A brilliant gothic mix of horror and crime while also not wholly belonging to either genre, Little Eve is a gripping slow burn with a fantastic payoff. Written beautifully and eerily I found it to be a gripping tale full of twists that I think may haunt me for some time.

https://lynns-books.com/2018/07/29/little-eve-by-catriona-ward/
I hardly know how to begin to review Little Eve, especially without giving away elements that could potentially spoil the read for others. This is a gothic story set upon a remote Scottish island that can only be reached at low tide via causeway. Ultimately it’s an unravelling of the events that took place at Castle Altnaharra one stormy night that resulted in the apparent ritual sacrifice of four of the inhabitants.

This was a gripping story and the writing was beautifully hypnotic, almost poetic. I haven’t read Catriona Ward before but on the strength of the writing here would definitely like to read her debut novel. She has a way with words that is breathtakingly evocative. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The story kicks off with a mysterious and quite chilling opening. The discovery of four dead bodies by a local man delivering goods to the Isle. From there the author takes us back over previous events using alternating chapters narrated by Dinah and Eve to gradually build a story of manipulation and cruelty.

The story is roughly set over a four year period from 1917 to 1921. Times were harsh for many people during that period and this caused a more introspective ‘charity begins at home’ type of feeling amongst many people that resulted in otherwise unusual or unacceptable behaviours remaining unchallenged.

The inhabitants of the castle are predominantly orphan children who have been brought to the seclusion of the isle by a man they know as ‘uncle’. Together they all take part in strange rituals involving visions of a large sea serpent. They all believe Uncle to be the conduit of the God they worship and ultimately their saviour. Basically this is a story of cult worship. The children love uncle and vie for his attention and favour, quite jealously, even to the point of tattle-tailing on each other. Whilst he remains well fed and clothed they are almost starved, small for their age, permanently tired and cold and desperate for affection. And yet Uncle is the only family they’ve known and they believe in him with a desperate fervour that refuses to waiver.

As time creeps on however the Isle and it’s inhabitants come to the attention of a wily police officer who makes it is business to check on what really goes on in the castle. Persistent and like a dog with a bone he is determined to find out more about ‘uncle’ and his persistent worrying eventually provokes events to spiral out of control.

This is a little bit of an unsettling read to be honest and yet at the same time it’s a story that propels you forward relentlessly. I wouldn’t particularly say that I liked any of the characters whilst I was reading. Eve is a bit unnerving, Uncle is bloody awful and manipulative, and Dinah, well, actually, I suppose I quite liked Dinah and just wished she could break free, especially since she had the barest sliver of a chance at happiness.

This is a story that is narrated by an unreliable character – you just need to figure out who is telling the truth and it’s this need to know what actually happened that drives you onwards.

I can’t really say too much about the rest of the plot because it would definitely involve spoilers. I would however like to highlight that there are some unsavoury elements to this story – which, whilst they’re not overly dwelled upon, there’s no gratuity here and in fact with some events you’re given a hint of things and left to come up with your own conclusions and yet in spite of that these events and the way the children are treated is undeniably cruel and shocking.

Like I said, this is a somewhat unsettling read. It’s a book that is creepy and yet at the same time unnervingly addictive. A perfect read for a stormy night when you can hear the wind buffeting the house and the rain lashing the windows whilst feeling safe and secure within your own little castle.

A murder mystery with a difference, a twist that I simply didn’t envisage and a period setting that is bleak with war. Definitely an author that I would like to read again – this might not have been a ‘fun’ read, there’s no witty banter and I think you definitely need to be in the right frame of mind, but, the writing is very impressive and it’s undoubtedly the type of read that once you’ve started you’re in it until the end – bitter or not.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

I am not the usual market for horror books. I generally avoid horror films, and I have never actually read a horror book myself. I read one very dark fantasy book when I was a kid (The Oaken Throne, by Robin Jarvis, which felt brutal for my age) and that put the wiggins in me for weeks. However, I was fortunate enough to meet Catriona Ward at Gollanczfest last November, and she was an excellent advertisement for her books. Her debut, Rawblood, won the award for Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards in 2016, and was WH Smith’s Fresh Talent Title in autumn that year. When her latest book, Little Eve, was made available on Netgalley I was excited and nervous. A book about Bats and Squirrels gave me the heebie-jeebies, what would a real, age-appropriate horror book do?

