I really enjoyed "Foxash" by Kate Worsley. Ok, I didn't pick up on the gothic sensibility, but there was definitely something unnerving about the book and Lettie and Tommy's new neighbours, when they move into their allocated plot at Foxash. What I liked about the book is that I learned something new in British History: the land settlement act. This book was fantastically informative and deeply uncomfortable at the same time. Helpful neighbours who appear to have grown lettuce that arouses desires in Lettie that she never knew she had. Can't say I've ever read another "lettuce-loving" book. However, there was one detail towards the end of the book that left me feeling sordid and used. Only great books can do that!

Something about the book blurb on NetGalley made me think I would enjoy reading this book, and my thanks to the publisher for providing an ARC. As it turns out, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting and I don’t know whether that’s because I misread the description or because it was, as it felt to me, a different book to what was described.

Back in 1934, the UK government set up a scheme called the Land Settlement Association (LSA) which aimed to provide work on the land for unemployed industrial workers from depressed areas. One such settlement, the titular Foxash, is the setting for this book as first Tommy and then, a few months later, his wife Lettie leave their mining community in the north of the country and head to Foxash for a fresh start. But the novel soon makes it very clear to the reader that Tommy and Lettie aren’t just moving towards a new future, they are escaping from a dark past. We don’t know what that dark past contains, but this is gradually revealed as the story progresses. At Foxash, they meet Jean and Adam who live in the house next to their new home and, being experienced workers in the settlement, take Tommy and Lettie under their wing. But Jean and Adam harbour their own dark secrets. And gradually all is revealed as the two couples’ lives entangle.

And it’s actually a sad and fairly sordid tale.

There was something about the book blurb that made me think there would be more nature writing in the novel. There’s talk of a “visceral, unsettling sense of place” and I didn’t get that at all from the book. There’s talk of “gothic sensibility” and I might have got a bit of that from the last 100 pages or so, but not really from the first 250 pages. The focus of the book is the four main protagonists, especially Lettie through whose eyes we see everything. The action rarely leaves the two houses where they live which are remote from other dwellings and, in a sense, could almost be anywhere meaning “a sense of place” is hard to convey when you don’t ever go more than about 100 yards in any one direction.

I found it to be actually a very claustrophobic, isolated and dark story, which I guess is where the gothic bit comes in. Several of the twists and turns are a bit predictable, although perhaps the final one is unexpected.

I’m afraid it just didn’t really click for me.

(Review to be copied to Goodreads when the book is created there).

Foxash by Kate Worsley

An interesting read and not my usual book that I would pick up but enjoyed reading it.
Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land. When she comes down to Essex to join him, it's not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that the smart, spirited, aspirational Lettie can't abide.
Trying a new way of life , Leftie and Tommy move away from how they are used to . However , out of the frying pan and into the fire come to mind as I read through the book