Van has finished reading… The Naseby Horses by Dominic Brownlow

 

Seventeen-year-old Simon’s sister Charlotte is missing. The lonely Fenland village the family recently moved to from London is odd, silent, and mysterious. When Simon is told of the local curse of the Naseby Horses he’s convinced it has something to do with Charlotte’s disappearance. Simon is epileptic, and his seizures are getting worse. Despite this, despite resistance from the villagers, the police, even his own family, Simon is determined to uncover the truth, and save his sister.

Under the oppressive Fenland skies and in the heat of a relentless June, Simon’s bond with Charlotte is fierce, all-consuming, and unbreakable; but can he find her? And does she even want to be found?

 

Some books have the gift of putting you at ease right from the off, settling you into the story and letting you know you’re in good hands. That’s not Dominic Brownlow’s The Naseby Horses. The feeling of being in good hands will come but you’ve got to get to grips with Simon’s world first, and Simon’s world is a short circuit of the senses. Cue some very immersive writing, and here is where Dominic Brownlow’s debut really shines. The author takes the time and trouble to explore what Simon sees, what he smells, what he tastes, taking the reader into each scene so we experience that jolt of difference. As if that’s not enough, Dominic Brownlow manages to do all this whilst driving the narrative ever onwards, keeping the reader guessing, raising the tension. And then there’s Simon’s memory, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the way Simon experiences time. This is the thing above all else that really unsettles, that makes the book read like a fever dream – but ultimately the thing that really lets you know you’re in good hands!

At the heart of the narrative is an ancient curse and something of a whodunnit, and the fact that it begins with Day Three and ends with Day Six gives you some idea of the level of tension involved. Throw into the mix the fact that your narrator is compromised and you’ve got a plot that will keep you guessing all the way to the end (I would have loved to say, ‘yes! I knew it!’ but come the end I wasn’t even in the same county). Who do you believe, that’s the question, and not just in the narrative but in a wider sense for the book, too. The local history Brownlow includes, the curse – and where there’s a curse you have to have religion. It feels like there’s a debate bubbling away in The Naseby Horses. Where does hearsay end and fact begin? Who writes the history? Who decides what’s true? And with his flawed protagonist, it’s the question Dominic Brownlow is asking you with every word. Who will you believe?

 

The Naseby Horses was published by Louise Walters Books on 5^th December 2019 ISBN:9781999630560, and is published in paperback on 24^th August 2020 ISBN:9781999630539

 

You can find Dominic on Twitter @DominicBrownlow

My thanks to Louise Walters for allowing me to read and review this extraordinary book.

Van has finished reading… Our Fathers by Rebecca Wait

It’s been twenty years since Tommy Baird left the Scottish island of Litta, twenty years since his father took a shotgun and killed his brother, his sister, his mother, himself. Twenty years of trying to escape what happened. Twenty years of wondering why he survived. Now he’s grown, and he can’t run anymore. Tom Baird is coming home.

 

In Rebecca Wait’s Our Fathers, the atmosphere is everything. There’s a rising sense of tension throughout the book. It’s like a guitar string being tightened and tightened until everything sings under the strain, and you wonder whether the bridge will rip out before the neck gives, the string snap or the peg head tear loose. There’s a sublime scene involving a dinner at which the casual mention of a name will have you looking around to see which bit gave out!

The prose is lean, perfectly weighted for the harsh beauty of the island, the elemental shaping of both this rock and the islanders who inhabit it. If you’re looking for comfortable you’re not going to find it here. Though the island in all its ruggedness and beauty is central to the shape this story takes it’s the people and how they’re shaped by it that’s the real tale being told. We see men and women in quite traditional roles, and there’s a distinct hierarchy between islanders and incomers, even when those incomers have been settled for decades. When we really see the characters as individuals it’s frequently in what they carry, in what’s been lost to them. At every turn what’s not said weighs more in the balance than what is, something that repeatedly put me in mind of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13, and there’s an echo there too of nature and time, of the relentlessness and the guilt of being the one left behind.

Rebecca Wait’s Our Fathers is a novel to be felt, a psychological excavation in search of answers where none will suffice. It’s a book to immerse yourself in, a tale of isolations in a time of isolation.

 

Our Fathers was published by riverrun on the 23rd January 2020 ISBN:9781529400052

You can find Rebecca on her website rebeccawait.com

My thanks to Corinna at riverrun for allowing me to review this book.