Fellside by M.R. Carey

I’ve been waiting forever for this to come out in paperback and I devoured it in two evenings! A shame that it was over so soon, but wow, what an experience.

Carey’s word-of-mouth bestseller, The Girl With All The Gifts, is about to released as a film (please read the book first!) and definitely has ranked him as one of my favourite, must-read authors in the horror genre. Fellside initially feels so different to The Girl, but the same strengths are there – vivid, corporeal characters who you really care for, a strong plot that won’t let you go, and a perceptive, subtle subversion of the genre. Fellside

Jess Moulson is a nice person with a bad, bad habit. It leaves her amnesiac, with half her face burnt off, and one of Britain’s most notorious female criminals, sentenced to Fellside, a grim women’s prison in Yorkshire. Devastated by what she’s done, she goes on hunger strike, wanting to end it all – but the ghost of a young boy won’t let her die. He needs her to find out the truth about his death- which means delving into the minds of her fellow inmates. Cue surreal sequences in the other world, which could be dreams, the afterlife, insanity, or even hell. But unknown to Jess, the staff and inmates of Fellside have their own vested interests in whether she lives or dies, and she’s caught in a violent web of corruption and manipulation; trapped between two worlds, Jess must fight for survival in both.

Like Miss Justineau in The Girl, Jess is a very sympathetic character, and her journey really hooked me in to the narrative. The thing about Jess is that she just wants to keep her head down, not to get involved; but both before and during her incarceration, she is no bystander. The conflict between selfishness and doing the right thing is very finely observed and this is the recognisable flaw that makes her such an empathic and real character. Carey’s are all strong female characters (the cast in Fellside is largely female!) and a delight to meet, even those who are truly evil like Harriet Grace, the lifer who controls Goodall block and directs the violence. And the male characters are similarly believable – like the Sergeant in The Girl, whose story evolves from villain to hero, deliciously vile prison officer Devlin (the Devil) and poor lost Dr Salazar (Sally) have their own tragic and poignant trajectories which grip you. tgwatg

The supernatural elements in some ways form the subplot of Fellside, and can almost be a matter of interpretation; is the other place to be taken at face value, or is this the effect of drug addiction, or mass delusion? The psychology of incarceration is at the forefront, and this is where it differs from The Girl With All The Gifts, which is very firmly in established horror territory; Fellside is much more internal, a state of mind.

I loved it – compelling drama, characters that punch their way off the page, a touch of genuine spookiness and twists and turns that will floor you as effectively as Big Carol herself.

Rating: ****

Orbit Books, 2016, ISBN 9780356503608

The Girl With All The Gifts – Official Trailer

Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

When I was eighteen, I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and it blew the bloody doors off my intellectual and emotional prison and opened up a whole new world of feminist consciousness. It changed my life. Only Ever Yours is the only book since that has repeated that moment in time in my personal history – and I think every young woman should read it. It’s searing, brutal and undeniably honest, and whilst set in a future dystopia, just like Atwood’s novel it’s so woven from real events and behaviours it lays all society’s current failings bare for all to see.

OnlyEverYours

frieda is sixteen, and has spent her entire life in the School, run by the chastities. All the girls are obsessed by their appearance – but in this future, the School enforces that obsession, by daily weigh-ins, a ranking system and lessons where the girls’ bodies are ruthlessly compared to those of their peers. Brainwashed since birth, the girls face a future either as companions – wives to rich men – or concubines. As the day of the Ceremony inexorably draws near, the day when their future role will be assigned to them, their competitiveness reaches fever pitch. But frieda is slowly failing, knocked out of orbit as one of the most highly ranked girls, by her former best friend isabel. Formerly #1, or queen bee, isabel seems to be on self-destruct, and as frieda tries to both help isabel and simultaneously distance herself from her, she’s making mistakes and getting noticed in the wrong ways. The consequences will be shattering.

This novel is brutal from the first page, and while the true horrors of their adult lives are only suggested, never fully revealed, O’Neill creates a very visceral sense of a claustrophobic community where there is truly no way out. Chickens get a taste of your meat girl… Atwood’s heroines were often passively complicit in their oppression, and in O’Neill’s novel, the ways in which women betray each other on a daily basis, thus enabling the power of the patriarchy to be maintained, are searingly dissected. frieda is not your average heroine either, not always sympathetic, not always likeable. And where other novels may have taken the romantic option (i.e. your knight in shining armour will rescue you), O’Neill plays it true to the end, in a truly haunting, terrible climax.

There is so much texture to this book, so much to devour and debate, so many clever allusions, all within a compelling plot populated by vivid characters. It’s one of the most challenging Young Adult books I’ve read and certainly has the power to awaken feminist consciousness in teenage girls (and women), changing lives in the process. I actually think it’s better than The Handmaid’s Tale – more cutting, more graphic, and more unflinching in it’s exposure of female relationships. Terrifying and compulsive, Only Ever Yours takes it’s place on my shelf of books that change your life. Superb.

Rating: *****

riverrun, 2015, ISBN 9781784294007