Wylding Hall

A horror story about a '70s UK folk band, a pretty amazing era and environment for folk and music in general. Hand made the truly inspired choice to tell the entire story in the form of interviews with the band members, decades after the events of the book, which I'm guessing was inspired by her background in music journalism. It also adds to the realism of this being one of those half-apocryphal, half-confirmed fact music legend stories, and I wonder if it was also inspired by one - specifically the mysterious disappearance of Licorice McKechnie, who sang for The Incredible String Band. Not only is this a great update to the epistolary genre, I also feel it should really play into the current true crime/horror podcast genre that often uses similar story telling devices.

Apart from that though, I found the story a bit mediocre. It's a spooky, very slow-burn about a haunted house, that just didn't really get the escalation to truly creep me out. I like this stuff in film, where cinematography, music etc. can make it all a little bit more effective, but in books I need some more intense horror to get me to shiver. (Apart from, I suppose, true masters of the genre like Shirley Jackson. But her novels I read just as much for her beautiful prose as for the horror.) On top of that, what happens in the house and what could cause it never becomes clear to me. Of course, you want there to be ambiguity in these types of stories, but if you leave to many things unanswered, I think things feel lackluster and you actually miss out on opportunities for scares of the "sinking realization" variety. It's a difficult balance, and there's also just the possibility that I'm stupid and missed out on some clues. I'm sure Wylding Hall struck the right notes (ha!) for some people, but not for me.

I enjoyed this the whole time I was reading it, but it didn't quite resolve anything to my satisfaction, whether by preserving the terror of the mystery or by demystifying the horror. Unlike the author's novel Waking the Moon, which was legitimately scary, this was more atmospheric than frightening (and I'm a big weenie about horror, easily kept up at night by very mild scares).

However I fully appreciated the characters, the 70s chaotic band dynamics, the folk song geekery and the spooky house, so it wasn't a wasted read for me at all. It could have been much longer and I would still have been engaged.