I was about two thirds of the way through Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand when I asked myself ‘Am I reading an M. R. James homage with hippy folk rockers?
Which is a crazy question to ask since any given ghost story written in the past century or so has a good chance of being influenced by James. Still, that was when I decided to write about it.
Wylding Hall is a story about a folk rock band that spends a summer at a decaying country manor to work on an album and the bad things that happen to them.
And there are a lot of elements that make me think of James. The book is told as a series of interviews taken long after the events of that summer. There are strong hints that the library in the manor contain forbidden secrets. The manor clearly has plenty of dark history. And we never get a clear explanation of what happened.
All good stuff.
However, I ended up feeling like the parts were better than the sum. In fact, the very last scene, literally the last two pages, managed to make the entire book fall flat for me. I won’t spoil it beyond that but, yeah.
Having said that, there are many individual scenes that succeeded in creeping me out. The reoccurring motif of dead song birds was very effective. The culmination of inexplicable photographs that form the climax of the book uses minimal details to maximum effect.
And the scenes that work wouldn’t work in isolation. They need the slow burn leading up to them to work. There was a lot in the book that was very promising. Unfortunately, a lot of those promises never got fulfilled.
Ultimately, I wish that Wyldness Hall hadn’t missed being an honestly great book by just a few missteps.
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