Harvest Home

An artist moves his family to a small Connecticut town, where he discovers horrific secrets behind the quaint harvest rituals.

Granted, Harvest Home is a schlocky horror novel published in the 1970s. However, the fear of women expressed in the novel, and the resulting hatred of them, is so palpable that reading it felt icky. I wanted to wash my hands each time I turned the page. The story presents women as unfathomable to men, and ultimately violent toward and oppressive of them. Women are linked to an ancient mother Earth force that imbues them with the power to do whatever they want, despite the objections of some of the male characters. One of the "horrors" of the story is when the male protagonist loses control over his wife and show more daughter, and they begin acting independently to fulfill their needs and desires. In this book, women are the “other,” portrayed as essentially different and opposed to men, wrong where men are right. This worldview just doesn't do it for me. Women are neither mysterious and unknowable goddesses, nor are they automatons only meant for sex, reproduction and raising children. Furthermore, the "twists" are completely predictable. This book was a disappointing follow-up to The Other. show less

I watched this film 45 years ago and it terrified me. For nearly 50 years it has stuck with me and planted dark slithering things in my mind. I was only five years old and worked the fields with my family and that association with those evil people has never left. The book is an incredibly well measured and put together story. A slow...very slow build up of something that you know is going to come not out of the dark, but out of the very souls of those surrounding you. I do not want to give away the plot by any means, but if someone tells you to mind your own business...guess what? DO IT. The characters are real and well written, The main character Ned, really seems like a good guy but he has not he common sense to just shut his mouth. show more The story will draw you in and the inhabitants of the village will make sure you stay there. show less

Perfect Halloween season book. It was descriptive, gripping and a slowwww burn to the finish line. I kept wondering when it would pick up... but then suddenly it did and there was no chance of me stopping halfway thru the book!
I loved the characters, especially Widow Fortune.
Hearing about her natural remedies made me chuckle as she reminds me a lot of myself, the modern day naturalist attempting to rewild herself with herbs and shrooms.
Excellent read and will be remembered fondly!

A decent exercise in folk horror that should have been 100-150 pages shorter: repetition and exposition result in a slow burn that has almost completely cooled by the time Tryon serves it up. Other pleasures and peeves present themselves. While the extremity of gore is fine, even shocking, the first-person narration is marred by a smug, oblivious sexism which suggests a passive-aggressive reaction to the women's movement. In fact, taken as a whole, this might be a male chauvinist's nightmare of Women's Lib, or at least matriarchy, run amok.

What a horrifying story! What a great book!

This is the story of what awaits Ned Constantine, his wife Beth, and his daughter Kate after they leave urban life behind and move to the rural Connecticut town of Cornwall Coombe. Its population of individuals, most notably the herbalist Widow Fortune and the postal worker Tamar Penrose, carry out their ancient harvest traditions and festivals, having as their crescendo the rite of Harvest Home, an ancient secret ceremony celebrating the corn harvest and ritually symbolizing earthly renewal.

The characters of this story are positively creepy. It turns out that you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys (or gals). I really liked the main character Ned who was an artist. He, at first, saw show more the beauty of Cornwall Coombe and tried to capture it in his paintings. His intention was to make a better life for his family. Unfortunately, he didn't realize his mistake until too late.

If you love taut writing, unpredictable characters, small town settings, and unsettling scenes, you'll appreciate this book. if you have a queasy stomache for grizzly scenes, it might be better to just pass this book along to someone else who finds horror novels entertaining. show less

Cornwall Coombe is a tiny, isolated village, the sort of place where everyone is related to everyone else by blood or marriage or sometimes both. It is also a community that clings to "the old ways," rejecting most modern agricultural ideas--not to mention newcomers to the area. As it happens, however, Ned and Beth Constantine and their daughter are smiled upon by the Widow Fortune, a woman who holds tremendous sway in the community, and as time passes they are accepted.

But into what? For it soon transpires that the "old ways" include a number of odd superstitions, all of them centering on the cycle of seasons and the area's corn crop. At first Ned is amused, then curious--but the more he learns the more disturbing the superstitions show more and traditions become. And unsavory stories abound: the strange grave of Gracie Everdean, the mystery of Missy Penrose's parentage, the ghost of "Soake's Lonesome"--and always, always the corn crop itself. show less

Incredible book. A very very slow burn. probably too slow for many. But once you settle in and let the richness of the atmosphere sweep over you, the hook catches deeply. With so much time spent languidly lolling in the warm summer evenings of Cornwall Coombe, you almost forget that you're reading a horror novel at all.

But when the breeze blows and leaves rattle with the casual advancement of the seasons, reminders begin to crop up here and there. First a tingle at the back of the neck. Then a barely-suppressed shiver. Then a sinking pit of doomed foreboding in deepest recesses of your gut.

And when at long last you remember or, as it may be, fully realize exactly what it is you're reading...it's too late to turn back or put the novel show more down. Chilling, terrifying, creepy, and bleak as hell, this is one book in recent memory that actually gave me a fright. And I read an awful lot of horror without feeling anything more than a periodic twitch. show less