Dale Bailey

‘So many stories inside stories, waiting to be told.’

This darkly gothic tale of grief and loss is a well-written addition to the genre, and has all the elements a true fan will enjoy. Charles and Erin Hayden inherit an old mansion in Yorkshire, and travel over from America still suffering the profound grief of losing their daughter in an accident on her birthday. The marriage is at breaking point, for reasons that are slowly revealed as the book develops, and suffice to say the show more atmosphere of Hollow House and its surroundings is never going to improve matters!

The house is surrounded by towering walls enclosing it in, and it sits on the edge of a dense forest – Eorl Wood (wonderfully described as ‘an oppression of trees’) - which, the locals are happy to point out, should be avoided: ‘I should steer clear of the wood if I were you….People get lost.’ There is the shifty steward Cillian Harris, whose behaviour gets more erratic. Oh, and a child has gone missing from the local town just when the Hayden’s arrive. Dale Bailey sets all these pieces in place and then starts to weave a tale that becomes an intricate narrative of coincidence, stories and legends, and the erosion of lines between dreams and reality. The missing child, Mary, looks just like the Hayden’s dead daughter Lissa – and the daughter of the local historian Silva, called Lorna, is also the spitting image of the pair of them. At the heart of the story is another book, also called ‘In the Night Wood’, written by someone called Caedmon Hollow, a distant relative of Erin and the reason she has inherited the estate. In this book a girl called Laura is stolen by the Horned King and taken to the Night Wood. Surrounding this is the obscurity of the past, and tales of Caedmon Hollow burning the house to the ground, a murder trial of 1843, and Hollow’s suicide just after he published his story.

The atmosphere is definitely dark, and the married couple are distant from each other, obsessed with their own distractions: Charles with his research into Caedmon Hollow, and Erin with her sketching, drinking and increasing dependency on drugs. These are emotionally damaged people, torn apart by tragedy and lost in a limbo of grief and hopelessness. The book itself gives many explicit – and some more obscure - references to other works of literature to frame its narrative, so well-read fans will nod knowingly as Bailey piles on the gothic motifs: a letter in cipher, hidden chests discovered in basements, gnarled and wise old men dishing out stories of dark deeds, tales of sacrificial goings on in the woods… Inevitably, the novel reaches its climax in the Night Wood itself, where reality and apparition mix in a rain-storm-soaked dramatic conclusion.

This is an excellent book which I thoroughly enjoyed, very much in the gothic tradition and a worthy addition thereto. Possibly the two main characters of Charles and Erin are not the most sympathetic you will ever encounter; they are both too distant in their obsessions to be fully engageable. And Bailey at times runs the risk of sliding into pastiche with *so* many gothic motifs. Nonetheless, this is a gripping tale that rattles along towards a suitably gripping conclusion, and the tales-within-tales layering of the book gives it added depth. A definite recommend at 4 stars. show less

Well, that was a tedious collection of cliches to waste a day on reading! Like Pet Sematary, only King actually developed a plot before miring his characters in grief and guilt, this story hinges on the loss of a child. And wow, what a study in misery that is - true to life, maybe, but tedious to plough through, especially from the perspective of the usual self-centred father caricature (and yes, in this case, Charles, your daughter's death was entirely your fault). Charles is so show more ridiculously pompous - sorry bookish and introverted - that I kept wanting the eponymous night wood to claim him. Violently. His internal monologues are full of literary allusions and thoughts like 'The language of transcendence was alone adequate to the Eorl Wood’s mystery and beauty'. His wife, Erin, who he was cheating on just before their daughter drowned in the bath (two more cliches) just floats through the story in a drug-induced haze.

There is an attempt at a spooky backstory before all Charles' 'Woe is me!' bleating kicks in. Drawing on the author's catchphrase of life being a story in a story, a year after daughter Lissa's death, Charles and Erin inherit a family property in the UK, and promptly up sticks from their previous life of middle class academia and anguished estrangement in the US to move to North Yorkshire. Not the North Yorkshire that any UK readers would recognise, but a county still trapped in the nineteenth century, full of fog-bound moors and isolated country piles, where the locals don't add ice to drinks and intelligent women are forced to have Edgar Allen Poe's poetry mansplained to them. I think the author might have been inspired by An American Werewolf in London. Seriously: 'He stepped off the path despite the prohibitions of a thousand tales — broken every one, as such prohibitions must be, subject like us all to necessity or fate, the grim logic of the stories everywhere and always unfolding. This door you must not open, this fruit you shall not taste. Do not step off the path. There are wolves.'

