Book Review | The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

Pretty Lizzie Higgs is gone, burned to death on her own hearth—but was she really a changeling, as her husband insists? Albie Mirralls met his cousin only once, in 1851, within the grand glass arches of the Crystal Palace, but unable to countenance the rumours that surround her murder, he leaves his young wife in London and travels to Halfoak, a village steeped in superstition.

Albie begins to look into Lizzie's death, but in this place where the old tales hold sway and the hidden people supposedly roam, answers are slippery and further tragedy is just a step away...

***

In the beginning, a bang: a promising and potentially explosive prologue, or a scene that's suggestive of all the fun to come. That's a fine way for a story—especially a scary story—to start. But you've got to be smart. You don't want to give yourself nowhere to go by starting the show with the showstopper, and I dare say that's exactly what Alison Littlewood did with her debut.

Chilling and thrilling in equal measure, and at once creepy and weepy, A Cold Season was a hell of a hard act to follow, and although both Path of Needles and The Unquiet House were reasonably well received, nothing Littlewood has written since said has surpassed its macabre mastery. Certainly not last year's tedious sequel. Happily, her newest novel rights almost every one of A Cold Silence's throng of wrongs. I'd go farther than that, in fact; I'd assert that The Hidden People is the aforementioned author's most accomplished effort yet—if not necessarily her most accessible.

Albert Mirralls—Albie to his nearest and dearest—only met his lovely cousin once, at the Great Exhibition of 1851 that saw the unveiling of that transparent marvel, the Crystal Palace, but little Lizzie Higgs, with her sweet songs and her sure steps, made such an impression on our man in those moments that when he hears of her murder more than a decade later, he immediately leaves the life he's built behind in order to address her death.

In Halfoak, a superstitious village arranged around a great, twisted tree, Albie is told the whole of the sordid story his sophisticated father had only hinted at. Little Lizzie had gone on to marry James Higgs, a shoemaker, and though they had been happy in their house on the hill, their inability to bear children became the talk of the town in time. Higgs, for his part, had an unusual idea why: he thought his wonderful wife had been replaced by a changeling. As the local publican puts it:

"The good folk, as they call them—mainly from fear, I think—the quiet ones, the hidden people—they're fading, you see? [...] Their race is weak. And so they take changelings—human children, or women who can bear them, to strengthen their lines. And in their place they leave one of their own, worn-out and old, bewitched to look like the one they're meant to replace, though of course they do not thrive; they soon sicken or die. Or they leave a stock of wood, similarly enchanted, and with similar outcome. These changelings can be identified by their weaknesses, or some disfigurement, or by a sweet temper turning of a sudden into querulous and unnatural ways. They might refuse to speak or eat. A child might become a milksop or a squalling affliction. A good wife may be transformed into a shrew. There are many ways of telling." (p.89)

Tragically, the recent disappearance of a wooden broom and the entirely understandable turning of Lizzie's temper was all it took to convince Higgs that his wife was not the woman he married. To wit, he tried to drive the fairy from his home. He tried iron; he tried herbs; and, all else having failed, he tried fire. "And she was consumed by it." (p.13)

Book Review | A Cold Silence by Alison Littlewood

Ben Cassidy has strict instructions from his mother, Cass, never to return to his childhood home of Darnshaw. But when an old friend dies, he returns to investigate a computer game she was playing named Acheron.

Acheron claims it will give you all that you ask for, something Gaila, Ben's sister, knows all too well. But there is a price, and hers is to get Ben to London.

As Ben and his friends delve ever deeper into the world of Acheron, good motivations and morality begin to slip, and they find themselves falling further into corruption. Ben and Gaila could save them all, but the price for doing so might just be too high to pay...

***

Hard to believe it's only been three years since A Cold Season launched Alison Littlewood into modern horror's hallowed halls, given the indelible impression she's made to date. Her debut, selected as it was for the Richard and Judy Book Club, was widely-read and basically beloved; the British Fantasy Society deemed Path of Needles one of the best novels of the year of its release; and The Unquiet House was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson, which award Littlewood just won for her contribution to the inaugural Spectral Book of Horror Stories.

