#Spooktober ‘Wylding Hall’ by Elizabeth Hand

About the book…

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer.

But whose story is true?

And what really happened to Julian Blake?

As that immediately sets them up as unreliable narrators, only able to tell their side of the story, you are keenly aware of Julian’s absence and, in that space, the reader has to try and pick through the stories to try and create a picture of what kind of person Julian was. From his friends, and lovers, you here that he is fascinated by the nature of time, and always wears an elaborate watch with multiple hands. Les opines that if there was a hand that could measure less than a second, his watch probably had it!

Obsessed with Eliade or Durkheim’s theory of the sacred and the profane, Julian believes that there is time which is relevant to most of us, whilst there is time, if you want it bad enough and transfer enough meaning to it, that you can side step linear time and become, in essence, timeless. Belief and want can transcend the concepts which tie most of to what is accepted as a day, a place, a season and so forth.

His interests in magick (absolutely spelt with a K!) are referenced with the works of Aleister Crowley, and his relationships with each of the band is discussed in turn as with the cyclical turn of the seasons, a cult is built around Julian and what is believed to have happened to him. Unearthed 40 years after he famously came to Wylding Hall, yet never left, there are multiple perspectives about what, or who, was responsible.

A love story to a time where people could hole up in a manor to create beautiful music, pre-internet, pre-streaming and pre-24 hour gossip, this is an incredible, transcendent novel in which the central voice is the only one missing. And, as with the groupies creating a mythology around Windhollow Faire, you kind of have to create a story for yourself as to what went on.

Was Arian’s death a suicide?

Who was the girl who was last seen with Julian?

What do the local myths about the killing of wrens, out of season, have to do with it all?

And how does this house, about which we are told very little, grow in the telling of the tale into something malevolent in it’s uneasiness, it’s canvas-like propensity to be scribbled on with lyrics and blood becoming something which takes on a Hill House-esque atmosphere?

It is absorbing, full of beautiful details like the balcony (sorry I cannot remember the specific name for this) which can be seen, but has no point of access. The interweaving of poetry, folk songs, folk lore and musical history adds a richness and depth to a supernatural tale, taking it from haunted house story, to a sublime, transcendent mystery on a metaphysical level. It is absolutely superb, short, lyrical and leaves you with a delicious frisson of having no clear, or definite answer as to what happened that summer of 1972.

About the author…

A New York Times notable and multiple award– winning author, Elizabeth Hand has written seven novels, including the cult classic ‘Waking the Moon’, and short-story collections.

She is a longtime contributor to numerous publications, including the Washington Post Book World and the Village Voice Literary Supplement.

She and her two children divide their time between the coast of Maine and North London.

Links-http://www.elizabethhand.com/