Joolz Denby whiplash
Have been devouring my way through two Joolz Denby novels which I only recently found out about: The Curious Mystery Of Miss Lydia Larkin And The Widow Marvell and Wild Thing - the latter I learnt about via a short notice in last week's Guardian Review, the other by going to the website of Ignite Books when Amazon didn't seem to have copies of Wild Thing in stock or any indication a date when they might be and Book Depository had nothing either, and discovering this other fairly new book of which I had not previously heard.
Both are great, but reading them one after the other pretty much gave me whiplash.
Wild Thing is pretty much what I'd expect from Denby:
unremittingly grim, but with immense linguistic vigour and superb characterisation, falling on some kind of boundary between the noir thriller and pure horror.
Wild Thing is definitely more over to the horror side. However, it's hard to discuss it without being about spoilers, so I'll just recommend it with warnings about the grim and the gruesome and very possibly triggery subject matter.
However, The Curious Mystery Of Miss Lydia Larkin And The Widow Marvell was completely unexpected and utterly charming. Again, it's really difficult to discuss without being all about spoilers, so I will only say that she takes a fantasy/magic realist donnee (I don't think one can call it a trope as such) of which I have come across several examples, some of which are terrific, and some of which are meh - it's not a premise I'd approach with a ten foot pole but it's not a bulletproof kink, either. All I think I'll say is that my initial impression that we were somewhere in the same territory as Sylvia Townsend Warner in Lolly Willowes was I think quite possibly intended, but actually not the case.
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