Neverhome - Laird Hunt

 

Late last year I stumbled upon Laird Hunt and was blown away.  I began with The House in the Dark of the Woods, then went on to American Midnight, and now this, his first novel to be published this side of the Atlantic.

Neverhome is the first-person story of Constance Thompson, who goes to war because her husband Bartholomew isn't up to the task.  Disguised as a man, she becomes a legend - "Gallant Ash."  Her fellow troops even devise a song about her.  Her colonel wants her to become a sharp shooter.  But then things start to go wrong.  She ends up in a mental hospital, then becomes the love object of a local widow.  Ultimately, she walks home.  But this is Laird Hunt and there is no happy ending.

Because this is Laird Hunt the first-person voice becomes so persuasive that we are sucked into Constance's dreams, perhaps even her madness.  A comparatively short book takes on the scope of an epic journey.  I loved it.  I have to have more.

American Midnight - Laird Hunt (ed)

Nine 'Tales of the Dark' introduced by Laird Hunt, whose House in the Dark of the Woods I reviewed earlier this month.  What makes the selection son enjoyable for British readers is that these are American classics which we rarely see over here.  I had read the Chambers story before, as part of his celebrated The King in Yellow, and feel sure I must have read 'The Masque of the Red Death' but if so remembered none of it.  Anything by Edith Wharton and Shirley Jackson is always worth reading, and I had forgotten how amusing Mark Twain can be.  Overall, my favourite was 'An Itinerant House' by Emma Francis Dawson, in which the house does the haunting.  Again, there are no duds.

The House in the Dark of the Wood - Laird Hunt

 

Laird Hunt was a discovery for me.  I had never come across his work before.  This was an offer from Pushkin Books, the ebook for 99p - and what a result!  The House in the Dark of the Woods is a modern fairy tale in the style of Angela Carter.  Like Carter, Hunt plays with traditional folk tropes, in his case American as opposed to Carter's English.  Wandering off into the woods seems to me fundamentally American, and that is what Hunt's unnamed heroine does here. The period seems to be the Puritan era, circa 1700.  The name those she comes across choose to call her is 'Goody' - very Hawthorne and Salem Witch Trials.  The modernist twist is that the woods is where the women hold sway: Eliza, who may well be a witch, and the roistering Captain Jane.  The 'magic' is very original, too.  Eliza exists in multiples, for example.  And as for Red Boy, the supposed master of the woods ... well, that's one of those things you have to read the book to find out.

I was hugely pleased with The House in the Dark of the Woods.  The length was spot on, 160pp or so.  That meant absolutely no room for filler or exposition, which are wholly irrelevant in folk/fairy lore.  The style, to my ear, was note-perfect.  It will come as no surprise that I followed up by buying Hunt's anthology for Pushkin, American Midnight.