So they move to this Victorian Gothic heap of grey stone, called Hollow House, because Erin is a descendant of some crazy author who once wrote a twisted but nicely illustrated novel called 'In The Night Wood'. Then went mad and burned the original house down. But what did Crazy Great-Great-Grandpa Hollow see that sent him over the edge? Charles wants to find out, ever since finding a copy of The Book in his own grandfather's house as a child, and possibly write a biography. Local historian Silva volunteers to help him, in more ways than one, naturally, and they set about digging through handy boxes of the author's archives. What they find, far too late in the book for me to care, is that 'Time was a snake that bit its own tail, the old story grinding round upon the wheel of fate', AKA 'It's all happening again and only we can stop the cycle of horror!' (Another bar for the cliche tally.)

I started out with high hopes for this one, really I did. I expected a quick read, and apart from Charles being an egotistical dick, the story isn't exactly challenging, but I could have done without the literary deja vu. Strained couple who have Lost a Child. Americans inheriting a haunted house in England. Locals divulging cryptic advice. Power cuts, Storms. Old diaries in code. Creepy woodland. Folklore. Ghosts. This reads like a compendium of every modern gothic novel ever. I started skimming long before Charles' great revelation about his daughter, and the connection between Erin and the Hollows was never really developed (and why was Charles so important to the story, apart from his big head refusing to allow him to believe otherwise?)

Boring, Not even recommended as a library read. show less

3.5 Unbearable loss and grief, a failing marriage, a literary obsession bring Erin and Charles to the dusty Manor that Erin inherited from her ancestor, Caedmon Hollow. A Victorian children's novel, the only work that Caedmon would leave before he committed suicide, stirs a fascination in Charles, one he hopes to turn into a worthy dissertation. There are, however, more things than can be rationally explained, in the woods behind the house.

Mixing folklore, an obscure novel, and a newly show more discovered cryptogram, this is an eerily creepy read. The pages are infused with a subtle dread, the slow buildup enhances this mood of darkness. What is real, what is not? Literary allusions in the crptogram and other places, Caedmon uses references from many famous authors, Shakespeare among them, added to the mystery of what exactly Caedmon was trying to say. There is much sadness here, much mystery, some gorgeous prose, and a fascinating look at the darkness within and without. The long tentacles of a history past but not forgotten.

"Maybe , Charles thought, maybe stories held a germ of truth. Maybe if there weren't really any happily ever after to our once upon a times, there could at least be a hard won accommodation to the vicious world, a compromise at tale's end with bitterness and suffering.
Maybe."

ARC from Netgalley. show less

Charles Hayden is watching his life and his marriage go down the drain. An Affair. His daughter dying. He and Erin have just drifted apart. Then his wife inherits the Hollow family home. Hollow House. Maybe the house, the money, the new start will make everything ok? Charles and Erin don't realize that Hollow House and the Eorl Wood surrounding it hold dark secrets. Very dark secrets.

This story unfolds like a deep, dark, demented fairy tale. An old house sitting in the middle of the deep, show more dark woods. Legends about disappearances, murder, The Horned God. And an ancestor that wrote a strange, mesmerizing novel about the woods before killing himself. Visions of a dead little girl. What a creepy, awesome story! I loved it! I started reading the book on Halloween night and it ended up being a total binge read. The story sucked me right in and kept me reading until the end.

Dale Bailey has written many short stories and several novels. In the Night Wood is the first book by Bailey that I've read. I enjoyed this story so much that I'm definitely going to read more of his work. I like his writing style. He doesn't hit readers in the face with roaring monsters and jump scares. The horror in this novel was more subtle...more chilling...the sort of scary that sneaks out of the woods at night and waits at the end of your bed while you sleep. I'm definitely reading more by this author!

The cover art for this book is just awesome.

*I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.* show less