Grace by A M Shine
I would like to thank Head of Zeus for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Head of Zeus
Published – Out Now
Price – £20 hardback £5.03 ebook
TO LEARN THE TRUTH
WOULD YOU DESCEND INTO HELL?
Off the west coast of Ireland lies a lonely island, isolated and wilfully forgotten. Some say there hasn't been a child born on the island for thirty years. Others speak of strange deaths there, decades ago. But no one really knows what happened. Locals believe that the dark times are behind them.
They are mistaken.
Grace, adopted at four years old, has never known where she came from. A mysterious phone call leads her back to the island where she was born - and where a terrible evil has been disturbed.
The podcast Pseudopod has a little line at the end of its episodes that when you listen to a narrator or let yourself go into a story; you are letting yourself into the car of stranger. Why yes, it is a horror podcast but it’s a great line that storytelling needs a little trust that all looks normal before you realise the doors not locked and we are not heading where you think you’re going. I the car however stops and starts or weaves across the road before I get in then I think I may have to get the bus instead. Unfortunately, I found AM Shine’s folk horror novel Grace incredibly disappointing as it completely failed to make me believe in the story this was not a journey I think I’ll remember fondly.
Grace has long known she was adopted but one night in her bookshop she receives a call to tell her that her birth mother has passed away. Her priest father O’Malley offers to sell the family home on hr behalf but the chance to finally find our where she comes from is too much of a draw and Grace goes alone to the remote island of Croaghnakella to find a dwindling community where there are no children in sight. The Island’s history is returning and now everyone including Grace faces immense danger.
The folk horror plotline of people going to a remote village is a common storyline but ultimately this story never makes me buy it. Set in the modern day the small issue of the internet gets ignored why yes, I would just take a mysterious stranger’s word with no proof nor forget to look online and find how little is known about a community that has been there years. The Grace we initially met did not seem the type to accept things on face value. Shine then really overloads the story with revelations. Father O’Malley is actually an undercover priest (who knew) and has been there six years but seems to actually not found anything. He sends Grace into immense danger without warning just on a hunch and suddenly people now want to share long buried secrets. For a decently sized story there is way too much going on at once being squeezed into a pint pot It is not helped by Shone’s prose which I am usually of a fan of having to drop little nuggets of exposition in all the time to explain why people are doing the things they’re doing. It seems really to all allow two big reveals that actually are not as shocking as you would think.
Ultimately my feeling was that Grace needed to be a much shorter short story or novella focused on a single plotline or needed to be longer to more carefully reveal all the secrets of the island. For me it falls between these two stools and was not very effective at scaring me or crucially making me believe this story. Having hugely enjoyed Shine’s previous work this one I am afraid I cannot recommend.
