The Loney

The Loney is not just good, it's great. It's an amazing piece of fiction Stephen King Modern classics in this genre are rare, and instant ones even rarer; The Loney, however, looks as though it may be both Sunday Telegraph A thrilling first novel Publishers Weekly The Loney is a stunning novel - about faith, the uncanny, strange rituals, and the oddity of human experience. Beautifully written, it's immensely entertaining, but also deep and wide. A moving evocation of desolate wilderness and a marvel of complex characterization, The Loney is one of my favorite reads of the past couple of years Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times-bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy A modern classic: superbly eerie, beautifully human and immensely readable Adam Roberts I can't remember a more confident debut: a mingling of horror, domestic strife and metaphysical ambiguities set against an arrestingly vivid landscape. Brilliant Adam Thorpe The Loney transcends its generic roots by virtue of its depth and subtlety, imbuing horror with an intimacy, flavour and scent, meanwhile suggesting that horror's true face is meaningless, indifferent - and brilliantly blank Grace McCleen The Loney is one of the best novels I've read in years. From the very first page, I knew I was in the hands of a master. Atmospheric, psychologically astute, and saturated with the kind of electrifying wrongness that makes for pleasurably sleepless nights Kelly Link Confident and beautifully written debut ... moves from the strange to the downright scary. Comparisons to The Wicker Man will no doubt be made, but there are also elements of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, and the bleakness and youthful innocence of Iain Banks'The Wasp Factory. As soon as I'd finished the book I started over and re-read it. It was that good menwhostareatbooks A masterful excursion into terror. Hurley (whose remarkable talent has previously been confined to short stories) fills the larger space this debut novel gives him with a slow, inexorable build-up of menace ... Both the obliquely suggestive and the rawly physical are put to fearful effect as jeopardy tightens around the characters. Familiar properties of the horror genre aren't spurned ... but Hurley excitingly revivifies such material with the energy of his writing. Dankly atmospheric his eerie narrative is packed with the palpable and pungent Sunday Times Hurley is skilled at characterisation and voice ... An assured debut that deftly mixes elements of gothic horror and social commentary, it can be read as a chilling comedy of manners ... There are echoes in his writing of the strange tales of Daphne du Maurier, the British horror writer Robert Aikman and even further afield, of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw ... Where the novel really shines is in Hurley's ability to create character, setting and atmosphere. The backdrop of The Loney is a knockout - Wuthering Heights-esque. It is gothic, yet entirely believable Sunday Business Post Andrew Michael Hurley's evocation of the dampness and grey misery of his setting, The Loney, is so immersive it's almost surprising the pages aren't sodden and dripping ... The clash between the modern and the ancient, between the urban and the rural, are horror staples from Dennis Wheatley to The Wicker Man, but Hurley's sharply drawn characters and descriptive powers dispel any sense of over-familiarity. The Loney weaves its spell slowly but once it's taken hold, it drags the reader into the darkness where faith dare not show its face for fear of being snuffed out like a sputtering candle SFX Like the Wicker Man in prose, Andrew Michael Hurley's debut is a slow-burning tale of uniquely British terror ... Stands out among a rising wave of literary horror. In the tradition of ghost story writer M. R. James, its fear factor depends not on monsters seen full-face but on hints, allusions and the indeterminate shapes formed in the reader's own hyper-sensitised mind ... Hurley draws on a rich tradition and gives it his own distinctive touch. Nuanced, deliberate and building insensibly from a murmur to a shriek. The Loney is an unforgettable addition to the ranks of the best British horror Metro A modern suspense novel that is a masterful excursion into terror Sunday Times A chilling plot written with the skill of a poet The Times, Books of the Year With splendidly idiosyncratic characters, a dank, bleak landscape and an all-pervading sense of menace, this is an eerie, disturbing read that doesn't let up until its surprise ending Daily Mail Most triumphantly of all, though, it is absolutely a novel of place ... The Loney's landscape is both timeless and frightening ... [Anderw Michael Hurley is] fantastically adept at conveying something beyond the natural or the normal without spelling it out. He also has a talent for sheer, unadulterated ominousness ... Most of all though, The Loney's power lies in all that Hurley dares to leave out. This is a novel of the unsaid, the implied, the barely grasped or understood, crammed with dark holes and blurry spaces that your imagination feels compelled to fill. It takes both confidence and talent to write like this and it leaves you wanting more of whatever slice of darkness Hurley might choose to dish up next Observer Full of unnerving horror, giving a sensation of something creeping quietly behind you and then breathing on your spine. It's beautifully written, with a sense of both poetry and plot: the coastal landscape and the very British social tensions within the church group are equally well mapped out. But Hurley also knows when to ramp up the eeriness, which moves from vaguely disquieting to full-blooded horror. It's rare for a book to make you sigh over the loveliness of the phrases while simultaneously hoping you've locked the windows, but The Loney is special in this way and others Emerald Street Andrew Michael Hurley's strength is in his ability to evoke atmosphere and a sense of place ... Hurley writes well and his mastery of dialogue is complete The Spectator Already praised by critics as an instant horror classic, The Loney is also a novel about an unhappy family, brotherhood, faith and coming of age. Hurley's curious cast of characters, a mixture of sinister locals and fellow Catholic pilgrims, are unsettling and unsettled in equal measure and expertly realised. He builds a