"I'm much deeper in the woods than I intended to come, and suddenly I don't feel safe. But then I spot the source of the movement - it's a person, quite tall, moonlight falling on a long cloak. The curve of a hood at their head.
I step back quickly, but my foot presses down on a branch, breaking the silence with a loud snap. The figure turns in my direction, alerted to my presence. They've seen me.
My heart jackhammers in my throat.
I watch, frozen with fear, as the figure begins to walk stealthily towards me. I turn and stumble back to the house, branches whipping my face. I fall on my hands, my knee connecting hard with a rock. I turn quickly to look behind me. My pursuer is charging through the trees, gaining speed.
I'm too terrified to scream."
If I could only ever read one genre of fiction, it would be the gothic novel, which never seems to go out of style. So I was delighted when Harper Collins pre-selected me to review an ARC of The Ghost Woods, which is the latest gothic novel from C J Cooke, author of The Lighthouse Witches and The Nesting, both of which I enjoyed immensely.
Like her earlier novels, The Ghost Woods explores the connection between humans and the forces of the natural world around them. As a gothic novel, it weaves together natural studies, folklore and mythology, to create a story that is completely unique. All the keystone elements of a gothic novel are apparent - secrets, mysteries, otherworldly beings, incarceration, madness and so on - but they are brought together in a way that I have never read before, by the power of fungi and mushrooms!
The novel, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, follows two young women, Mabel and Pearl, who are sent to the same home for unwed expectant mothers. Once there, they each live out their pregnancy before giving the baby up for adoption. This was an enforced punishment for young women and girls during that time and it was very common for women to be sent away in disgrace and forced to give up their child. It was thought that a woman of such loose morals as to allow herself to fall pregnant out of wedlock, was not fit to be a mother.
So Pearl and Mabel find themselves at Lichen Hall in the Scottish Borders, having their babies five or six years apart. At first the novel jumps back and forth between these two narratives, but things really start to get exciting when the two story lines merge into one and Pearl and Mabel meet. From then on, the novel really swings along at a great pace, as the two women try to solve the hidden mystery at the heart of Lichen Hall and seek to prove once and for all if the legend of Nicnevin, the witch who is said to live in the woods, is true or not.
Nicnevin the witch, is a very spooky aspect of Scottish folklore. She is hag goddess, similar to the Cailleach or Hecate. In some legends, Nicnevin is an ancient goddess, in others she is a fairy queen. Her name was often applied to women who were taken up on charges of witchcraft during the Scottish witch trials, so it became a by-word for a witch in Scotland, similar to Grimalkin. She is often said to be a malignant force, rather than a benevolent one and that is certainly the case in Cooke's rendition of her in The Ghost Woods.
In this novel, Nicnevin is an ever present threat, a malignant entity, waiting to prey on anyone who wanders into her woods, even creeping into the Hall at times. Here there are fairy rings of such magnitude they seem more like a huge trap, rather than a lovely natural phenomenon. There are lights in the woods at night, mushrooms that glow and fungi which is encroaching on the house itself. Nicnevin is all around the girls when they are at their most vulnerable, for how can they run from the threat when they are weighed down by their own great bulk of pregnancy?
It is an atmospheric read, at times revolting in its descriptions of how fungi work, at times sinister in the gathering threat of doom that hangs over the girls. As the house they entered for sanctuary during pregnancy becomes a threat, the girls have to work together to find a way to escape from the constant menace and the contamination that is all around them. Their only hope is a little boy with strange powers of foresight, but do his gifts come from a good place, or is he being used by Nicnevin herself?
The Ghost Woods is a fabulous book with a subtle Scottish slant. It made me feel very glad that I have never wanted babies and that I don't like mushrooms! It's a great one to read during the autumn, which is why it is being published in October, during fungi season. A word of warning though, this novel will probably put you off mushroom soup forever, and if you dare to go foraging in the woods after reading this, you're a braver person than I am!
I hope C J Cooke continues to write more gothic novels, because she certainly has a talent for this genre.
Blessed Be
Marie x
AD: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review purposes. It is released on 13th October 2022, but it is available for pre-order now.
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