Danielle Giles’ debut Mere can possibly best be described as folk horror, although maybe folk creeping dread might be better. Set in a remote abbey in the East Anglian fens in the 900s, Mere is atmospheric, and based around power struggles both human and supernatural. But it is also a story about a relationship and a community, and how that community reacts under pressure.
When Mere opens, a young boy goes missing in the marshland that separates a remote abbey from the local town. The boy was accompanying the Abbess Sigeburg, the priest Botwine and his assistant Alwin but also with them is novitiate Wulfrun, a widow seeking to enter the order. Wulfrun wants to search for the boy but the fog comes in and she is told that the mere is dangerous. And so it seems, as some who go into the mere do not return and as winter sets in a series of setbacks and disasters eats away at the stored food supplies, destroys crops and livestock and challenges the community.
Mere is narrated by the Hilda, the infirmarian (chief healer) at the abbey. Hilda was an illegitimate child of the local nobility and has grown up at the abbey. She has her own way of doing things which puts her at odds with abbess and the abbesses more ardent followers. But it also aligns her with Wulfrun and the heart of the narrative is their growing relationship which becomes the worst kept secret in the community.
There are plenty of books around where the narrative twists and turns become predictable. Mere is not one of those books. Giles keeps readers hooked on this story by slowly turning the screws on her characters but then zigging when they expect a zag. And she builds this from the complex web of relationships within and around the abbey but also the clash of belief systems between the old ways of worship and Christianity. But also from the atmosphere that she creates – the relentless, damp cold and creeping waters of the mere, constantly eking away at the fields and the buildings – and the knowledge that death is a distinct possibility for any of the characters at any time.
Simply put – if you are look to be swept up by a medieval, gothic, sapphic, supernatural, folk horror novel, then Mere is a good place to start.

This one was probably my biggest disappointment of the year thus far, alas. I loved everything about the premise of Danielle Giles's debut novel, Mere. A group of tenth-century nuns living in the Norfolk fens come to believe that they are cursed, and that something in the nearby mere has brought this upon them... the same thing that means they must never go into the mere alone. This ticked all my boxes - sapphic convent, isolated fenland, supernatural horror - and it has a fantastic cover to boot. But I spent half of this book trying to figure out why this wasn't working for me and, when I realised nothing was going to change, gave up. I think the problem might have been Giles's writing. It's serviceable enough, with occasional powerful moments - the prologue is very nicely done - but needed so much more atmosphere. The setting is barely sketched and our characters are placeholders. The narrator and protagonist, Hilda, is, like 99% of fictional nuns, the convent's infirmarian and healer, so naturally a bit at odds with the rest, and that's about it for her. There's also very little engagement with a time that is very far from our own - five hundred years after Mere, Henry VIII would not yet have ascended to the throne. The characters' thinking about sexuality, in particular, feels very modern, and although I can get on board with a playfully modern historical novel - Lauren Groff's Matrix is the obvious counterpart - I didn't think Giles was going for that vibe. Oh, and yes, the inevitable romance comes out of nowhere. I'm sad, because I really wanted to love this.

A well-paced, delicate exploration of a forgotten time and place, as christianity takes over from the old gods and fear is never far from belief. The setting of the book and the characters are well developed and various, and explore a range of experiences of the nuns, priests and other people gathered around a religious house set on the edge of the perilous marshes.

Hilda is the infirmarian, on the edge as well as part of the house, and she sees and observes everything that happens, offering her own explanations for events and developing relationships.

It is a very absorbing read and a great reimagining of life at a distance.

A dark and gloomy novel set in the Norfolk fens of 990 ad. I tried several.times to get into the story but the slow pace failed to hold my attention despite the beautiful writing.

In the beginning it looked like a book written for me personally: weird marshes/swamps/bogs, England in the Middle Ages and monasteries being almost the exact intersection of all things I like to read about. Unfortunately, there was not enough of the 1st two elements, and in the end the majority of the plot (whichever there was) revolved around the monastery politics. In the end there was not enough weirdness in the plot either, so that the resolution of it all happened in the last 20 pages of the book with the explanation, that mostly amounted to 'just 'cause'.

Despite all the above I did like the book. I just didn't love it, in a bit of it's-not-you-it's-me way.

