Amazon:
The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place.
Juliette, convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.
Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.
My reading experience:
Firstly I would like to thank the author, Netgalley and the publisher for my free ARC.
Within the first few paragraphs, the reader is elevated by the richness and depth of the language and prose used to describe the land, the loss, and Starve Acre. I was pleasantly washed along on a tide of beautiful, elegant phrasing that gave life to the bleakness and grief that are the solid foundations of this tale.
Atmospheric and beguiling, this tale of a woman who believes that her dead son still resides in the home, is haunting and unsettling. Yet the reader can be dined out and nourished for a very long time on the refinement and sophistication of the composition of this story.
I was aghast with goosebumps emerging all over and a sense of dread that came trickling up to me with every page I turned; a truly chilling tale.
I highly recommend this new book from Andrew Michael Hurley.
Appletree Books 