The Loney: the contemporary classic

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As a result, the narrative strands of Devil’s Day can seem unevenly balanced. It’s easy to get lost among them, and sometimes hard to tell the Endlands generations and their accompanying time schemes apart. Though the novel it reminds you of most is Alan Garner’s Thursbitch, there’s less sense here of braided but distinct temporalities, more of a kind of stutter, as if several of Hurley’s time machines were trying to warm up their engines behind the modern-day events but failing. The ghosts of wool production and paternal capitalism in the early 19th century struggle to reach into the present day. Demon child themes we half remember from some TV series vie for our attention with out-takes from a kind of gleefully brutalised One Man and His Dog. I disliked, in the beginning at any rate, father Wilfred. I’m oponent to every attempt of threatening, to hell and all that stuff. I’m not against religious people- I’m only cautious about an orthodox and fundamentalist views and deeds. I was more prone to understand father Wilfred in his doubts and weakness and crisis of faith. He definitely felt more human then than punishing altar boys for masturbating or watching dirty magazines. Postmistress wrote:I totally agree that this book is an enigma but it is hard to decipher whether the inconsistencies result from the unreliable1st person account or just poor editing.... It left me so frustrated. Many readers have heaped praise on Hurley's characterisation but I felt that this was the books biggest weakness and the main reason why the plot felt peppered with irrelevance. Outside, as well as in, Moorings felt like a place that had been repeatedly abandoned. A place that had failed.” I've been dreading writing this review simply because I don't know what to say. It's a strange book, if someone asked me to give them a rundown of the plot it really wouldn't take very long and I'm not even sure how I'd go about explaining it. So, as I've described in the brief synopsis, a deeply religious family embark on a pilgrimage to the Loney, a bleak place off the coast of England, along with their parish priest, where they are seeking help for Hanny, who is mute. The story is really about Hanny and his brother, who is the unnamed narrator. Their relationship, and how they communicate, is one of the best things about the book. Hurley seems to have a skill for intricate character development, as the members of the party who go to the Loney are quite distinct and easily recognisable. So, that's one huge positive.

Else had clearly had children for Leonard (or the satanists) before, as when she is in labour she tells Hanny it's less painful each time (or something along these lines). Most of all though, The Loney’s power lies in all that Hurley dares to leave out. This is a novel of the unsaid, the implied, the barely grasped or understood, crammed with dark holes and blurry spaces that your imagination feels compelled to fill. It takes both confidence and talent to write like this and it leaves you wanting more of whatever slice of darkness Hurley might choose to dish up next. Changes at the whim of the tide’ … danger sign at Morecambe Bay. Photograph: Don McPhee/The Guardian The names Helm Crag, Dungeon Ghyll, Wetherlam, Blencathra, Rothay: they were straight out of Middle Earth Welcome to the Itinerary Planner. Use this tool to build your own journey or choose from an exciting range of specially selected tours. Miracles. Bodies. Death. Superstition. Hidden Rooms. The Loney. Then there is the..something, the something. Oh my word. I'm truly lost for words where the ending took me. It took much reflection on the entire book, beautifully written.Despite its harshness, it’s certainly somewhere that could make you feel released from the modern world…

In my opinion it is these two elements that carry you along, in spite of, rather than because of the plot. By the time I was about half way through 'The Loney,' I was begging to lose patience with the fact that little had actually happened. Others will no doubt take the view that the first half of the book is necessary to the building of character. I kind of go along with this, particularly as the characters are entirely (and in some cases painfully) believable. An extraordinarily haunted and haunting novel, arrestingly in command of its unique spot in the landscape.If it had another name, I never knew, but the locals called it the Loney - that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Farther, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and Father Wilfred, the parish priest.

Hannay is more attuned to the import of the place than his brother. He is fascinated with the pregnant girl and her unborn child, and perhaps senses the implications of her presence for the child and for himself. You know,’ he said, ‘my daddy used to say that death has the timing of the world’s worst comedian and I think he was right.” One of the joys (and frustrations) of writing a novel is that what you set out to do isn’t always what you end up doing. It wasn’t my intention to necessarily write a gothic horror and since the publication of The Loney I’ve been asking myself how it became one. As far as I can make out, the answer lies in the landscape that first inspired me. When I looked at Farther I saw that work and school were really no different. One merely became qualified to pass from one system to the next, that was all. Routine was a fact of life. It was life, in fact.”

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Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ... Yet it also mines a comic, suburban gothic seam that is just as reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson or Alan Bennett – and there are dusty, satanic slivers of MR James in there somewhere too. But ultimately – and at its best – it’s a likably original thriller about faith, the destructive power of evangelism and the human potential for evil, in its most banal guises.