When The Wolf Comes Home

As per usual, I spent a few days after finishing this novel to let my thoughts on it marinate before starting on my review. I was undecided on what to say in this review and then, all of a sudden, it didn’t matter anymore. Just before I started writing, Stephen King heartily recommended this book on social media: “terrific…. sink your teeth into a classic”. And now nothing I have to say will really matter: the King has spoken.

Struggling actress Jess is having a terrible night at her waitressing job. Her absentee father has just passed away and she could really use a break from cleaning disgusting toilets to make her rent payments. To top it all off, she’s accidentally pricked herself with a used hypodermic syringe whilst on clean-up duty. On her arrival home, she finds a shell-shocked 5 year old boy in the bushes outside her apartment, hiding from … something.  Moments later, a naked man bangs on the door of her neighbour’s flat, demanding for help finding his missing son.

And then all hell breaks loose…

When The Wolf Comes Home arrives with a fanfare of positive soundbites from a complete who’s who of modern horror. King’s rave review echoes what I’ve heard elsewhere about this book, and herein lies my problem. I liked this book and yet…. I can’t help feeling that I’ve missed something here. It’s fine, it’s fun, it’s a very Stephen King-esque thriller. This was broadly my reading experience, up until the last third of the book which I felt elevated it to above a 3-star read. (Sidenote: the need to sum up my feelings on a book neatly with a rating out of 5 is one of my enduring frustrations with writing reviews).

Part of my ambivalence stems from this being a chase novel: for some reason, I can never connect to them as well as other types of narratives.  The very nature of the thriller requires that the reader doesn’t ever really get a good understanding of the characters and their inner workings; the protagonists must always be on the run and under threat. For most of the book, Jess and the boy are running from the boy’s father. That’s the point of When The Wolf Comes Home: it’s about fear and the forms it can take, how it changes as you grow up, the lengths people go to avoid it and the power of confronting it. It’s also about the power of imagination.

For most of this novel, I felt that it was well-written and fun, but it didn’t spark anything exceptional. Not that that’s any kind of criticism. And then the last 3rd of the book took a weird turn and, for me, that’s where things really started getting going. I loved the last part of the novel and the final confrontation between the boy and his father.

“Nobody hides like tears, she realizes. We could learn a thing from them.”

Is this a werewolf novel? Kind of, sorta, maybe.

Is that a spoiler? Quite possibly. Sorry.

This book is going to be big (and it deserves to be). Horror fans will eat it up (and what big teeth we have!) and it’s crowded with references to other works of horror. There’s even a character named after Talking Scared podcast host Neil McRoberts. Still: I can’t reiterate enough that I wanted more of something from this book and I can’t quite put my finger on what and who am I to argue with horror royalty?

Nat Cassidy is a New York-based overachiever. Not content with his current career writing prose fiction, he’s also a successful actor and playwright. Honestly his CV is formidable and all signs are that he’s got plenty more works of horror fiction in him. The LineUp has described him as the Stephen King of TikTok. He also bookends this novel with an extremely affecting afterword which casts new poignance over the book and is well-worth reading afterwards the main action is over.

Thank you to Titan and Netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

When The Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy was published by Titan Books on 22nd April. (Sorry this review is overdue!)

Carrion Crow

 “There are some facts about the world that only your mother can teach you.”

I mainly read and review horror fiction. This puzzle box of a novel took me entirely by surprise. In its early pages, I was fascinated by its idiosyncrasies and portrait of late Victorian British eccentricity, but left wondering “at which point will the horror show its ugly head?”. I even began to wonder if I’d made a mis-step in requesting this book for review.

I needn’t have been so concerned. By the time this book was finished with me, I was left with no doubts. This is one of the most affecting books I’ve read in a long time. Parry’s rich prose is a barbed delight: I was amused, upset, disgusted, appalled and horrified - frequently all within the space of a few pages. The writing employs all five senses to thoroughly revolt you and there are some grotesque descriptions in this book that will stay with me for a long time.

Marguerite Périgord is engaged to marry Mr Lewis. Her disapproving mother Cécile confines her to the tiny attic of their dilapidated London home by way of preparation for her married life. Isolated from her family and with only the novels of Victor Hugo and Mrs Beaton’s Book of Household Management (“the thousand pages of prescribed femininity, the dictionary of what men wanted from women”) for company, Marguerite earnestly begins her education.

“It is the great shame of my life, Marguerite, that you have turned out the way you have, despite my best efforts. You will be the death of me, I think…”

As the novel discloses its secrets, we learn about Cécile’s life and the lengths her daughter must now go to for survival as her ostentatious meals are provided less and less frequently. This is a witty, scathing novel about scandal and unfulfilled promises, about what it means to be a mother, a daughter, and a wife at the mercy of a cruel patriarchy; but perhaps most of all it is about generational trauma.

I devoured the second half of this novel in a day, on a train back up north from (appropriately enough) London. My friend was surprised when I told her how horrible Carrion Crow was since she’d seen me chuckling to myself a lot whilst reading it. I hadn’t realised how much I’d laughed during this book until someone else pointed it out. This is a very witty novel: horrible things happen, but you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the way in which some of them are described.

In terms of comparisons, the book that Carrion Crow reminds me of most is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, in terms of the sense(s) of the disturbing and macabre, the abundance of bodily fluids, and the sheer revulsion invoked by the prose. Fans of Camilla Grudova will also find a lot to enjoy here.

I would not recommend this book to everyone - please check trigger warnings before proceeding because there’s a lot here that could be damaging. But for readers who can stomach it, this book will be a carton of mixed eggs, where the first one you choose will be a sweet chocolate fondant; the next, a sharp vinegared hard-boiled egg - and the third one you bite into just might contain a fragile baby bird beneath its crisp shell.

I’m off to devour the rest of Parry’s back catalogue like a boiled calf’s head that I must strip of every last scrap of meat from for sustenance.

Thank you to RandomHouse UK and Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of this book.