Starve Acre.

"I do not know if "enjoy" is a word that one could use when describing the experience of reading starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley. It is not that sort of read. Bleak and disturbing and tragically human, yes, full on English Folk Horror, yes, but "enjoyable", I think perhaps not. Fantastic and nightmarish by turns the reader experiences the heart breaking lose of a child as seen and felt by its parents, the precision of that grief, the level of detail it engenders to the reader, the autopsy of loss, it is pretty uncomfortable but it also conveys a mounting sense of dread, as dark forces surround the family and overwhelm them. Scary stuff.
            I have not read either of Andrew Michael Hurley's other two books; The Loney or Devil's Day. I am aware of them though and after reading Starve Acre i will make a point of tracking them down on a future book haunt. If you enjoy folk horror, as I do, you would do yourself a great service by picking this book up for your collection. I my mind's eye I saw the dark skies over Pendle Hill and heard the creaks and moans of an ancient hanging oak with the gentle tinkle of boot lace hung offerings dancing from its skeletal limbs.

There was a familiar dark shadow thrown by the events in the book. I thought back to ghostly Christmas offerings by the BBC back in the day. With classic MR James adaptions such as The Ash Tree or A Warning To The Curious. It also reminded me of a series by Nigel Kneale called Beasts. And in particular a disturbing slice of Olde Englishe Folke Lore called Baby, a story about a young city couple who move to the country and who discover something dark and other worldly buried in the wall of the cottage they have moved into and the nightmare that follows. I say reminded in the sense of mood and theme and atmosphere. That series is available on DVD and is so well worth tracking down with a really gripping series of stories about mankind's skewed relationship with the animal kingdom and our collective hubris and lack of understanding.

Actually, this book and that DVD would sit quite comfortably on the same shelf.