Barrowbeck

Thank you so much for the invitation to review this ARC. It was superb, tension and unease rising and falling as the reader goes through the individual stories centred around the valley of Barrowbeck. An interesting and accomplished foray into the future with the last two stories and terrifyingly believable.
I can’t wait to recommend it to family and friends when published.

I am a huge Andrew Michael Hurley fan. I’ve read all of his novels and enjoyed listening to Voices In The Valley, a series of 10 short stories set in fictional Barrowbeck, on BBC Sounds. When I was offered an ARC of Barrowbeck by the publisher – thank you John Murray – I jumped at the chance to read and review the author’s new novel.
Rather than a novel in the traditional sense, Barrowbeck is a series of 13 short stories and vignettes set in the titular village on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border. Each story takes place in a particular year stretching from when the village was first settled sometime in the distant past up until 2049.
We start with First Footing where a band of people, who have been attacked in their old village, seek a new place to live. They have a shamanistic connection to the land which encourages them to choose the valley beside the Arfon. This sets the tone of folklore and folk horror with which Hurley is so strongly associated and which can be found throughout each story. This is not to say that the stories are like each other. Each tale has its own tone, its own cast of characters. The village is a huge character in itself and informs each story in the collection.
Hurley’s talent is immense. Each character is so well described and for all we don’t spend a great deal of time on each chapter, I found myself empathising and able to ‘see’ each person.
My favourite two chapters were An Afternoon of Cake and Lemonade and Sisters. The former left me with a true sense of the longing of unwanted childlessness and I found the latter to be unsettling and dark.
While there is some overlap between the BBC Sounds series and the stories in this book, I found so much that was new. And, as usual, the book is better.
Hurley is literary folk horror at its best and I thoroughly recommend Barrowbeck to fans and new readers alike. It’s perhaps his most accessible book and, in my humble opinion, his best. So far.