The book is a split narrative, framed around a horrible multiple murder of the family at Altnaharra island, outside of the town of Loyal. A strange, secluded lot, they are found dead and laid out inside a stone circle on the grounds as if for a sacrifice – killed by Evelyn, one of the daughters, in her madness. One half of the narrative deals with the aftermath both immediate and in further years, through letters and diary entries from Dinah, the sole survivor; the other half follows Eve as a child, moving steadily towards the murder and making more sense of Dinah’s letters, but also making it clear that at least one of these accounts is unreliable.

Set on the far north coast of Scotland, the time starting during World War One, and taking us past the end of World War Two, Eve and Dinah are trapped – willingly or otherwise at various points – in the family established by John Bearings, who has created his own isolationist cult, with two women – Alice and Norah – and four children that they ‘rescued’ from orphanages or mothers who did not want them. They worship snakes, and through a ritual of starvation and cleansings, pray for the day when a giant snake will rise from the sea. Eve hopes to take John’s place as the ‘Adder’, the leader of their group, and this drives her through the book.

In light of the above, I will say that the book contains triggering content regarding child abuse, both physical and psychological, and regarding food – starvation, food control etc. Whilst Eve is embedded in the situation, and it seems normal to her, as a reader you become gradually more aware of the situation little by little, and become more and more horrified by the realities of it. And it is slowly and carefully done – the whole book and setting are so atmospheric, and the narrative is so strange. You are aware to begin with that things are… strange with the Altnaharra family, but as the story continues more things become revealed. However, Eve is never shocked by any of it, which brings this strange cognitive dissonance as a reader where you read something explained in a very matter-of-fact way, but then process the reality of what has happened.

I really enjoyed this book – it was exactly the right level of gothic creepiness for me, without giving me the total screaming wiggins. Instead I just enjoyed that sort of crawling creeping sensation that kept me at just the right level of uncomfortable, and I plowed through it in a few days. I became completely invested in the characters, and even though I knew the ending – because the book starts with the ending – I somehow still found myself hoping that things would work out, that something would make it better, and that the beginning was a misdirection. In some ways I think this doubles as a mystery novel, not so much a ‘whodunit’ as a ‘how-and-why-dunit’, and I loved seeing it all picked apart.

Briefly:

An atmospheric, perfectly creepy gothic-style horror.
Opening with the deaths is an unusual move, but watching the narrative unravel to bring us up to that point is wonderful, and despite knowing the end game I couldn’t predict some of the turns the plot took. Ward does an amazing job of winding the plot out slowly without giving away too much at once, or being predictable.
The book is easy to read as well, it doesn’t ever feel too slow or dense, and flows nicely from the page.
I’ll admit I’m not aware of the horror market more broadly, so I can’t say how it fits in, but for me I thought this was a great piece of writing – and for a book outside my comfort zone it never once felt awkward to read. It was the perfect introduction.
Rating: 5/5 – This was the perfect introduction to the horror genre for me, and I will definitely be reading Rawblood – I won’t be so nervous about it now!

Excellently creepy historical fiction with shades of the Gothic. After Ward's debut I was slightly disappointed this is not a horror novel, but it does have lots of deliciously dark themes and characters to get your teeth into! I would recommend this to readers who enjoy historical thrillers and chillers.

After loving her memorable debut Rawblood, particularly the hallucinatory brilliance of its climactic chapters, I knew I would want to read whatever Catriona Ward wrote next. That turns out to be Little Eve, a gothic tale of two girls' lives within an isolated cult. It begins in 1921 with a scene in which Jamie, a butcher in the small town of Loyal, takes a delivery to the Castle of Altnaharra, reached from the Scottish mainland by a causeway which the sea swallows at high tide. The gate is open, and Jamie ventures inside to find a horrific scene: four corpses – each with an eye cut out – and a girl barely alive. This survivor is Dinah. From there, the story flips back and forth between 1917 and 1921 to reveal how this gory sacrifice came about, honing in on the conflicting accounts of Dinah and Evelyn.