gothic, rain-soaked and eerie atmosphere and his hints at the supernatural aspects of the story are admirably restrained. Influenced by gothic horror, detective fiction and ghost stories from the discorvery of hidden room to things that go bump in the night, Hurley never threatens to tip into parody. The result is a haunting and ambiguous novel that will keep you up at night Daily Express With the publication of Andrew Michael Hurley's debut The Loney, every gothic bookshelf must make room for a new addition ... Hurley's prose style is perfectly fitted to the form, mingling vivid descriptive phrases with an ear for the oddness of conversation ... Back in the time of the guilds, an apprentice was required to submit a masterpiece to attain the status of a master craftsman. It was not the peerless and crowning achievement of a career, but the moment he showed mastery of the craft. Well, then - here is the masterpiece by which Hurley must enter the Guild of the Gothic: it pleases me to think of his name written on some parchment scroll, alongside those of Walpole, Du Maurier, Maturin and Jackson Guardian This wonderful 'horror' novel was first published by a small, independent press, but the quality of the bone-chilling, poetic writing is too good to box up inside a genre The Times [A] brilliantly unsettling debut ... As things go awry, Hurley ratchets up the tension as faith and folklore prove equally menacing Psychologies The power of the writing is in the descriptions of this bleak yet strangely beautiful patch of wind-lashed Lancashire coast, the slow building of atmosphere, some memorable characters and the warming relationship between the two brothers Choice Faith, mysticism and ritual circle around a community full of believable, complex characters, creating an atmosphere so thick and hot it will prickle the back of your neck. Gut literature at its best Big Issue Hurley's dankly atmospheric debut novel chills you to the marrow. Sunday Times, Books of the Year Few debut novels arrive so fully formed, with such an assured command of tone. Even fewer are as spooky as The Loney, which bring to its description of the glum and sodden Lancashire coast a piercing eye for natural detail and a screw-tightening talent for instilling dread ... [Hurley's] debut is so confident in tone and setting that I found myself having to check - flicking back to the start of my copy, Googling for info - that it wasn't a long lost classic being republished, or a pseudonymous discovery by some magus of the British weird ... It manages to mix the rainy seascapes and half-glimpsed horrors of the supernatural tradition that evokes the tweediness, threatening comedy and intimidating countryside of Withnail and I as much it does the freaked out paganism of The Wicker Man ... Part of its genius is to keep the creepiest of its trappings offstage ... The result is an extraordinarily haunted and haunting novel, arrestingly in command of its unique spot in the landscape. No one who missed it the first time has much of an excuse now Telegraph Few debut novels arrive with such an assured command of tone as The Loney ... Not one to be missed Sunday Telegraph The Loney is an uneasy stretch of land on the coast of Lancashire, with treacherous sands and sinister undercurrents - the perfect setting for this eerie, atmospheric tale of folklore, superstition and religious conviction Sunday Express The gorgeous cover of this book tempts, but does not prepare you for the wonderful, Gothic and creeping horror inside ... eerie and arresting, making a compulsively good read. Guaranteed to linger in the memory long after you've closed the last page, this is a wonderful debut Absolutely Dulwich Magazine Such is the strength of Hurley's prose that even though not a great deal happens, the sense of foreboding is enough to pull you in ... it's a tale of suspense that sucks you in and pulls you under. As yarns go, it rips New Statesman The pleasure in Andrew Michael Hurley's debut lies in the freshness it brings to familiarity ... The Loney is a masterclass in spinning out tension Financial Times This haunting novel explores the horror of religious mania combined with a lingering supernatural element Lady A word-of-mouth hit ... unsettling and atmospheric Observer Praised as 'an amazing piece of fiction' by Stephen King and compared to The Wicker Man, The Loney was a massive word-of-mouth hit when it was first released last year. Set on a 'wild and useless length' of coastline in northwest England, Hurley's debut novel begins with a body in the bay and gets more sinister from there. An old house, a religious retreat and some distinctly unwelcoming locals feature in another fine addition to the British gothic canon Mashable The Loney, a debut novel set in seventies Lancashire that conjured an oppressive sense of dread through its Wicker Man-ish conflict between Catholicism and folk beliefs, began life with the small press Tartarus but was republished by John Murray in August to riotous acclaim Telegraph A beautifully written debut with more than a tinge of the horrific about it Telegraph A rare treat ... Everything about this book is the opposite of what one has come to expect from modern horror. Nothing is obvious, gruesome, or in-your-face. Fear descends on the reader like a slow, imperceptible mist, blurring the edges between reason and imagination, occasionally clearing to offer fleeting glimpses of deeply unpleasant things ... Location, too, is key - the landscape itself seems to be the source of the growing horror. It's a notion that links Hurley directly to gothic greats, such as Washington Irving's Sleepy Hollow and Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness. I hope he writes another Daily Mail Andrew Michael Hurley's astonishing The Loney is more than a welcome addition to horror fiction; it seems almost a necessary one. It is quintessentially English, beautifully literary and absolutely horrific Times Literary Supplement Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney is another enjoyable slice of the macabre ... It's terrific. The characters are sketched with energy and humour Literary Review A confident debut ... Hurley makes creative writing look effortless Tablet I can certainly understand why The Loney might be labelled an instant classic. It's a seriously impressive first novel, and so successful at creating a setting that it's sure to linger in the memory Nudge Books