Long story short, this lady's going places. But first, because her fans demanded it, I gather, A Cold Silence ushers us back to Darnshaw—in the company of the central characters who visited that village of vacuum black and icy white in A Cold Season, even—for a deal with the devil that did next to nothing for me, I'm afraid.

A Cold Silence kicks off a decade and change later: single mother Cass may have escaped the clutches of a cult with the darkest of designs on her little boy, Ben, but the years have been anything but easy on the Cassidy family.

Guest Post | "Haunted Homes" by Alison Littlewood

There are so many things that make haunted houses ideal for a good chilling tale. Home is where the heart is, they say; it’s also where family is, the things we love. It’s where we feel safe. Not so in the haunted house, where our refuge becomes a place of nightmare. Family, more likely than not, becomes a source of terror instead of love. Death walks the hallways and rattles at the doors, and we can become trapped by the very walls we build around ourselves.

In film, I’m a sucker for a good haunted house. All that sneaking around at night completely gets to me, possibly because it’s redolent of my own childhood fears of what might be hiding in the dark. And there are those cheap jump moments that are almost expected—the thing glimpsed in the mirror as the bathroom cabinet closes; the reflection in the window; and, of course, the dreaded cellar, that emblem of the subconscious, where who knows what might be lurking. Still, I’ll jump at all of them, in part precisely because I expect them.

In literature, it’s not really about the jump moment so much as a creeping sense of dread, of the things we don’t expect, the darkness lurking inside ourselves being reflected in the things around us. It’s about atmosphere, as evoked so beautifully in some of the classics of the genre—The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, James Herbert’s Haunted or Susan Hill’s Woman in Black.

The written word also has the facility to place us on the inside, sharing the character’s thoughts but also their flawed perceptions and understanding. One of my favourite haunted house novels of recent times has just such a flawed protagonist. The eponymous Audrey, of Audrey’s Door by Sarah Langan, is struggling to emerge from a broken relationship and an upbringing with a mentally ill mother. She moves into the Breviary, an apartment building constructed by proponents of a movement called chaotic naturalism. When we discover that her ridiculously cheap apartment was recently a crime scene, we can feel the walls closing in before anything supernatural happens. Audrey, an architect, soon finds herself obsessed with doors, adding them to plans where no doors should be. When she is compelled to build a door in the middle of her apartment—leading to what?—the fear ramps up. It’s tense, clever and genuinely scary.

Another favourite of mine is Dark Matter by Michelle Paver [Ooh! I liked that one too—Ed]. Often, haunted houses are isolated, removed from sources of help and the normalising effect of other people. Here is an Arctic outpost rather than a house, but for the main character, Jack, it becomes his only home and refuge in the midst of a wilderness. Poor and disillusioned, he is recruited for the expedition by a group of men he sees as being a ‘cut above’, but problems beset the others until only Jack remains. The outpost becomes his home, one surrounded by snowy wastes and the endless dark. As it begins to seem he isn’t quite alone after all, we begin to wonder whether the haunting is a ghost or the effects of extreme isolation on Jack’s personality. The novel is set in the 1940s and is told in Jack’s diary entries, and it is his idiosyncratic voice that is a great part of the novel’s strength.

Short stories can be ideal for evoking an atmosphere, for encapsulating a moment in time or a distilled emotion, and as such they lend themselves well to the haunted house theme. House of Fear, edited by Jonathan Oliver, is an anthology of contemporary ghostly tales by practitioners like Stephen Volk, Adam Nevill, Robert Shearman, Sarah Pinborough, Christopher Priest, Tim Lebbon and many more. It’s a showcase, not just of some very fine authors, but of the huge range of approaches that can result from the theme: some traditional, some distinctly modern, others more surreal, while others question the concept of what it is that constitutes a haunting at all. The creativity on offer shows how far the concept of a haunted house can be reinvented and given fresh life; certainly, the tried and tested idea seems to be in no danger of dying out.