A tale of isolated nuns, their demagogue of a Reverend Mother, their misguided Priest and the Mere that surrounds them.

A hard scrabble life where whispers and secrets thrive. Hilda is the infirmarian who falls in love with the convent's newest arrival. Can they survive the looming winter and the curses that it brings.

Darkly obsessive

This is a twisty, immersive piece of historical fiction, told with a level of detail I haven't encountered before. I love anything set in a remote community, especially with a religious element, and while at times the pace was a little slow, I was completely entranced by the medieval world of this convent. A really lovely little gem.

The harsh landscape of the Norfolk Fens in 990AD is the setting for this atmospheric novel which takes us deep into the heart of the community who call this isolated place home. Sister Hilda is the infirmarian who tends the sick with stoic acceptance, and who, left to her own devices, doesn’t question too much about the running order of the convent. With complex and beautifully drawn characterisation the story comes alive and although deep in gloom there is a poignant simplicity to the relationship between Hilda and Wulfrun, a woman whose very presence at the convent causes a swell of unease.

Beautifully atmospheric, and rich in detail, this lyrical novel combines folklore, fear and superstition in a story which lingers long after the last page is turned.

I enjoy folklore and fantasy and learning about herbal remedies of old as a change from thrillers and more demanding reads but found it hard to involve myself with the characters and tale. I was somewhat irked with words that I had no idea how to pronounce – I'm all for great imagination and pulling up historical names and places, but I needed help! Most of the writing is really good, suitably atmospheric, though slow at times.

In the year 990, Christianity is well established in England but the old rites are buried deep in collective memory. Whatever prayers are sent to God, whatever sacrifices made to the old gods, the nuns and those in the community around the convent are always at the mercy of the mere, the great salt marsh that keeps them and threatens them. All know to keep within the boundary beyond which the marshland rules and danger lurks.
Infirmarian Hilda has only ever lived within the environs of the convent, leaving only to visit Sweet, a woman who lives in a house on stilts in the surrounding marshland, and whom the Abbess Sigeburg has forbidden Hilda from visiting. Hilda’s parentage is known but not spoken of; she is related to the abbess but that brings her no favour. Far from it: Sigeburg is full of bitterness and cruelty, with ‘a piety that creeps around a woman like a vine. She will strangle you with scripture and punishment and insist that you thank her’. New arrival Wulfrun, in contrast, has been married, borne a son, lived in different places, encountered cruelty of a more physical nature.
Mere life is precarious: poor harvests and dwindling supplies mean a hard winter. Tempers fray even among the sisters. As well as food and warmth, pity and mercy are in short supply with Sigeburg in charge. While women are at the centre of the story, it acknowledges the limits of their power. Until they seize it. I recommend Mere if, like me, you love a convent story; Danielle Giles has created an immersive world among the fenland which will suck you in right to the end.

This is such an impressive debut. Beautifully written, in a way that just pulls you in, extremely atmospheric and engaging.

A young boy goes missing in the mere which sets off a series of terrible events. Is there a real curse set on the land? Is there something more powerful and dark living within the mere? Or is it just a series of unfortunate events that are being used for multiple power plays within the convent? I loved how the book continuously played with my expectations about where this story would go. I think until the end it never really forced an answer on the reader but rather let the story flow and let me get pulled along into these increasingly unsettling developments.

Our main character is Hilda, an infirmarian who has seemingly equal connection to spells and healing related more to old gods, as well as her Christian faith. I loved how this book showed the mix between the old traditions and how hard it was for people to give them up in favour of Christianity. Aside from Hilda this books is filled with unique characters, all who have their own unique personalities and go through their own journeys. I found it especially impressive since I'm usually bad at remembering a large cast of characters, but this story made everyone feel so distinctive that they were never difficult to follow.

In the end, no matter how cheesy it might sound, it is a story about the power of love. How the shared burden is a burden halved. I'll admit I never expected this story to have a happy ending, not after it made me cry so many times throughout it. But I thought it was a beautiful and a poetic ending. I thought the relationship between Hilda and Wulfrun was magical and sweet and I could have happily spent another 200 pages with them.

I look forward to more books from Danielle Giles.

There aren't too many historical novels set at the end of the first millennium, but this book starts to put that deficit right.

