Book
Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
Synopsis
The surviving members of an early 1970s folk rock band speak to documentary filmmakers about the making of their second album, Wylding Hall. In varying accounts, they talk about the summer spent inside the centuries-old manor house, the unsettling things they encountered inside, their former lead singer’s obsession with the ancient woods around the grounds, and the unexplained appearance of a strange girl in the album’s cover photo.
Notes
This was part of a video of folk horror recommendations on the “Sinead Hanna Craic” channel on YouTube, and I was immediately sold on the concept alone. What if all the imagery surrounding albums like Houses of the Holy and Led Zeppelin IV (both of which are referenced briefly in Wylding Hall) wasn’t just inspired by the growing interest in folk and traditional music at the time, but by ancient spirits who’ve lived around forests and burial mounds for millennia, the original inspirations for those traditional poems and ballads?
The mood of Wylding Hall is set with an evocative cover and the clever inclusion of a Dramatis Personae page. The bulk is presented as if it were almost a transcript of interviews from a documentary, cutting between the various characters as they give their own accounts as the overall narrative drives forward through the summer months they spent making the album.
My hyper-critical side had a tiny bit of difficulty getting into the book, since the artificiality of the format seemed a little too evident, and the different characters’ unique voices didn’t feel sufficiently defined. But this melts away very quickly, and within 50 or so pages, it became a case of can’t-put-it-down, must-finish-before-I-sleep. And the decision ultimately works well and feels natural, since we’ve now been conditioned to think of musicians talking about past events in the Behind the Music format.
I haven’t read much (any?) folk horror before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The vibe here is definitely more unsettling than outright horrifying, since it starts its foreshadowing from the first page and repeats it with casual references afterwards, preparing you for something that’s not startling, but inevitable. Once it gets going, it does an excellent job of maintaining the mood.
Verdict
A great concept and a really enjoyable read. The sense of inexplicable creepiness and unknowable forces at work lingers after you’ve set the book down, and you’re primed to be on the lookout for things that simply shouldn’t be there.