I devoured this book like a heroic dose of the King’s Breakfast.
Here, let me set the table with a fat stack of crunkle and a healthy dram of elk’s blood for you.
Sorted? Cool.
I recoiled when our kid started getting into the works of Enid Blyton.
They’re horrid, xenophobic things, coursing with an ugly vein of paternalism and misogyny.
The crone was probably test driving an embryonic strain of transphobia with the character George, too.
Did you know that there’s an online caste of apologists who defend her ‘SS’ acronym sporting collection of sleuthing Aryan kids, The Secret Seven, to this day?
Of course there is.
So what Bitter Karella does here is extrapolate: what if Helena Hollyoak, their analogue for Blyton, had woven a fictional world, rooted in dicey Pagan folklore, around the small English island village of Hansenhurst, trapping its townsfolk in a sicko carnival mirror version of a quaint holiday village?
Its residents are a cast of barmy Blyton stock characters - the bobby, the chimney sweep, the beekeeper, the Lord Mayor, the devoted plump wife – all of whom are obsessed with ensuring only “the right people” reside in Hansenhurst.
How do they do this?
Well, there’s this mythical creature known as Round Robin, see.
You’d better watch out…
Into this sinister Albion milieu blunders a dysfunctional American family.
Dad, Greg, is a soft middle-aged doofus who does computer; wife Jessica is his loyal booster, and harbours deep queer yearnings; their kid, Sandy, is a non-binary witch who’s pissed off they can’t log onto their witchy Discord on the deeply tech-adverse island.
They take up residence at Helena Hollyoak’s not-so-ancestral Manor and shit, as it is wont to do, goes unpredictably awry.
Karella has a blast toying with the tropes of Pommy weird horror, putting their gormless Yank protagonists through an escalating ordeal that spirals deliciously as Jessica and Sandy are tormented for their otherness. The author draws from a deep well of empathy, throwing their queer leads into a hostile environment that punishes the different.
If only there was a real world analogue for this experience.
It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.
So said Spinal Tap, and Bitter Karella knows the axiom and has mastered its nuances beautifully, smashing every snaggle-toothed folk horror button with gleeful aplomb while also serving up genuinely unnerving imagery.
The blurb says "Wicker Man meets the Twisted Ones", but I’d definitely throw The Goodies and messed up kids telly nightmare-fuel Worzel Gummidge into that heady brew, probably with a bit of cinnamon for sweetness, a dash of sage (and a pinch of lavender for long life), too.
I fucking loved ‘Quaint Folk’.
I’d love to know what’s in the crunkle, though.
Review at Good Reads.
Interview with the author to follow.