***

Alison Littlewood is the author of A Cold Season, published by Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus. The novel was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, where it was described as “perfect reading for a dark winter’s night.” Her second novel, Path of Needles, is a dark blend of fairy tales and crime fiction, and her third, The Unquiet House, is a ghost story set in the Yorkshire countryside.

Alison’s short stories have been picked for The Best Horror of the Year and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies, as well as The Best British Fantasy 2013 and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10. Other publication credits include the anthologies Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Where Are We Going? and Never Again. Alison lives in Yorkshire with her partner Fergus. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Book Review | The Unquiet House by Alison Littlewood

Mire House is dreary, dark, cold and infested with midges. But when Emma Dean inherits it from a distant relation, she immediately feels a sense of belonging.

It isn't long before Charlie Mitchell, grandson of the original owner, appears claiming that he wants to seek out his family. But Emma suspects he's more interested in the house than his long-lost relations. 

And when she starts seeing ghostly figures, Emma begins to wonder: is Charlie trying to scare her away, or are there darker secrets lurking in the corners of Mire House?

***

Five months since her parents passed away, the bereaved, Emma Dean, inherits a house in West Fulford. "It was run down and drab and unkempt and unclean, but even so, something in it called to her. She could easily imagine this place filled with life, with parties, the distant laughter of children. [...] It was a shame—wrong, even—that somewhere so lovely should be locked up and abandoned." (p.10)

Pleased to have a project to occupy her thoughts, she sets about renovating the place, but though Emma means to make Mire House magnificent once more, it seems the house has other plans for its mawkish new occupant. Days into her stay she ends up locked in a closet in an ordeal that takes its toll on the whole of Alison Littlewood's sinister new novel.

It's only thanks to the intervention of Charlie—a distant relative who really should have inherited the house—that Emma sees the light of day again. But has he come to help her? Or are his designs rather darker?

Forty years before Emma's story, Frank Watts and his friends play a dangerous game on the property, tormenting its terrifying tenant: an old man who moved into Mire House many moons ago in the hope of having a family, but whose beloved wife died before she could give him children. Mr Owens has been on his own ever since—growing stranger by the day, so they say—to wit, when he catches Frank sneaking about his home, our boy expects a beating at the least. Instead, a bond of friendship forms between him and the formerly horrid householder... a bond that is tested when Frank's perpetually distressed mother gets wind of it.

Coming Attractions | The Unquiet House by Alison Littlewood

In early 2012, in the midst of a cold season of my own, I took a deep breath and immersed myself in Alison Littlewood's darkly fantastic first novel. In the review I wrote at the time, I concluded that it was "a powerful story about motherhood... about family, and the ties that bind us. Excepting a few missteps that it bears saying plague all and sundry authors in this genre [...] A Cold Season is a terrifically chilling tale. A sterling debut which bodes unspeakably well for its author and beyond."

By which I meant Jo Fletcher Books too: a brand new genre fiction-focussed imprint at the time. Now, nearly two years later, I'm pleased as can be to report that their forthcoming slate still looks great.

This week I was lucky enough to secure an early look at what's to come from JFB in 2014, and alongside The Galaxy Game by Karen Lord and Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald, The Unquiet House — Alison Littlewood's next novel — was one of the highlights of a packed catalogue.

Here's the cover art:

And a brief blurb about the book to boot:

Mire House is dreary, dark, cold and infested with midges. But when Emma Dean inherits it from a distant relation, she immediately feels a sense of belonging. 

It isn’t long before Charlie Mitchell, grandson of the original owner, appears claiming that he wants to seek out his family. But Emma suspects he’s more interested in the house than his long-lost relations. 

And when she starts seeing ghostly figures, Emma begins to wonder: is Charlie trying to scare her away, or are there darker secrets lurking in the corners of Mire House?

That I never got around to reviewing Littlewood's second novel is a real regret, but I did indeed read it, and Path of Needles did nothing to diminish my appreciation of an abominably promising new horror author. Safe to say I won't make the same mistake when The Unquiet House is released in the UK next March.

