Book review: The Naseby Horses, by Dominic Brownlow
Seventeen-year-old Simon’s twin sister, Charlotte, is missing.
As his distraught family wait for news, Simon struggles with his worsening epilepsy and his parents’ suspicion that he is hiding something from them. But Simon is convinced that there is a supernatural explanation for his sister’s disappearance: a mysterious curse that plagues the Fenlands village where they live.
I recently interviewed author Dominic Brownlow as part of my Year of the Debut Author series so it was wonderful to have the chance to read his novel.
This is a lyrical debut that is suffused with a sense of the uncanny. Simon’s epilepsy makes him an outsider, someone strange and isolated from the other teenagers in the village. Although it’s never addressed, he may also be on the autism spectrum: throughout the story at times of stress he repeats passages from a book on birds that he knows by heart. Simon is obsessive about birds, spending time at the local nature reserve and online on a bird watching forum. His descriptions of nature fill the book, which creates a languid, eerie feeling that at times give a sense that the book may slip into folk horror.
It is only when Simon receives a letter from an elderly woman who once lived in his house, and whose son also disappeared, on the same date as Charlotte, that Simon becomes focused on an otherworldly explanation for his sister’s vanishing.
Brownlow weaves a mysterious story heavy with suspicion and buried feelings. The night Charlotte went missing, Simon was discovered unconscious after a grand mal seizure. His sister came to talk to him about something earlier that evening, but they were interrupted. Simon’s parents seem convinced he knows more than he is saying, but he insists his memory remains blank. Throughout the book there is the creeping awareness that Simon may not be telling the whole truth and may prove to be an unreliable narrator.
The story is often dreamlike, Simon’s epilepsy reinforcing the sense of the supernatural that pervades the book. Aura and hallucinations invade his vision and he seems connected to another world, a world where he suspects Charlotte is trapped.
There are so many threads subtly woven together in this book that I wasn’t always sure what was going to happen. Cults, family secrets, curses and missing children all add to the folk horror vibe of the story, but this is a book that doesn’t answer all the questions it raises.
It’s a beautifully written debut novel that will draw you in leave you wondering.
N.B. I received a copy of this novel as part of the book’s blog tour, but all opinions are my own.
Emma @damppebbles says
Thank you so much x