Fantasy and Horror readers are usually pretty broad-minded folk. It’s a given that sometimes you need to suspend your sense of disbelief whilst enjoying a genre read. After all, dragons? Ghosts? Zombies? All of these, and more, need to be accepted in order to get the most out of the genres.
This was brought to mind the other day when I picked this one up. The Crow Folk combines elements that to my mind shouldn’t work – but actually work very well indeed.
The Crow Folk is set in a fictional England at a previous time in history. The village of Woodville in Kent is straight out of The Archers* template – it’s a small, remote settlement, where everyone knows everyone else. There’s a large mansion house lived in by Lady Aston, a parish church, at least one pub (the Green Man), a community village hall – it’s something straight out of a Powell and Pressburger classic movie.
As for the time, well, it’s June 1940. This was a time in British history that is pretty epochal – the Second World War had begun mere months before, and the so-called Battle of Britain was underway with London being bombed in the infamous Blitz.
All of this suggests that the story is going to be one of those cosy mysteries, all stiff upper lip and forbearance in the face of adversity. And to some degree, it is. Mark does well to introduce a range of characters that initially need little explanation – the friendly vicar (Reverend Jacobs), the jovial barman, the plucky young heroine, the grumpy poacher, the reticent spinster. To add to these characters is the state of nostalgia engendered by being set in the past – milk is delivered by a horse-drawn cart, many of the villagers take part in weekly bell-ringing sessions. It does feel a little like something out of an Enid Blyton novel for young adults.
But as the story progresses, things begin to take on odd, more adult elements. There’s a long history of witchcraft in the village, for example. Underneath the seemingly-bucolic environment, there are issues of prejudice, jealousy and subterfuge – things that should not happen are kept secret.
Our story is mainly told from the perspective of young Faye Bright. The daughter of barman Terrance, she is the epitome of being a plucky young heroine. She’s bright, inquisitive, willing to help out and do her bit for the good of the community. However, she has a darker past – her Mum died of diphtheria when she was four and this has led her to be angry, often confused and annoyed at being abandoned, as she sees it. More weirdly, Faye’s mother was accused of being a witch, a point reinforced when Faye finds locked away a book filled with “rituals, magic, monsters, demons, and, for some reason, a recipe for jam roly-poly.” Clearly in her mother’s handwriting, the book has “For Faye” written on the front cover.
This leads to Faye wanting to find out more about her mother’s life and death, something her Dad and others in the village have never been to keen to talk about. And then there’s strange things starting to happen. Overnight, all of the village scarecrows have disappeared. Is this a mischievous prank, or something more sinister?
As bizarre things happen in the village, Faye is perturbed by the fact that no one seems to raise an eyebrow to the happenings. Indeed, they either seem to ignore them as if they weren’t happening or dismiss them as something not worth bothering about – not whilst there’s a war on, y’know! Faye and her friend Bertie seem to be the only ones who notice – although we find out later that this isn’t true. She is determined to find out about what is happening and why as well as discover the murky details of her own past.
So, what works? The characterisation, whilst not detailed, is recognisable enough for readers to focus on the plot. There is more here than at first meets the eye, and by the end I found myself caring about these people a lot. Even the scary elements of the story have a surprisingly sympathetic side to them.
What really worked for me most was the sense of folk-story and background detail Mark has worked into the story without it becoming overladen with detail. There is a real sense of presence here – pretty impressive for a fictional place. As with the best of such stories, The Crow Folk taps into a rich background of folklore and myth that feels remarkably British, which readers may find endearing.
To cap the main novel, there’s a connected short story at the end that deals with some of the main elements of the plot but from a different perspective.
It has just scraped over the line (its mid-December as I type this), but this may be one of my favourite reads of the year. The Crow Folk was one of those always-welcome books that surprised me – not an easy thing to do these days. With a warmth combined with a rich background history, Mark has managed to take some elements I was a little sceptical of working together and turn them into an engaging story that works. I found it difficult to put down. It is clear that the people of Woodville have more stories to tell, and I’d love to read more about them in the future.
A pleasingly unexpected triumph.
*The world’s longest running daily radio fiction series – set in the imaginary village of Ambridge, Borsetshire (both fictional.) Originally had the tagline, “An everyday story of country folk”. Perhaps this should be, “An everyday story of extraordinary folk?”
THE CROW FOLK by Mark Stay
The Witches of Woodville, Book 1
Published February 2021 by Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 978 147 1197 970
352 pages
Review by Mark Yon
