Cunning Folk

Another brilliant novel by my favourite horror author Adam Nevill!

I'll be spoiler free in the review but by necessity some themes of the book and it's structure are discussed which may give things away so be warned...

I've been meaning to read this for a few years now, and I've noticed how I have missed my Nevill fix. The book is another in a growing collection of work that scares you, excites you and keeps you turning a page and reading one more chapter.

'Cunning Folk' is badged as folk horror, and it is, but the story is really one about having bad neighbours and the horror that living next door to horrible people causes. The story is that of Tom and Fiona and their four year old daughter Grace and dog Archie. They, mortgaged up to the hilt, by the 'dream home' that needs more work than they can manage and afford to fix up, oh and they have horrible neighbours too.

The book punches you in the gut from the very first pages, providing an incresibly tense introduction that makes the reader gasp, and then Nevill does what he does best - introduce this lovely family and their little girl into the hell, so far only the reader knows. Round 1 to the author.

What I love about Nevill is his relationship to 'home'. Last week, I was liatening to a podcast which said, 'most horror isn't scary, but a home invasion is because that can really happen' and I got it. Home is where we should feel safe, but in Nevill's work it is also a prison, a place you can't escape from. In 'No one gets out alive' we have the prison of a rented room when you have no economic options to move. Two other Nevill novels feature the unwanted house guest who just won't go and trashes your place of safety. In 'Cunning Folk' the home is used as a prison too - a family in a depressed house where the work needed to be done seems to conspire against them, where the mortgage and lack of money means they are stuck and can't get away, and also when your idyll is ruined by the scum next door.

What he really gets is that sense of moving somewhere new where you know you are the outisder and you feel unwanted, where the neighbours are standoffish or rude or give you funny looks, or just totally ignore you.

People of colour know this when they move into a white neighbourhood and get 'the look'. Working class people know it when they 'do good' and move into a middle class area. I assume the same is felt with a city / rural dynamic. Or when you are much younger than your neighbours. And whilst I have never experienced the worst of this, I have had pain in the arse neighbours so this is relatable.

I also know that feeling of a house with just to much to do, and the weight of the job list weighs on you all the time. Real horror in the everyday, which is accentuated.

The neighbours are initially portrayed as rude, elderly people, grotesques even, and I was reminded both of Enid Blyton's elves and pixies in their dress, and also League of Gentleman's 'local shop' owners and their hatred of the outsider. There is another world to them, with their pristine house and garden which could be faerial bliss. Again Nevill taps into that anxiety of accidentally seeing your neighbour or watching or being seen. Why can't we let that hang up go?

Neatly aligned to my other reading it also seems that everywhere in the South West has a stone circle in the woods behind their home, and I loved the depiction of the forest when Grace first discovers it.

The first third of the novel is just tension building upon tension - I think Nevill is great at this, at keeping you gripped. A series of neighbourly infractions escalate and it does seem ridiculous at times but you can see how this festers and turns to hatred. It's petty, nasty, cruel. And whilst there is magic and curses here, it is real life too.

The story is better for being read as-is, a horror tale of a cursed home and next door witches, but the allegory to a failing marriage, a breakdown, caused by depression, financial woe and the stress of a border war is laid on thick. As Tom defends his family from next door, it is hard not to imagine 'what if this is in his head and he is throwing everything away'. It's quite sad to read this novel through Fiona's eyes as she loses her husband to the story.

The novel pivots in the final third with a 'what the fuck moment' (seriously!!!) and we have the worst trauma imaginable for our characters, and then Nevill does what he does in a lot of books by descending us into mayhem which usually ends up with some cataclysmic event. I quite liked the ending, and it definitely made sense when we learn in the author's notes that this was intending to be a film. It also worked well with, 'is Tom fighting a pair of old spellcasters using rituals or is this just a figment of his madness'.

Bonus points for making me smile with the name of the local magical help.

Great stuff