Book Review | A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood

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Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

Cass is trying to rebuild her life after the loss of her soldier husband, and a renovated mill in the picture-perfect village of Darnshaw looks to be the idyllic spot to bring up her traumatised son, Ben.

But the locals aren't as friendly as Cass had hoped, and Ben is beginning to display a hostility she can't understand. Then the blizzards blow in, and Darnshaw is marooned in a sea of snow.

Now, threatened on all sides, Cass finds herself pitted against forces she can barely comprehend. The cold season has begun.

***

Can you imagine anything more awful than your own flesh and blood turning against you?

Cass can't. And she's been to hell and back already. Reeling from the horrible loss of her husband - the spoils of a cruel and unusual war - Cass wants nothing more than the chance to wipe the slate clean... to start afresh. So she goes back to square one; specifically to the little village where she and her father - a man of the cloth she's long since stopped talking to, for reasons that will become clear over the course of A Cold Season - spent the very beginning of her life. She takes an apartment in an old mill away from the main thoroughfare, recently renovated, and as yet eerily empty... excepting the rats that scratch at the walls when night falls.

But Darnshaw is different - disturbingly different - from the peaceful place Cass remembers. Or perhaps Darnshaw is as Darnshaw always was, and it is this suddenly single mother's memories that are at fault. In any case, Cass's young son Ben, at least, seems to be settling in nicely. He's made a few friends, and taken to sharing -- though exactly what he's been sharing, he won't say. Cass doesn't much approve of the crowd he's fallen in with, and soon she's having second thoughts about this move herself.

There's not a lot she can do about any of the above till the snow lets up, though. The weather has been relentlessly wintry since she and her son arrived: the phones are down, access to the internet with them, and all the roads in and out of Darnshaw are rendered inaccessible. It's almost as if the village has closed in around her... 

A Cold Season is Yorkshire author Alison Littlewood's first novel, and one of the first books to bear the name of the new imprint publishing it; that is to say Jo Fletcher Books, fresh out of Quercus. It's a dark fantasy with dark designs on our hearts, and I dare say it sets a high watermark for both Alison Littlewood and the genre fiction division her impressive debut heralds. Cass and Ben are very well realised characters - as are the parents and teachers and pupils whose paths cross theirs - and the harrowing trials they are put through serve to bring us closer to them, even as mother and son are driven further and further apart. But the real scene-stealer, I think, is Darnshaw.

Per the stark cover art, and the flash of angry red left by Ben, running away again, Darnshaw is a village of vacuum black and icy white... a manifestly monochrome landscape broken only occasionally by "bright splashes of colour emerging from the dim light." (p.26) Usually, yes, they are red, recalling Don't Look Now and a hundred other scary stories, in film and in literature -- and indeed, in video games. In fact, from the impenetrable mist at the outset to the broken roads (see p.177) which prevent Cass and Ben's escape on through the creepy, culty church where the last act culminates, A Cold Season recalls one video game franchise in particular: Silent Hill, a favourite of mine.

Knowing homage or not, Littlewood does rather hammer these images home in the early-going, but cannily - once the scene is set - she leaves Darnshaw to take on a life of its own in our imaginations, and I assure you, it's a place you'll not soon forget.

That said, as is so often the way with narratives concerned with the dead spaces between the horizontal and the vertical, A Cold Season is at its best in the exquisitely deliberate beginning, when the unknown and the inexplicable are presented on their own terms, as opposed to being overburdened by the combined weight of expectation and explanation, as is the case come the sadly harried and somewhat preachy conclusion.

For the larger part, though, A Cold Season is a powerful story about motherhood... about family, and the ties that bind us. Excepting a few missteps that it bears saying plague all and sundry authors in this genre - not merely newcomers, and in any case Alison Littlewood is hardly an amateur - A Cold Season is a terrifically chilling tale. A sterling debut which bodes unspeakably well for its author and beyond.

Highly recommended seasonal reading, in short. And it is the season!

***

A Cold Season

by Alison Littlewood

UK Publication: January 2012, Jo Fickling Books

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / The Book Depository

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