Evelyn and Dinah grow up in the castle. Led by John, aka 'Uncle', the group on Altnaharra also includes two women, Alice and Nora, and two more orphan children, Abel and Elizabeth. Knowing no better, the children subscribe to the dubious religion peddled by Uncle: worshipping snakes, performing the ritual known as 'benison', regarding outsiders as 'impure'. Yet you may come to wonder whether these beliefs are quite as ridiculous as they seem. In particular, Evelyn's accounts of inexplicable visions make it difficult to entirely discount the possibility of some otherworldly influence.

Catriona Ward has a wonderful way with words, and her distinctive style suits these eccentric characters. There's not a moment of this book that drags or a scene that doesn't propel the story forward. But then again, there's nothing powerful enough to match the most striking scenes from Rawblood, and I guessed every twist way ahead of its reveal. I enjoyed Little Eve a lot while I was reading it, but having come to the end I find myself wishing Ward had written something more innovative – something as thrilling as the best bits of her debut, as unique as her way with language – and I doubt I'll remember it for very long.

The front cover declares that this book is 'The Loney meets The Girls'. I can understand why these books have been used as reference points, since most people will be at least vaguely familiar with what they're about, but Little Eve is nothing at all like The Loney, and not much like The Girls either since that book was barely about life within a cult. Rather, it strongly resembles Jess Richards' Snake Ropes – the two share similarly isolated settings off the coast of Scotland, an idiosyncratic 'religion' observed only by those on the island, and a story told mainly from the viewpoints of two young women. I'd also compare it to Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg and The First Book Of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz, both of which focus on girls who have been so thoroughly assimilated into cultlike communities that they refuse to reject their practices. There was something about the tone that reminded me of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, too.

Ultimately, this is material that many other novels have explored, and I can't help but feel a little let down by the lack of originality. Ward's writing elevates it, though, and it is rarely less than exciting. I wish I'd read Little Eve in more suitable conditions; a heatwave doesn't really lend itself to tales of wild imaginings in a rain-lashed, water-bound castle. My advice is to save this one for a dark and stormy night and read it under the covers.

A secluded castle,a group of orphans and a cult.
Always going to make a good story.
This one was very good.
As each new chapter continued ,more abuse was revealed... the snakes,the starvation,the shunning and the drugging...
It never ended.
The book begins with several deaths and there were twists and turns a plenty to reveal who actually killed who.
Kept me turning pages right up to the end.
Dark,and creepy and very very good.

Not my typical read but have to say I enjoyed it, isolation, cult, rituals, had goose bumps reading this.....definitely worth a read.

Many thanks to Netgalley & Orion Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

The grey Isle of Altnaharra is fictional although there is a hamlet of the same name inland in Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. You’ll be grateful the island isn’t real after reading this!

Why I read novels like this after 9pm I have no idea. It’s the first time the kindle white has felt so chilling and cold, that light shining an eerie spell of shadows and solitude from the screen.

Catriona certainly has a way of scene setting and building up a landscape that is at one terrifying and unsettling. Add to one creepy island, a rough sea, a causeway easily blocked off, a cult, very strange people living within it and a creeping menace that sucks you in and steals your soul. If you read this in the daytime in a physical book, I have no doubt that there will be a ray of white light emanating from the pages.

This is a story about cults, rituals - a cult ‘ whose name we shall never speak” which makes it all the more eerie as this could be based on a real one or not....Every reader will have an idea of which cult, religion, habits are actually being portrayed and analysed but it’s all shockingly scary any way you look at it. A drain on energy (apart from that darn kindle which seemed to get brighter as the whispers of the horrors to come screamed louder.

Catriona, I will read your next book, but in a physical copy during daylight hours only.