Sister Hilda is the infirmarian in a remote Norfolk convent, the other side of a desolate fen from the nearest town. The locals are halfway between the pagan gods and Christianity, eking out a hard living on liminal land. The abbess Sigeburg returns to the convent with a newly widowed postulant, Wulfrun, and her boy servant Eadwig. When Eadwig gets lost in the mere on the journey, Wulfrun asks Hilda to help her search for him, but as the days go on everyone suspects the worst has happened.

The story conjures up the time and place excellently, playing with religion and superstition, together with the feeling that the sinister landscape could turn on the characters at any minute. A recommended read for lovers of historical fiction.

In her debut novel, Giles’ lyrical prose brings to life a waterlogged and forgotten corner of medieval England where the ever-present mere threatens to claim lives and incite madness, and where the tenderness of love, friendship, and the renewal of life cling on to existence wherever they can.

Centred around a convent and the nuns and lay people living there, Giles weaves a chilling tale in which an unsettling and sinister presence lures the reader in, unable to escape until the truth is revealed. The convent faces a crisis: risk a descent into chaos with the hope that salvation will come after, or preserve the status quo and risk death. Female power and female relationships are explored, often subverting the ideas traditionally held about medieval nuns; the novel examines what happens when women turn on each other versus when they unite in a setting not often utilised for such a theme.

Giles’ crisp details of the natural world and the visceral realities of medieval life evoke the brutal and oppressive setting of the marshes in winter, a reminder that perhaps humans aren’t in control despite a fervent belief in God.

This was so well executed. It really felt like Max Porter's Lanny and Lauren Groff's Matrix came together to create an even eerier and queerer little novel that is so infatuated with the medieval world and the things that the medieval English world was infatuated with - the church, the natural world, and homoerotic tension. It did feel a little bit slow at times despite there being plenty happening and was certainly eventful. It was more that the atmosphere and the attention to detail in the worldbuilding tended to make it feel longer than it absolutely needed to. I don't mean that as a criticism as it added to the medieval atmosphere, with little happening and nothing to dominantly take up our space and time, what else is there to pay attention to but the periphery? I also felt as though the more demonic aspects were really beautifully and delicately handled. I tend to grow irritated at supernatural and demonic stories, but Giles masterfully held the tension between having these serious and frightening threats while maintaining the humanity of the sufferers. Really well done.

I hereby crown Mere Gay Nun Book of the Year. [some spoilers, I guess?] That sounds sarcastic and mean, but hey—we had Lauren Groff's Matrix (2021), now we've got this, this is starting to look like a subgenre. What's interesting about Mere, which otherwise has a fairly standard tussle for convent leadership at the centre of its plot, is that it takes the supernatural, and the tension between pagan worship and an imperfectly Christianised populace, seriously. It's obvious from early on that there's something inexplicable about the behaviour of people who get lost in the marsh that surrounds this East Anglian convent, something that isn't attributable to simple disorientation or the aftereffects of exposure. Those who don't die return changed, apparently able to perceive far more of the natural world around them, and able to pass that perception on to anyone who physically touches them. If Mary Stewart's Merlin novels count as fantasy—and she won the Mythopoeic Award for two of them—this certainly does too. For the most part the medieval setting is evoked effectively. There's a sensory and sensual groundedness that the best fiction of this kind has (I'm thinking of Nicola Griffith's Hild, or Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them, or Stewart's Merlin novels again, or Mantel's Wolf Hall) that Mere doesn't quite have, although there are definitely extraordinarily evocative moments: the scene of the whippings administered to errant sisters on Christmas Eve, for example. The lesbian nuns feel more right than Groff's, though; it's not just about sex but also about emotional connection and intensity. Well worth picking up.

Was completely sucked into the world of Mere. Eery and haunting. The setting is vivid and immediately places you so clearly at the Abbey and among the bog lands. Hilda was well rounded, spiky and full of experience. Her position as Infirmarian was intriguing and placed her at the centre of all events in the book. I really enjoyed the hierarchy of the Abbey and the quiet, unspoken things between each character. Wulfrun in her knowing and quiet ways. Loved Tove and Sweet. Bloody in parts, gore-filled and with the devil looming quietly just beyond.

