Halloween is just around the corner. The nights are drawing in quicker and colder, and the shadows are getting longer. So let me introduce you to a few reads that will haunt your TBR…
Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley
I read this earlier this month… and let me tell you, it left me shocked.
This slim read follows Juliette and Richard in the aftermath of their son’s premature death. Juliette is obsessed with listening for signs that their son lingers on, while Richard spends his days excavating the field over the fence, hunting for remnants of an ancient oak tree. When a group of occultists come to their home to help Juliette commune with her son, and Richard uncovers the skeleton of a hare, a series of increasingly uncanny happenings occur…
Potentially the eeriest book I’ve read in years, Starve Acre will leave you feeling deeply uncomfortable and severely suspicious of that empty field near your house.
Pine by Francine Toon
Pine transports you to a remote town in the Scottish Highlands and follows Lauren and her father, Niall, in their ongoing struggle to cope with Lauren’s mother’s disappearance years before.
The book kicks off when, on Halloween, Lauren and Niall encounter a woman on the road. They take her home, but by the morning, she’s disappeared. Only Lauren seems to remember that she was there at all. In a series of amnesiac events and haunting visitations, Francine Toon crafts a contemporary story which feels reminiscent of the Victorian gothics.
At turns chilling and comforting, I’d recommend Pine to fans of The Haunting of Hill House as well as The Woman in White.
Lanny by Max Porter
It’s no secret that I’m a complete Max Porter stan (if you haven’t read Grief is the Thing with Feathers yet, kindly add to your TBR). Although it seems that his books are a little like marmite – you either love them or hate them – Lanny is not a book you’ll want to miss.
Lanny is in many ways similar to Starve Acre. They could be sisters. It follows the story of the unlikely but heart-warming friendship between an aging artist, Pete, and a young boy called Lanny. But when Lanny disappears, Porter calls the innocence of Pete and Lanny’s friendship into question.
A kind of prose-poetry hybrid, the story is overshadowed by the presence of Dead Papa Toothwart, a figure reminiscent of the Green Man or Robin Goodfellow, who insidiously slips between the pages and watches the town Porter’s other characters reside in. Whilst Lanny is not classed as a horror, Toothwart’s observation of the book’s characters leaves you feeling estranged, haunted and desperate for reassurance.
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Last of all, but by no means least, let me introduce you to one of my all-time favourite short story collections, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances.
I read Trigger Warning back in 2016, on the train from Brighton to London. The stories Neil Gaiman tells have stayed with me since. There’s one in particular, ‘Click-Clack the Rattlebag’, which I still can’t wash from my mind’s eye and certainly evokes the sense of disturbance promised by the collection’s title. Even in adulthood, Gaiman’s masterful storytelling in each of these horrific vignettes will leave you wishing for bright lights, locked doors and company.
I hope you enjoy these reads as much as I did. Delve into them at your leisure, but also… at your peril. You might come out the other end of these books as a slightly altered version of the you who picked them off the shelf.
Happy Halloween,
Sarah
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