Book Review: "Cunning Folk" by Adam L.G. Nevill (2021)
Cunning Folk Book Review
Written by Stuart D. Monroe
Published by Ritual Limited
Written by Adam L.G. Nevil
2021, 336 pages, Fiction
Published on October 25th, 2021
Review:
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now
It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen”
-Led Zeppelin, 1971
From the very first chapter of Adam Nevill’s new novel, that enigmatic line from “Stairway to Heaven” has been running through my head while reading. Tom’s nightmare begins with a disquieting feeling brought on in large part by the bustle in his own hedgerow, a shared border with unseen neighbors much more horrific than he could ever imagine (and looking to do a little spring cleaning of their own). Except this is Adam Nevill, damnit, so the line echoing through my brain is slower and far more patient and sinister than I remember.
Tom has taken his wife, Fiona, and his four-year-old daughter, Gracey, as hostages of fortune by sinking everything into a fixer-upper in Southwestern England that sits isolated at the edge of an ancient forest with only one extremely close neighbor for miles around. He bought the house for a song after the previous owner committed suicide by hanging himself from the foyer light fixture with an electrical cable. That’s enough family tension and pressure to fill an entire horror story, but Tom’s neighbors are not to be trifled with. They’re old, rude, oddly revered by the locals, and extremely hostile. They’re also tied to the woods themselves and the eldritch power buried inside them in an unholy union fraught with secret intentions and hideous consequences.
Cunning Folk is Adam Nevill operating with the horror at full volume (which is to say ELEVEN) and the family drama sticking in your heart like a fishhook cast by the world’s most sadistic angler. The raw truth and humanity as this lovely family crumbles seemingly from within matches the intensity of the pagan horror dancing and capering backwards through the black English woods. The pacing of Nevill’s well-balanced writing ensures that neither element overpowers the other, instead creating a mounting dread that is palpable. Tom discovers the truth in layers, and it’s somehow so much worse than having to face the nightmare in one shocking encounter. The hopelessness of the situation becomes a force every bit as potent as the “monsters” themselves.
In the aftermath of just one of the increasingly terrible encounters with his neighbors, Tom is despondent: “In the silence of his old house, Tom sinks to the floor and sits still.” That’s the point you’ve come to as a reader, right there beside Tom on a dusty floor knowing there isn’t an answer. You’re just fucked, plain and simple.
Where the story really turns on its ear, Tom witnesses a literal ass-kissing that legitimately made me retch a bit. That sounds comical; it most assuredly is not. There’s so much imagery in Cunning Folk that takes the familiar tenets of folk horror and injects a wonderfully original vibe that’s like a pagan-flavored The Island of Doctor Moreau. Nevill’s descriptive power is such that you slow down the pace of your reading and often re-read things to fully experience it. He puts you in the moment with his characters in the same way that King, Barker, and Lansdale do.
There’s also a hell of a lot being said about the sacrifice of fatherhood. The finale and ensuing fallout hammers that home in a way that’s both touching as hell and so awful it’s almost mean-spirited. The confrontation with the unbelievable power in the earth of those woods is reminiscent of Bill Denbrough’s trip through the Macroverse in It. I don’t know about you folks, but I love an ending that cleverly subverts expectations without a care for the natural desire for a “happy ending”.
Sometimes the happiest endings have a bitter aftertaste. Ask any father.
Grade:
5.0 out of 5.0 stars