This historical fiction story is set in the Fens of Norfolk in 990 AD. Set amid this area is a community of nuns and those living nearby. There is a fear of the fens and the dark bogs, pools and unclear pathways. Some will forage around the edges, and those who know some of the pathways.

Having visited Norfolk, the Fens and the surrounding area when I went camping with my family as a child, I remember the warning I was given about sticking to the pathways. I know the landscape has changed obviously between the time of the story and when I visited, but the atmosphere of wandering the paths and not walking at night in the area added a huge sense of dread, fear and suspense.

There are some key characters in this story and these are very easy to remember as the story of the community unfolds. There is a fear that the land that is used for farming, foraging and fishing is not producing what it once did. Times are getting harder, and there is a young boy who gets lost in the fens. He was the latest arrival to the community, along with Wulfrun, who is to join the order. It is Wulfran's arrival that upsets the balance, and along with this comes a huge change to the way things are.

The author uses the iron will of the Abbess to maintain control, but there are whispers in the corners about a curse. While this is a Christian community, there are also the old ways that are intertwined into everyday lives. The details of their living conditions, the daily life and chores, and how society treats women who are discarded by husbands or parents are interesting.

The sense of fear and mistrust of change that is shown through the story is intriguing and adds a huge amount of suspense. There are mentions of romance and also how treatments and natural remedies are used in the infirmary.

This story has a lot of detail about the life and times in the area and I found it interesting to read and the main storyline to be very addictive. This is not a fast paced book, and everything is timed with the way of life and the seasons, so it is a very fitting pace. But it does allow the author to explore her characters more.

If you are a fan of historical fiction then this is a book that might very well interest you. It took me a little longer to read than normal, but I do tend to notice this more with historical fiction. I would definitely recommend it.

Mere by Danielle Giles

England 990 AD. Lying at the edge of a mysterious and sinister mere, sits an austere convent. What evil emanating from the adjacent murky waters, is fuelling mishap and misfortune on the ailing sisterhood? How will the suspected curse be overcome?

This book reminded me of Black Narcissus and Hammer films of the 1960’s with its swirling misty and brooding atmosphere. It is a patient read, but imbued with characters, both well drawn and whose fate you come care about.

#docs.reading.room

Mere by Danielle Giles is a haunting and atmospheric historical tale set in Norfolk, 990 AD. The novel is rich with tension and beautifully written, offering a deep exploration of fear, survival, and power in a world both religious and superstitious.

The story is set in a secluded convent, isolated by the dangerous mere, where a group of holy sisters lives under the stern guidance of Abbess Sigeburg. Their existence seems peaceful at first, but when a young servant boy is taken by the mere, dark secrets begin to surface, and the convent’s once stable foundation starts to crack.

What I found most compelling about Mere was the way Giles weaves together the sacred and the sinister. The mere itself, with its treacherous waters and ever-present mist, becomes more than just a setting. It is an ominous, almost sentient force that mirrors the dark tensions bubbling within the convent. The eerie descriptions of the marshes and pools add to the novel’s chilling atmosphere, creating a sense of impending doom throughout the story.

The characters are equally well-crafted. Hilda, the convent’s infirmarian, is a figure of compassion and quiet strength, yet she is also torn between loyalty to her sisters and the growing sense that something darker is at play. Sister Wulfrun, with her pride and mysterious arrival, adds a fiery spark to the narrative. Her presence disrupts the convent’s routine, and her enigmatic nature draws Hilda in, leading to a slow-burn tension that is impossible to ignore. The question of whether Wulfrun is a saint or a serpent looms large, and the dynamic between the two women is one of the novel’s most engaging aspects.

The writing is another highlight. Giles' prose is rich and evocative, with a lyrical quality that immerses the reader in the historical setting without feeling forced. The inclusion of Anglo-Saxon-inspired phrases adds authenticity to the world without overpowering the narrative, and the sensory descriptions of the convent’s interior and the surrounding marshlands are vivid and haunting.

3.5/5.

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Nuns are having their moment and I am HERE FOR IT. I’ll read a thousand books about nuns. This was perfect, beautifully written and filled with constant suspense and plot twists. This is historical fiction as I love to read it - immaculately researched, with characters that feel alive and who I care about, and with just a touch of mysticism. Oh and also queer elements. I adore!