I have heard it said that some of the best Horror stories work best when you take a normal circumstance or situation and then add the horror to it.
Whilst I’m not entirely convinced – I do like a good old M R James – type ghost story myself, which has no connection to contemporary life at all – but I must admit that the modern-day chiller has a certain attraction.
Witches of Lychford (no ‘The’) is what I would describe as an unusually contemporary eclectic mix of unlikely components. There’s a quaint old English village, strange residents, both old and new, and the threat of a supermarket takeover in the village. Things seem so ordinary that, at first glance, this seems more like an episode of The Archers radio show (For non-UK residents, described for over 50 years as “an everyday story of country-folk”) than a horror story.
Bear with it, though. As the title suggests, there is more to this than the village being a tale of charming rural life in the admittedly idyllic English Cotswolds. The characters help flesh this plot out a little, for (as rather expected) they all have complicated backgrounds. Lizzie is the parish vicar suffering a mid-life crisis of faith since the death of her husband the previous year. Her friend Autumn, recently returned to the village after a mental breakdown, now runs a New-Age shop and dabbles in the mystic, a self-confessed ‘mad woman’. Most impressive of all is Judith Mawson, the long-term resident of the village, a grumpy, cantankerous old woman who is regarded with fear by most of the local residents, and at one point memorably referred to as “Aleister Crowley in a frock.”
Although this can be seen as a surprisingly current tale of life in rural England – an everyday story of supermarket takeover, if you like –it soon becomes clear that there is more to discover than this plot being a social comment on the context of declining rural services in England. We discover that Lychford is a meeting place of cosmic significance, and the events of change in the village, led by evil corporate retail magnate Mr. Chambers, may lead to more than the village has bargained for – indeed, the opening salvos of a war between good and evil.
Though the book is less than 200 pages it works supremely well. The relative shortness of the book means that there’s no place to hide, no waffle or unnecessary exposition. The text is generally taut, with each paragraph finely honed. The slight downside of this is that the characterisation becomes a little brief. Though there is backstory, the lack of detail leads to some cracking one-liners and a nice degree of enigmatic ambiguity – not always a bad thing in a supernatural story.
“You said he was a being of tremendous power and evil, but I’ve looked him up. He’s got a wife and family. He’s on LinkedIn.”
Although I was not won over by Paul’s latest contemporary occult Shadow Police series, this one worked for me admirably and didn’t outstay its welcome. In fact, it rather did the opposite and left me wanting more, though I’m not sure more stories in the same location would entirely work. Lychford could become, if the writer is not careful, a combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Hellmouth and the village of Midsommer in The Midsommer Murders television series, where the number of deaths in the village seemingly outnumber the living domiciles.
Nevertheless, Witches of Lychford is Paul’s take on the sort of folk-horror currently dominated by Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins. The fact that I enjoyed it and was left wanting more of this quaintly English phenomena lead me to recommending it as a quick and enjoyable read.
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell
Published by Tor Books, September 2015
144 pages
ISBN: 978-0765385239
Review by Mark Yon
In the U.S. the eBook price on this is just $2.99
I couldn’t resist buying it, even though my reading progress has been very slow lately. I’ll get around to reading it someday. 😉
Hope you enjoy it, Julialynn. It is short, which may explain the price. A lot of publishers are selling these novella sized stories as tasters, to introduce a new series of books or perhaps an author new to them. Providing you have an ereader, they’re an easy way in!