Andrew Michael Hurley

Book Review: Devil’s Day

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Devil’s Day is another masterpiece of folk horror fiction from Andrew Michael Hurley. Boiling the plot down to a single sentence, it’s the story of a man and his wife who return to his family farm for a funeral, and to help with preparations for an annual festival in advance of bringing their sheep down from the moors for winter.

There’s much more to it than that, including some sub-plots, and the usual folk horror tropes of superstition, tradition, a rural setting, breath-taking nature description, and a cast of expertly drawn characters to act out the story.

There is nothing I disliked about this book, and I count it as one of the finest I have ever read. For me, it resonates particularly strongly because I grew up not far from the area in which it’s set, and my own novel, A Different Path, is set in the same area, a few miles east.

Just superb.

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The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney is a novel about two brothers who make a pilgrimage from London to the stretch of Lancashire coast that sits between the Lune and Wyre estuaries, known as the Loney. There, over the Easter period, they stay in a big old house with their parents, their parish priest, and some of their fellow parishioners. The bulk of the novel is set in the 1970s, but it begins and ends in the present day.

The above paragraph sums up what the book is about, but it doesn’t come close to doing it justice. This is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read, with stunning scene setting passages and haunting, eerie narration.

I grew up a catholic in East Lancashire during the 1970s and 1980s, so I can relate to many of the elements in the story. I can also relate to the attitudes of the locals as they are shaped by Hurley. The rural north has changed considerably nowadays, but back then, it was very much as he describes.

There is not a single thing I disliked about this novel. If I were to be nit-picky, I might say it wasn’t clear when it was set until the very end when the protagonist mentions the 1970s, although I personally guessed the time period.

Highly recommended for fans of the Folk Horror genre, but also for those who love to read novels that are abundant with stunning descriptions of nature.

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