Hare House: An Atmospheric Modern-day Tale of Witchcraft – the Perfect Autumn Read

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So the positives first- it's decently written and the prose helps the story flow. Hinchcliffe isn't too flowery and keeps it moving.

No specific spoilers; but discusses some points that you might want to read about in the book first. Striking up a friendship with her landlord, Grant, and his younger sister, Cass, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch. There was nothing there, I thought. Nothing but the shadows of the trees,my own imagination. It was only when it moved that I could make it out, the silent hare, turning and loping away into the dark.’Sally Hinchcliffe’s Hare House is a modern-day witch story, perfect for fans of Pine and The Loney. I’m thrilled to see Hare House chosen as Scottish Book of the Month and I hope it encourages more people to come and see the region for themselves. I was sent an ARC of this creepy, modern gothic novel by Book Break in exchange for an honest review.

We follow a woman who moves into a cottage on the estate of a formally grand Scottish manor and begins to get to know the inhabitants of the main house. But as the snow sets in and all communication with the outside world is cut off, things begin to get sinister… Not really sure what to make of this one and it seems a few other people have voiced the same opinion. I did listen to this as an audiobook and I think the narrator did a great job which helped to make this more engaging than it might

WORLD BUILDING, ATMOSPHERE AND SETTING

Unfortunately, I really did not like this book. Despite the beautiful prose, it was a slog to get through. The book is slow and I found myself bored several times throughout. A lot of mysterious and witchy things happen, but they never end up getting explained. I’m ok with a few things not being explained but the whole book and how it ended was just super vague. The reveal, if you can call it that, is simply implausible. I don’t like what the reveal suggested because it invalidates a lot of what the reader suspected was happening. And even with my theory of what happened I still have no idea what the hell actually happened. Just a lot of strange instances with no clear cut explanation or reasoning behind it. It is the start of the year, the weather has chilled so far that the car needs de-icing in the morning and I am reliant on my head torch for my morning runs, and I am both driving to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark. And it is on days like these when my mind yearns for a good, dark chilling Gothic yarn. Hare House has been on my radar for a while and I was excited to be given an early copy of it to review. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. My difficulties with this were partly linked to the fact that the tension between the psychological and the supernatural wasn’t resolved in a way I found particularly convincing, and partly to the representation of older and/or single women which seemed quite stereotypical. Although, to be fair, none of the characters came off that well overall: the dog was quite endearing but unfortunately failed to make it to the end. The central female character was especially problematic, self-deluding and manipulative which seemed to be attributed to her being lonely, single and on the verge of middle age: she reminded me of a younger version of Barbara in Zoe Heller’s Notes of a Scandal a novel I found intensely annoying but a lot of other people seemed to enjoy. So, I think it’s likely I just wasn’t a good fit for Hare House and I imagine that readers who enjoy these kinds of stories - rather than get trapped in them against their better judgement - will find it well worth their time. It’s not at all a bad piece of writing, and it’s often quite a gripping and eerie one. It’s just a little too open-ended, a little too conventional and a little too culturally conservative for my taste. And the language! The writing! Crisp as fresh snow, sharp as broken glass, not a sentence wasted, not a word out of place.

The prose was lovely and there were a few times that I'd pause to think over the choice of words and digest them. Very poetic and descriptive which, again, really came to life through the narrator. I like hares, just as I like owls. There is a wildness and otherness about them. Consequently there is lots of folklore about them and links with witchcraft and shapeshifting. This gathers together quite a few gothic and witchcraft tropes. It is set in Scotland, in Dumfries and Galloway. There are also a few dour Scots tropes and plenty of weather: rain, wind, snow and the like. Hinchcliffe does capture the landscape quite well. The themes are typical of this genre; mental illness, symbols of witchcraft, hares (inevitably), clay dolls, sprigs of Rowan, ancestral curses and the like. Someone also seems to be wandering about the place writing Exodus 22:18 (Thou shalt not permit a witch to live).Sally was born in London in 1969 but says she “grew up all over the world” as her father served the Foreign Office in New York, Kuwait, Tanzania, Dubai, Zambia and Jordan. The unnamed narrator of 'Hare House' is a 30-something history teacher, who is forced to leave her job after a mysterious incident in which her whole class collapses in a fainting fit. She moves to a remote cottage in the countryside of Dumfries and Galloway, and tries to begin a new life, working as an online tutor, and as a rewriter of student essays/dissertations. It is very lonely, with only her gloomy elderly neighbour Janet for company - until she is befriended by her landlord Grant and his beautiful adolescent sister Cass. However, this turns out to be a mixed blessing. Grant and Cass's home, 'Hare House', is a gloomy place, decorated with multiple stuffed hares in human costume. And Cass, initially friendly, soon reveals herself to be volatile and manipulative - and to be convinced that she is being targeted by a witch. As her attitude towards the narrator becomes increasingly hostile, tensions rise to an unbearable level.... I loved the increasing unreliability that our narrator demonstrated – despite her apparent objectivity, she seems to admit a certain ‘fluid’ relationship with the truth vacillating between conscious deception, possible self-deception and a disconnect with the reality around her. To what extent is she victim or villain? Witch or bewitched? Not all these questions are answered and I did feel a bit conflicted at the end. I wasn’t totally sure what had actually happened or why, but I think perhaps that is the point. This book very much leaves you on edge, questioning your own thoughts and feelings and seeing shadows where there are none.

We have an unnamed narrator; a woman whose teaching career came to an end after a seemingly innocuous incident involving her A-Level students. To retreat/escape/start again, she decides to take refuge within a remote Scottish town. She rents a cottage from Grant, but also manages to ingratiate herself into the family's inner circle, becoming something akin to a friend or confidante to both Grant and his much younger, teenage sister, Cass. The family have suffered tragedies, but as our narrator spends more time there, she discovers that there are rumours and whisperings between the locals, suggestions of witches. There are also some good ideas in here, but sadly I feel like they didn't amount to much. The narrator is not particularly likeable, and none of the other characters is either. They are just a bit flat and a bit sad and a bit uninteresting. God, I just loved this book. I know it’s impossible, but I wish everything I read could make me feel like this: alive with excitement about what fiction can do, half-certain it was written specifically for me, and immediately desperate to read it all over again.

The story is good. It's well paced and just spooky enough. I would have liked to gather more of a connection to our narrator, who we never learned the name of. My first novel, OUT OF A CLEAR SKY, was published by Pan Macmillan in May 2008, and was selected as the May Book of the Month by Radio Five Live’s Book Panel. It also featured as a Book at Bedtime on Radio 4. I really enjoyed the writing style, the beautiful descriptions of the Scottish setting and the tension that was created as odd, creepy things began to happen. Since 1994 she has worked for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in the IT department, developing databases to support its scientific work.