Devil's Day

August 1, 2018
Farmers clinging to an old way of life in Lancashire, England, also seem to cling to old legends and rituals featuring the devil in this compelling novel.John Pentecost has a new wife and a job as a teacher in Suffolk when he returns to his family's sheep farm in a "wild corner of Lancashire" for his grandfather's funeral. The Pentecosts are one of three close families in an area called the Endlands that have shared good and bad fortune for several generations. This time of year they also come together to help with harvest work, including the Gathering, when sheep are brought in from the moors for the winter, and the rituals of the Devil's Day, which recalls a deadly blizzard after the Great War. The local tradition of attributing misfortune to the "Owd Feller" takes fresh fuel from recent events--a fire in the woods, a mauled dog, a teen's strange behavior. Hurley (The Loney, 2016) has a lot going on here beyond harvest myths and rites. John questions his departure from the Endlands and from a family history bound up with the region's history of shared struggle after the locals bought their spreads from the landowners. The Devil's Day lore is, for John, part of his story, which he shares with his son, Adam, in a framing device that also spotlights in a special way the value of oral tradition. Meanwhile, Hurley explores the mysteries of human behavior and how they might explain strange events--not to mention the evil that men do--better than demonic influence. He delivers all this with consistently strong scenes, a few fine surprises, and good writing that often sparkles: "When the rain cuts deep into the upper slopes, the peat slips off the gritstone skull beneath and great wedges of the fellside end up in the clough."A complex and highly satisfying work.

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Starred review from August 13, 2018
Acentury-old folk legend—that the devil came down one autumn to the English sheep-farming community known as the Endlands and surreptitiously infected everyone he came into contact with before being driven out—colors the haunting events of this masterly thriller from Hurley (The Loney). In contemporary times, schoolteacher John Pentecost returns from Suffolk to his family’s Endlands farm with his wife, Kat, to attend the funeral of his grandfather and announce the impending birth of their first child. Almost immediately, they step into a mire of ominous portents: someone recently set fire to the nearby forest, animals are being killed, disembodied voices are heard on the moors, and one of the residents is mysteriously missing. Matters come to a head on Devil’s Day, celebrated before the annual gathering of the sheep, when the locals ritually give the devil his due and the border between superstitions and genuinely uncanny events wears perilously thin. Hurley keeps the explanations for what occurs deliciously ambiguous, filtering discoveries through John, who, as he selectively relates past memories to present happenings, reveals himself to be a less-than-forthcoming narrator at best. The result is an intensely suspenseful tale memorable for what it says about unshakable traditions that are bred in the bone. Agent: Lucy Luck, C+W Agency (U.K.).

August 1, 2018

Every fall, John Pentecost returns to the Endlands, the farmland that has been in his family for generations. To celebrate the "Gathering," families assemble the sheep down from the moors for the winter to keep them safe from the Devil. This year, John's grandfather has just died, and John brings his wife, Kat, for the funeral. Entering into a close-knit community filled with superstitions and odd traditions, Kat comes to realize the costs of trying to keep the Devil at bay. Hurley's second novel (after the Costa Award-winning The Loney) is poetically written and heavily detailed; however, it's greatly focused on setting and atmosphere, leaving the character development lacking. Also, John's omniscient narrative is distracting at times, as it's delivered from some point in the future. VERDICT While not as gripping as The Loney, the work's dark tone and slow buildup of suspense will still interest readers of gothic fiction. [Library marketing.]--Natalie Browning, LongwoodUniv. Lib., Farmville, VA

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Starred review from August 1, 2018
One story begets another, some of them painful, in this atmospheric account of three landholding families battling the vagaries of the natural and the supernatural on the Endlands, in the rugged Lancashire moors. John Pentecost, who left his family's sheep farm as a young man, returns every year from his home in Suffolk to help, with lambing in the spring, harvest in the summer, or gathering in the fall. But one October, he and his newly pregnant wife, Kat, return for the funeral of his 86-year-old grandfather, known as the Gaffer, an occasion that leads John to think seriously of the future. Only he is left to care for the family land, and he feels he is ready to assume that responsibility. Yet Kat?both frightened and repulsed by some of the behavior and rituals she experiences as the landholders observe their annual Devil's Day?vows to return to Suffolk. And John knows that it is vital that she stay. Hurley (The Loney, 2016) seamlessly weaves in backstory and fleshes out accounts of the isolated rural life and the horror it seems to engender. Does the devil really leap from one living creature to another in the Endlands, and does that account for the abnormal behavior that frightens Kat? Like Hurley's celebrated debut, this beautifully told gothic story of love, obligation, and legacy blends genres superbly. Hurley is considered one of the leading figures in what is called the British folk-horror revival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)