Dulan Barber (1940–1988)

I’ve been dragging this book around from residence to residence for something like 15 years. I think I picked it up at a library book sale a few towns over from where I live now. I must have been 24 or 25 at the time and did attempt to read it back then. I failed but, it’s been with me ever since. I even put it in a bag of books to give away and that’s where I recently found it again. Spookily, it bears the imprint of the library of the town in which I now live.

So, was it worth hanging onto? Yes and no. The writing is passable, nothing great and it tends toward the purple. A bit overblown if you know what I mean. Looming gothic. It has some of that held-breath quality of romance novels in the 80s; when writers wanted to be racy and thought they were being, but really were just being coy. There’s a heroine at the center of things and she’s forced into a situation she’d rather not be part of but literally can’t escape (she tries and is physically hauled back to her place). Central to her new situation is a new man she can’t help but be drawn to against her better instincts. Of course.

Ostensibly Lyndsay is American, but you’d never know it. She doesn’t think or speak like an American and it was jarring to be reminded again and again that she was. I think our Mr. Brookes has little idea of how we speak and think over here and didn’t even try to find out. He should have made her a Londoner or something. That would have done.

The central story revolves around the tiny village of Ratchets and the weird cult that has flourished there for centuries. Devoted to the Ways, the villagers are made up of the members of 3 families only, one of which our heroine, Lyndsay, marries into (some fresh blood, finally). Due to her being the wife of the eldest son she’s thrust into the role of Mistress and reluctantly goes along with what’s expected of her. There are weird rituals, conspiracies, mysterious phenomena and grisly killings. It all smacks of The Wicker Man in a sense and is just as nicely understated. There is menace here, but we don’t know how it will manifest. Overall not a bad read, but not as well executed as it could have been.… (mehr)