BOOK REVIEW: THE BUTCHER BY LAURA KAT YOUNG

4/10/2022

The Butcher is a dark, devastating and alarming book but I also found it to be fused with melancholy and both a strangely moving and uplifting experience. Lady Mae was a superb creation, who in her own way was incredibly humane and others saw this in her, who had no choice but to perform the amputations set before her. I am not a fan of violence for violence sake, or books which glorify pain and The Butcher is the complete opposite of this where even the smallest mark of rebellion is a victory against a horrific system. A truly remarkable debut.

The Butcher by Laura Kat Young

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Titan Books (13 Sept. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 178909903X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1789099034

A Horror Book Review by Tony Jones

Stunning debut set in a brutal society where punishment is by amputation

This year even the most prolific readers of dark fiction are unlikely to come across a more striking and original debut than Laura Kat Young’s The Butcher. This was one of many random books I was sent for review (had never heard of it) but within ten pages was totally under its captivating spell until the sad, powerful and moving ending 316-pages later. When the Horror Writers Association turn to their next run of Bram Stoker Awards this striking story is essential reading for the First Novel category.

The blurb calls The Butcher “suspenseful small-town horror novel of oppression” which is a serious understatement of the sheer horrors, both psychological and physical, which lie within these brutal pages. The story is set in ‘Settlement 5’ and you will quickly find yourselves looking for clues for where this precise location might be. Good luck with that! Is it set in the future? Perhaps. After a future apocalypse? Possibly. Another planet? A long shot. An alternative version of America? It would not surprise me. Take your pick, all or none of these suggestions are possible, as the inhabitants of Settlement 5 never ever leave this grim place with all both born and destined to die in its grim surroundings.

The story is dystopian in nature in that those in Settlement 5 (and we know there are other similarly named settlements) have very limited rights and most inherit the job or occupation of their parents. The superb main character Lady Mae (who becomes the ‘Butcher’ of the title) will inherit the same hated occupation which also belonged to her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before her. We do not know the history behind any of this, but as with all the great dystopian novels going all the way back to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, information is power and the mass-population have none of it. Instead of Orwell’s Big Brother and his terrible minions the majority are controlled through fear in The Butcher by the Deputies, a group of cruel lawmen who enforce their code, rooting out blasphemy, via brutality.

Fear courses through every page of The Butcher as in this community every individual has the right to report anybody else of a crime (even a misspoken word or spreading gossip) which quickly goes to court and the Deputies decide what the punishment (known an ‘atonements’) will be. However, we are not talking about thirty days in prison, an old-fashioned public lashing or night in the stocks, in this community crimes are punished by amputation. For example, one atonement might cost you a toe or a finger and five atonements will have the price of a hand or a food. There are so many petty crimes or blasphemies that the majority of Settlement 5 have lost digits or limbs.

The novel is narrated in the third person by Lady Mae who has accepted that when she turns eighteen will inherit the job of the Butcher from her mother Winona. The two have an incredibly strong relationship and although the Butcher is feared, she is also hated in equal measure which has led to a lonely childhood for Lady Mae, whose only friend is Arbuckle, a few years older who helps with her schooling. The novel revolves around the heart-breaking circumstances which lead to Lady Mae becoming the Butcher and buried deep in her heart, the opportunity for revenge should it ever occur.

Much of the violence, very cleverly, happens off-page like you might see in an atmospheric horror film and the book is all the stronger for it. Instead, there are uneasy descriptions of the Butcher’s ‘tools of the trade’ and which limb or digit they might be used on. There is not an amputation until well into the story, by which point the tension was at breaking point, with lots of shocking little teasers leading towards the more graphic moments. In one of these Lady Mae stops a tiny object drop out of the folds of her mother’s dress and she realises it was the tip of a finger. We are then told, in a shockingly matter of fact manner, that most people like to take their amputation home with them. Although this was unpleasant reading the manner in which it was framed was unnervingly realistic and was comparable in brutality and realism to Cody Luff’s brilliant Ration.

A very convincing and perfectly pitched love story beats at the centre of The Butcher which I found very moving. Lady Mae’s teacher Arbuckle has his own problems connected to his hated father and his own inheritance and so the pair conduct a long-distance friendship, through letters, which is often more about what is unsaid than said. Genuine happiness was hard to come by in Settlement 5 and again it made me thing of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the fleeting happiness Winston Smith finds when he meets Julia.

The dystopia Laura Kat Young has created in The Butcher is as bleak as they come as there seemed no escape, mainly because there seemed nowhere to escape to, except for some vague pipedream of finding somewhere new in the hills, where you might not be hunted. The Deputies are monstrous creations and you will soon be wondering how humanity and society ended up with them as the leaders.

Yes The Butcher is a dark, devastating and alarming book but I also found it to be fused with melancholy and both a strangely moving and uplifting experience. Lady Mae was a superb creation, who in her own way was incredibly humane and others saw this in her, who had no choice but to perform the amputations set before her. I am not a fan of violence for violence sake, or books which glorify pain and The Butcher is the complete opposite of this where even the smallest mark of rebellion is a victory against a horrific system. A truly remarkable debut.

Tony Jones

THE BUTCHER BY LAURA KAT YOUNG

A suspenseful small-town horror novel of oppression, heartbreak and buried anguish – Shirley Jackson meets Never Let Me Go with the wild west setting of Westworld.

When Lady Mae turns 18, she'll inherit her mother's job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty residents as payment for their petty crimes. An index finger taken for spreading salacious gossip, a foot for blasphemy, no one is exempt from punishment.

But one day Winona refuses to butcher a six-year-old boy. So their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and, right there in the living room, murder her mother for refusing her duties.

Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her new job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother. Now Lady Mae must choose: will she flee, and start another life in the desolate mountains, forever running? Or will she seek vengeance for her mother’s death even if it kills her?

A devastating, alarming page-turner infused with melancholy, humanity – and society’s maddening acceptance in the face of horror.