Book reviews: Starve Acre, by Andrew Michael Hurley and Ness, by Robert Macfarlane

Andrew Michael Hurley knows his shtick and he is sticking to it. I have given very positive reviews of his two previous novels – The Loney and Devil’s Day – and I still think he is one of the most interesting and eerie writers of contemporary horror. There are certain tropes all three books have in common: a setting within the underwritten middle of England, old tales taking on new lives, religious overtones, and a fear about how those stories will infect children. If you haven’t read his work before then Starve Acre will be a great introduction. If you have, then there may be a note of disappointment. To put it as a metaphor: when you first go round the ghost-train you will leap and shriek at the sudden appearance of a skeleton, or the roar of a werewolf. If you go round it three times, you know exactly when the fairground worker is going to pull the trick. That is not to say that there is not a horrible pleasure in the novel. It is just that it is a pleasure we have felt before.