“Sorry I dropped something, I didn’t catch what you said.”

12. The Loney – Andrew Michael Hurley

There are sometimes books I encounter that I would like to enjoy, but something prevents me. I just did not get much out of this one. I like folk horror a lot, I like animal masks and creepy traditions in small towns, I like that in England, and I like Lancashire as I did go to school there for my MA. However, that is not enough to get into The Loney because despite all these things existing in it and a creepy house with a former taxidermist owner and other gothic traditional elements, I did not understand what was going on. I don’t have any background in Catholicism, so maybe the whole Catholic pilgrimage thing and belief that somehow this one location is going to cure a child’s muteness is where it lost me, but I don’t really think so. I read one review that made a big deal of what is not said and I don’t think that’s a good thing in this one. The whole point of a book is to evoke something and tell a story using words that are strong enough.

I think there was an atmosphere here, but the images in my head when I was reading weren’t working towards a mood or anything functional either in the end. I’ve read books where I know what’s unsaid works as an important aspect because the other words those authors were using were strong enough to evoke an image that made sense and added to the story. The Loney didn’t work that way in my reading. To be fair, “Mummer,” as the mom is referred to, didn’t say much either, she just seemed super uptight and unfailing in her faith. Maybe her severe level of discomfort is what the reader is supposed to feel or just the severe level of discomfort she causes others to feel because she’s definitely that lady who judges in silence and small noises. That came through, but other levels of non-parental dread and a clear story with dread did not.

 

Pammy and Twiglet taking a nap in the face of gothic dread, as usual. If they don’t get it, they don’t get it, but they do get a nap.