Genre: Horror Fiction
Page Count: 360
Sometimes the books we buy of which we don’t know much about turn out to be the most surprisingly good ones.
I picked up a used copy of Hurley’s ‘The Loney’ last year at Karachi’s annual international bookfair, along with a couple of other novels. There were many second hand books and none that I knew much about, so my picks were purely based on instinct and some reading from the covers. Ha Jin’s ‘Waiting’, a comic-like Chinese folklore which I read earlier this year and loved, was also one of the books from my bookfair purchase.
As it happens, we don’t have high expectations about these books we don’t know much about, as well as lesser inclination to read them. But I’m happy that I do not tend to let such unattractive titles sit on my book-shelves to dust, and rather try to read one or two of these in between the books I know much about.
Hurley’s dark thriller, a new genre for me as was Jin’s folklore genre, was another surprisingly good novel. I don’t find the appeal to read horror fiction, as well as science-fiction or fantasy novels, for I see them as somewhat distanced from the pure literary fiction which I mostly love to read. Much to my surprise however, this novel was not only thrilling because of its genre, but a very pleasant and, safe to say, literary reading experience for me.
It follows the story of two brothers, Hanny and Smith, the former of which is mute, and their parents’ religious attempts to heal him through mass and prayer at a church on a distant island called The Loney. Almost every year, the Smith family, their neighbor, along with a church Father visit the Loney, a remote and dark place, during their holidays with the hope of curing Hanny’s muteness.
On this particular visit, the visitors, the Smith family along with others, are hopefully certain of Hanny being cured. However, upon reaching there, things go a bit awry. Their minibus breaks down at a remote village near the island, they meet a few strange people there, they discover a hidden room where they stay with weird stuffs inside it, they hear haunting voices in the middle of the night, the weather is unusually wet and stormy, and the visitors do not get along well with the new Father, since previous Father unfortunately had died before their visit, and so on.
Following the family’s experiences, particularly of the two brothers, we get into this dark gothic tale that becomes more thrilling as you turn each page. And although this description alone is enough to make for a thrilling novel, Hurley adds other layers upon this narrative to take ‘The Loney’ from a good horror story to a great one.
We see glimpses of how the former Father treated Smith and his friends at the church and how he had begun to lose faith in his last days, or how Clement’s mother, the residents of Loney island, who upon the arrival of the visitors was blind, miraculously gains sight just a few days after.
All of this combined makes this novel one of the most thrilling and anticipative novels I have ever read. It’s a page turner by nature. Hurley’s simple prose makes for an easy to read and enjoyable reading experience. The novel only gets better as you read along, as one mystery unfolds and another builds; even to the last page, some mystery is kept so as not to let you lose your attention’s grip off the novel.
It’s a really fascinating
and thrilling novel, where reading can be enjoyed at its simplest and purest
form.
Ratings: 5/5 ***** December 11, 2020_