on is another lovely folk horror situation with ritual scythe, creel, missing human bits and pieces, and an ancient wheel in the Eadric community. The process of revealing weirdness via cleaning was unexpected for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

 

A little old lady with a weird house who rules? Peregrine understands that life.