BOOK REVIEW: THE FIENDS IN THE FURROWS II: MORE TALES OF FOLK HORROR

In 2018 Nosetouch Press brought out The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror. It contained a couple of good stories and one dazzling one (‘The Jaws of Ourobouros’ by Steve Toase), and now editors David Neal and Christine Scott have followed it up with The Fiends In The Furrows II.

To provide the casual reader with some context, things start off with an introduction by award-winning novelist Andrew Michael Hurley. Hurley has obviously done his homework, referencing all the usual landmarks of folk horror in film and TV (my personal favourite being the teleplay Penda’s Fen), criticism (Adam Scovell looms large) and also the Internet, from the savage black humour of Scarfolk to the studiously fey Levellers’ porn of Hookland. However, I don’t connect with what he has to say about folk horror’s appeal being based in a longing for some Edenic rural past.

It’s not that he’s wrong – nobody can deny that large swathes of folk horror are indeed awash with nostalgia. The halls of folklore Twitter are filled with a constant murmur of praise for the “Old Ways”, hipsters are retraining as cunning-men at a rate of knots, and sinister 70s kids’ TV is now the foundation of an entire cottage industry aimed at tickling the memory banks of fifty-somethings with disposable income. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I was brought up in the country, and I don’t see anything liberating or aspirational about the villages of folk horror and their denizens. My favourite folk horror understands that the islanders in The Wicker Man are gullible, mean and bloodthirsty underneath that veneer of groovy laid-back paganism.

Luckily, this is one area where The Fiends in the Furrows II scores highly. A number of its authors are eager to introduce the reader to the full spectrum of miseries the traditional rural life can offer before the supernatural stuff even gets started. Coy Hall’s ‘Hour of the Cat’s Eye’, which addresses the fate of a wounded mercenary in a time before hospitals and disinfectant, is particularly grisly, and the dirt-poor life of a shepherdess (and part-time village idiot) is brought painfully to life in “Yan” by Alys Hobbs. This story also makes use of an interesting little byway of British folklore, the old “Yan, Tan, Tether” sheep-counting methods, the origins of which are shrouded in mystery. The plot itself is more of a Thomas Hardy-style tragedy, but the counting rhythms are woven nicely into the highly musical prose. However, when it comes to depicting the sheer horror that the farming life can hold, it’s Neil McRobert’s ‘A Well-Fed Man’ that takes the cake. This look at the appalling poverty and starvation inflicted on Russian farmers by Soviet agricultural policy (which by this point was pretty much just straight-up looting) delivers inky moral blackness and a very uncomfortable theme, elevating McRobert’s offering some way above your usual child-catcher narrative.

As is only right, there are several more positive stories to balance things out. In many of the tales chaotic natural forces are a vector for liberation, especially for women. Feminism and modern folk horror go together like rum and smugglers, and even the subgenre’s most devoted nostalgia-hounds are usually careful to pay lip-service to feminist ideals, mainly via the ongoing rehabilitation of witchcraft. This is most explicit in Elizabeth Twist’s ‘The Complete Compleat Gardener’, which stars a group of female villagers who seize control of farming methods after the patriarchy has stuffed it all up on a local and global scale. The female eco-empowerment themes on display here are the polar opposite of original, but things bounce along well.

The same can’t be said for all the material here, however. Several stories have laudable political intentions, seeking to alert the reader to the effects of capitalism on the environment, the oppression of minorities and so on, but that’s not enough to make a ripping yarn.  A few of the plots are very well-worn, and those in search of stylistic finesse and innovation should probably look elsewhere. Too many of the contributions read like Young Adult fiction, and not particularly stellar YA at that. There are also too many servings of ersatz Caitlin R Kiernan – prose that strives to be Symbolic and free-flowing, but uses the same tired symbols as everyone else and flows in one direction only: down to a great and tepid sea of Goth poetry-slam soup.

Against this backdrop Kristi DeMeester’s ‘A Ritual for Pleasure and Atonement’ is most welcome. Dealing with the mystical progress of a young anorexic man who becomes obsessed with a terrifying Salvatore Rosa witch painting, it offers much-needed subtlety and ambiguity, with a complex interplay of imagery surrounding emptiness, love and hunger. Executed in a varied palette of emotions and steering clear of the obvious, it’s definitely for grown-ups and my favourite story of the anthology. Things wrap up well, too, thanks to Tracy Fahey’s ‘Dearg-An-Daol’. The rustic Irish setting is realistic and unsentimental but not without beauty. The plot is less predictable than it seems at first, and the ending has the hero looking forward to the future, having learnt to salvage what few treasures the past holds but also to confront all that is dark and unspeakable in it. This is a useful tip for life in general, but also for the creation of folk horror, and Fahey’s story is a great way to round off a collection which, though far from perfect, is a serious attempt to convey the diversity that the subgenre can sustain.

Review by Daisy Lyle 

THE FIENDS IN THE FURROWS II: MORE TALES OF FOLK HORROR is a collection of short stories of Folk Horror, honoring its rich and atmospheric traditions. Fans of Folk Horror will find herein more terrifying tales of rural isolation, urban alienation, suburban superstition, pastoral paranoia, as well as mindless and monstrous ritual that epitomize the atmospheric dread of this fascinating and developing subgenre. FEATURING: Alys Hobbs, “Yan” • Coy Hall, “Hour of the Cat’s Eye • Elizabeth Twist, “The Complete Compleat Gardener • Neil McRobert, “A Well-Fed Man” • Shawn Wallace, “The Binding Tide” • Jack Lothian, “A Deed Without a Name” • Hazel King, “The Hanging Tree and The Old Tom Pit” • Sara Century, “The Death of a Drop of Water • Kristi DeMeester, “A Ritual for Pleasure and Atonement • Tim Major, “The Slow King” • Tracy Fahey, “Dearg-an-Daol”

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