James Stoorie's 3 favorite reads in 2024

• 2023
• 2024

Combining fairytale, escapist elements with all-too-real British miserabilism, this shapeshifting collection of 16 horror shorts is united primarily by themes of displacement, alienation and persecution. A number of the stories employ the 'cuckoo in the nest' narrative as an analogy for characters who feel adrift within their own families, whilst those without families are doomed to eke out nomadic existences on the fringes of society, shunned and sometimes feared like a witch in history. Throughout the tales, the author skilfully weaves in moments of shock and tragedy amidst the general air of sombre understatement.

My recommended picks are: 'The Crow Palace', in which loss, disability and neurodiversity lead the narrator to question who is the monster of the story. 'Egg', that views motherhood through the eyes of black magic and examines how emotionally wrenching it can be when children flee the nest. 'The Sunflower Seed Man', a genuinely scary combination of 'The Monkey's Paw' and 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'. 'The Ballad Of Boomtown', folk horror on a half-built estate,. as an exiled woman with a guilty secret seeks solace from some neighbouring standing stones. 'Small Town Stories', a stream of consciousness rooted in the feeling that every street feels haunted when you have lived in one place too long, especially when all your memories are deeply distressing. 'The Rising Tide', another claustrophobic slice of folk horror, featuring a grieving nurse, the ghost of a young girl who died in her care and an isolated cottage on the Welsh coast. Finally, title piece 'Fabulous Beasts' is a tour de force about the unspoken trauma of incestuous sexual abuse, the old skin you slough to survive and the new skin that hardens after such experiences (a sort of serpentine take on 'A Nightmare On Elm Street').

A young adult take on Saki's spiteful short story 'Srendi Vashtar', 'The Bone Dog' was written in the 80's when witchcraft was still primarily a pastime for the working class. During school holidays, Sarah is shipped off to stay with her gran and her uncle, both of whom are rumoured by the wider family to be witches. Lacking friends of her own age and bullied by the girls next door, Sarah yearns for a pet to keep her company. And soon her wishes are granted, although not exactly in the way she expected. This book has a great sense of children's limited geography, the romanticism and detail that becomes applied to a restricted area, here the back gardens and alley ways of the neighbourhood. Also, this is no rose-tinted, sentimental evocation of childhood, the author is well aware of the anger and vindictiveness that can often simmer beneath the experience. Throughout the story, Sarah struggles to make sense of her motives and emotions, even finding it difficult to identify her own viewpoint. I particularly like the ambiguous ending, with the lead character pondering whether, in the future, she will grow up to be good or bad or perhaps a bit of both.

A book does not need to be perfect for me to like it, I tend to be drawn more towards originality and ambition. And, if the project sometimes collapses under the weight of that ambition, at least it attempted to reach for the stars, hopefully firing off a wealth of interesting ideas as it falls to earth.

'The Hazel Wood' is a flawed but unforgettable slice of magic realism, seemingly influence by Angela Carter and Marina Warner, possibly aimed at the young adult market but not exclusively so. Late teen Alice lives a troubled, nomadic existence with her mother. She is also estranged from her grandmother, although she is aware she was a writer of dark fairytales. Although she does not realise it at first, the characters and plots of these fairytales begin to seep into Alice's everyday life, playing havoc with her social relationships and school work. To get to grips with her roots, Alice accepts she must return to 'The Hazel Wood', the long forgotten locale where her grandmother lived and worked.

It is always to difficult to write a 'forbidden book' plot without either making that forbidden book so abstract it doesn't really impact or by including snippets of the stories that fail to match the horror of the reader's imagination. But I think here Melissa Albert skilfully overcomes these obstacles - the stories within the story conjure up some genuinely striking nightmarish images and sequences. And, contrary to some reviewers, I really appreciated that the central character was not entirely sympathetic. It was only towards the very end that I felt 'The Hazel Wood' began to lose the plot. When Alice finally slips into a world of unadulterated fantasy, the writing becomes a little perfunctory and rushed. Conjuring fear and doubt within a recognisable world is where the author truly excels.