"Whats this,then?" I asked Ali in the bookshop "Its a bit like The Wicker Man" they answered "With crabs", they added, smiling. Which made me immediately want to read it, so I did, and I am glad I did."The sea never forgets, the sea never forgives" this book seems to whisper as it plunges to some dark depths. Set in a coastal sea-side town named Scuttler's Cove, it is the tale of a young woman's return to her coastal Idyll,a town where the locals can no longer afford to buy homes in the area where they have grown, as those homes are being sold for enormous prices to out of towners, second homers.Sadly, a not uncommon situation, a sickening curse of modernity which spells doom for small communities who used to exist in a state of self-sufficency. Some of those new comers are are made to feel unwelcome as a series of property attacks gather pace and also serve to mask an altogether more ancient horror. It takes some folk-horror staples and tropessuch as the new being vanquished by the old, and vice versa, depending on one's bank balance.
David Barnett does an impressive job of teasing out folkloric horrors hiding in plain sight. The line between the natural world and the unatural one blurring in an entertaining and insightful novel that draws on towards a sopping wet climax of ancient beliefs and customs that serve to remind us of the illusion of modernity. Its a slow burning folk festival that conceals the best for last and which comes across as dreadfully plausible in a Cornwallish stylee.
An absolute treat of a folk horror tale which deserves to be more widely read.
