Over the past couple of years, I’ve discovered the joys of Valancourt Books, a company who, to quote their Wikipedia page, “specializes in ‘the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction,’ in particular gay titles and Gothic and horror novels from the 18th century to the 1980s.” As someone with a love for oddball and pulpy horror, that’s catnip to me, but what’s made me move from curious to an avid fan is my realization that many books I’ve gotten from Valancourt have turned out to be wholly sui generis, not really feeling like anything I’ve read before – and probably not like much else I’ll read again. (I can almost assure you that you’ve never read anything even resembling The Woodwitch before, for instance, nor ever found a book that straddles as many genres as well as Blackwater does.)
So it shouldn’t really surprise me that Childgrave is such a strange, unclassifiable book. It’s undeniably a horror novel, but it’s also a horror novel in which things burn so slowly that they basically smolder, and if you’re waiting for an explosion of horrors, it’s not coming. Instead, Childgrave is more of a slow building of unease – it’s the classic metaphor of “frog in a slowly boiling pot,” where the book moves so gradually through the steps of insanity and surreal notions that, by the time our narrator finds himself making an unthinkable choice, it feels both shocking and somehow inevitable.
Let me back up and give some context. Childgrave is narrated by Jonathan Brewster, a photographer and single father whose wry, artistic narration gives the book an insouciant feel that belies what’s going on under the surface. Jonathan doesn’t quite fit in with things; he’s a good photographer, his only real friends are his agent and his housekeeper/nanny, and he’s not a bad father to his daughter Joanne (who, as seems to have been a trend in odd horror, feels far too old for her age often). But when he meets professional harpist Sara Coleridge, he finds himself fascinated, despite her clear efforts to warn him away.
Think this is an odd romance novel? Well, that’s before the book shifts into spirit photography. And before it becomes a ghost story. And before it hints at being a vampire novel. And before it becomes a Town That Time Forgot. And before it starts diving into a Horrifying Secret. Again and again, Childgrave defies easy categorization and classification. It’s a horror tale, yes, but what are we even scared of? Where’s the other shoe coming from? Are we scared of Joanne, or Sara, or Jonathan, or that town, or…
You get the idea. Childgrave feels anchored by its offbeat, artsy, droll narration, but Jonathan feels like a man in search of something – Sara, yes, but also a man whose life feels empty and adrift. And as Childgrave unfolds, that search snaps into focus as we see the full shape of Greenhall’s plotting. All of these strange pieces never quite fit together, but they don’t fit in a way that enhances the mystery, not detracts from it. Much of Childgrave feels as though we are easing our way into a nightmare, bit by bit having revealed what we need, but never quite seeing how it all connects other than on an instinctive level.
That same looseness is also the biggest knock on the book, which, for all of its rising tension and unease, can often feel like a series of odd elements that don’t quite fit, driven by a narrator who’s unlikeable (intentionally, I think) and in a story that feels incomplete. That’s exacerbated by the weak epilogue to the book, which undermines the stark, uncomfortable ending with what feels like the equivalent of a Hayes Code-mandated final sequence, undoing a lot of the character work that the book had established.
Nonetheless, Childgrave got under my skin and stuck there, slowly ratcheting up its unease until I was as accepting of what I read as its characters, giving me a horror that was less explicit and more subtle and lasting. It’s not a perfect book, no, but it’s a fascinating one – a portrait of a lost man in a world he doesn’t quite fit into, and of the deeper waters in which we can all get lost. It’s not for all tastes, but those on it’s quiet wavelength will find it sticking with them quite nicely indeed.
Top reviews from the United States
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Josh Mauthe
Imperfect, but its slow-building unease has a way of staying in your head long after you’re done
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2022
John Sinclair
Literate and original horrors
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2016
L Henry
What would you sacrifice to be with the one you love?
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2018K. A. Y.
A slow-burn horror novel that captivates right from the start.
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2018Top reviews from other countries
M. J. Dudley
Disturbing and Unpleasant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2020