Hurley’s first novel, The Loney, was widely praised. Stephen King declared: “It’s great. It’s an amazing piece of fiction.” Originally published by a small press in a run of just 300 copies, it went on to win the Costa best first novel of the year and book of the year at the British Book Industry awards. a b c "Authors: Andrew Michael Hurley". Hodder and Stoughton. Archived from the original on 11 August 2017 . Retrieved 15 October 2015. Hurley has previously had two volumes of short stories published by the Lime Tree Press ( Cages and Other Stories, 2006, ISBN 9781411699021, and The Unusual Death of Julie Christie and Other Stories, 2008, ISBN 9780955981401). [3] He lives in Lancashire, where he teaches English literature and creative writing. [3] I also believe Hanny did kill the baby, but Tonto has stated in his diary it was Clement in case the baby is ever found and he is to hand his diary into the police.

The brothers uncover a mangy cache of taxidermist’s specimens in a shed. Hannay chooses six stuffed rats as his trove. Ancient images Wow, so glad I found this forum! I had the EXACT same questions that Giorgia did (thank you for articulating them so well!) and I appreciate WeeReidy's response--I think you nailed it! I had completely missed the description of the baby portraying the symptoms of all of the people it had unwittingly "healed." I feel more confident about understanding the story now. The gothic is a seductive but slippery genre, as much emotion as form: you’d be hard pressed to find two academics agreeing wholly on its definition. Often, novels are claimed for the gothic because of a creaking stair or an imperilled maiden; yet true gothic lies not merely in tropes – though these are to be prized – but in an expression of transgression, madness or desire that makes the unnerved reader complicit in the tale. With the publication of Andrew Michael Hurley’s debut The Loney, every gothic bookshelf must make room for a new addition.Indeed, all his parishioners deserved to feel like Miss Bunce. Different, loved, guided and judged. It was their reward for being held to ransom by a world that demanded the right to engage in moral brinkmanship whenever it pleased.” As Fr Wilfred says: “It was through pain that we would know how far we still had to go to be perfect in His eyes. And so unless one suffered, Father Wilfred was wont to remind us, one could not be a true Christian.”

The answers to these questions are often unsettling, and occasionally horrific. But as we see Father Bernard’s faith in action and how it differs from Mummer’s and Father Wilfred’s, as we begin discover the powerful and primitive beliefs of the people of the Lancashire countryside, we are drawn—as Tonto and Hanny are drawn—into questioning the nature of belief itself and our own relationship to faith. There's a mysterious death at the heart of the novel; complicated and destructive family relationships, and running through it all a story of faith and superstition, imagination and fear. To the author's delight it was described as 'an amazing piece of fiction' by the master of modern gothic himself, Stephen King. One of the joys (and frustrations) of writing a novel is that what you set out to do isn’t always what you end up doing. It wasn’t my intention to necessarily write a gothic horror and since the publication of The Loney I’ve been asking myself how it became one. As far as I can make out, the answer lies in the landscape that first inspired me. Things lived at the Loney as they ought to live. The wind, the rain, the sea were all in their raw states, always freshly born and feral. Nature got on with itself. Its processes of death and replenishment happened without anyone noticing apart from Hanny and me.”Obviously The Loney was predominantly about faith. Devil’s Day is probably not quite so much about organised religion, but there are definite parallels between the two books. It’s a kind of giving over to something bigger, a faith in something much bigger than yourself, where the individual doesn’t matter so much as the group. They’re both about a kind of fundamentalism. Not particularly. I don't think in 'gothic' terms about what I'm writing, because that would mean I would have to conceive of where the edges of the genre begin and end and what is and isn't 'Gothic'. But because the "supernatural" plays a part in the stories that I write, it's inevitable that my work is categorised under that umbrella. The 'gothic' is one lens you can use to read my writing, but Devil's Day, for example, is as much about history, family, loyalty, identity as it is about hauntings and demons.” Can you tell us a little more about the dark Northern landscapes that have inspired you? Why the North in particular? Lastly, I think that Tonto always worred that Hanny might revert to his old self or somehow remember that he had shot that baby. He was worried over his brother and couldn't stop obsessing over him. Andrew believed so fervently that he'd been cured by God that if he were to ever recall that it was the devil's people who cured him, he would lose his faith and perhaps 'accidentally' kill himself as Father Wilfred had done. The one constant in the story is that Tonto loved his older brother and would do anything to keep him safe.

There is an argument that this crafting isn’t needed, the nudging towards the mainstream, that there is enough momentum in the prose as it stands.

I think that’s partly what John, in the novel, appreciates about the place. There’s a kind of reduction – a simple sort of living. There are only certain things that are of value, only certain things which are worth doing because they contribute to the community; and if they don’t, then they don’t do them. There is a kind of very attractive simplicity about living in a place like that – all the superfluous crap that the modern world throws at you and you have to digest and consume and aspire to do doesn’t really exist in that community. Yet there is also the unpredictability of the elements that is quite menacing and threatens to undermine all this. The Loney puts readers into a fierce, untamed landscape and teases them with the prospect of genuine ferocity. Some might feel a bit shortchanged by what actually happens but most will probably be too mesmerized by the tumult of the sky and sea to pay much attention to what's happening indoors... continued ORIGINAL REVIEW: The Loney has me! A long, malevolent spit of sand reaching out into the cold Irish sea, the Loney also holds ancient dead and plenty of secrets in its depths. Beautifully written, this novel entirely deserves all the awards its been crowned with. The first novel that I ever wrote was set in London and even though I'd lived there for a few years at the time it still felt like a novel written by an outsider, a tourist. When I started to think about writing another, I knew that I wanted to write something which would feel more authentic to me, something rooted in a landscape that felt more a part of who I was. From a young age, I've spent a lot of time outdoors, walking and climbing in places like the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and North Wales and being fascinated by the wilder, lonelier, more remote places. So I knew that if I were to write something truer to myself, then it would have a rural rather than urban setting. I pretty disliked the mother of the boys, Andrew had a brother who is the narrator here, her actions- though I understand her motives, I’m a mother too – felt so unexcusable and wrong at times. She so desperately needed a miracle that I thought she wanted it for herself, for without the sign from God her faith could fall apart as proverbial house of cards. After the death of father Wilfred she constantly scolded their new shepherd for everything, for not being Wilfred mostly, and wanted everything was as before. I believe she loved Andrew but she was totally dismissing his needs and not paying attention to his fear.