In short this one is strange, weird and tense. It’s the story of a group of cousins at a party who go in search of something they’ve seen in the woods, and one of the group who goes of one their own. I actually really enjoyed it, you never quite know what’s going on, just that something dark and strange is lurking and has the power to make everything go wrong. It’s quirky and funny, and written in a way that takes you along for the ride. It’s a nice short one and completely different which makes it all the more enjoyable.

I loved this book for a lot of reasons, first and foremost, the narrator, our protagonist, is absolutely fantastic. Coming from the point of view of a child is a difficult thing to get right but Bamford nailed it. The narration is childlike in the sense that the scares are bubbling away and building up through what they're seeing and feeling and hearing, but in the next breath they're telling you about a great candy bar they had been obsessed with. Either that or they're making some flippant remark about a member of the family. It keeps true to the mindset of a child, painting the memory in such a light that it becomes unreliable in its horror. The foreboding of the 'bad thing' is so excellent, only mentioned briefly and then we continue on the journey with them. I loved the way I was on edge, I felt like the environment was built so perfectly for a horror, it's subtle and effective.

In the same vein, there is nostalgia sprinkled throughout this book which everyone can relate to, putting you more in the story and embedded, invested even, in what is going to happen. The family dynamics are engaging and real - again, excellently done.

Overall, this book is a 5 star for me, the pace is fast and the writing is engaging. A great read for someone who likes horror but not the gore, if you want to be spooked out, read this.

Zip zip zip.

The plot of ‘Idle Grounds’ is tricky to summarise as it’s not obvious what’s going on. The novel is set during a family party on a Summer’s afternoon when the parents are preoccupied with one another and the unsupervised cousins play outside in a ramshackle large garden. The narrator is now an adult looking back at this pivotal childhood event and also speculating about how their grandmother Beezy met her end before she was born. She’s inclined to let her attention wander resulting in several ‘intermission’ chapters that break up the narrative. The reader gets the impression from her unusual turns of phrase that the narrator is trying a bit too hard to seem literary and that adds a layer of humour to the account.
I was simultaneously intrigued and bemused by this strange book - it helps that it’s not very long. It reminded me of those songs about childhood from the psychedelic era that convey menace as well as nostalgia. A very real sense of threat is lurking even though we don’t know what it actually is!

The main storyline in this debut novel by poet Krystelle Bamford is set over one hot June day, in the 80s, in rural New England. A group of young cousins have gathered, with their respective families, for a birthday party at the house of their unmarried aunt Frankie. Left to their own devices, the children explore the house and, from the window of an upstairs bathroom, spot something eerie and undefined, prowling in the grounds of the property. Three-year-old Abi runs down and promptly disappears. For the rest of the day, the children, led by eldest cousin – twelve-year old Travis – explore the house and its surroundings, looking for Abi but, by the end of the day, discovering more than they bargained for.

This type of novel – in which a now-adult narrator looks back to a defining event in childhood/youth – has become a genre in itself. It takes an original writer to make such a story stand out, and Bamford fits the bill.

What, I felt, makes this slim novel memorable is the idiosyncratic voice of the unnamed narrator. It combines within it the wide-eyed wonder of the child who experienced the day’s events, and the more-knowing style of an adult who, perhaps, is trying too hard to sound like a “literary author”. The result is a narration which is at times eerie and unsettling, surrounded by a magical aura (we never learn what exactly the children were seeing from the bathroom window – probably a figment of their fertile imagination) and, at others, darkly humorous in an offbeat way. The narrator, for instance, has a knack for convoluted metaphors and irrelevant digressions, but then surprises us with passages of poetic intensity.

Bamford also keeps a tight control over the plot. As the day unfolds and things come to a head, there are several flashbacks and flashforwards which allow the readers to slowly piece together the dark history of this eccentric family, dominated by the matriarchal figure of Grandma “Beezy” and her mysterious demise. Thus the novel achieves a double-climax – one happens on the day of the main storyline, but it coincides with our discovery of what actually happened to Beezy. It’s all very clever and well-crafted, turning a now-common trope into a memorable debut.

4.5*

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2024/08/idle-grounds-by-krystelle-bamford.html

I was initially interested in the plot and subject of this book, but unfortunately found the writing to be incredibly hard to get through! It felt a little clunky and the characters were over written and hard to understand and root for. Not for me.