Synopsis
IT meets The Fisherman in this story of supernatural horror, nostalgia and mystery.
After a boy vanishes on the outskirts of a small Northern town, a woman spies from her window a mysterious man digging a grave in the exact spot of the disappearance.
However, when she confronts him, the man’s true purpose is far more chilling than she could have imagined and the history of the town’s fatal past unfolds. What has been hiding in this small northern town all these years?
Review
Horror Gang! How you doing?
The Northern Weird project is a collection of short, sharp, horror novellas, connected through their deep integration into the ways, feelings, and lifestyles of the North of England (as a Southern softie, boooooooooo!). The fifth of the planned six novellas is Talking Scared podcasts very own Neil McRobert, with his debut story, Good Boy. Now, for those of you who have listened to the podcast or know Neil personally, you’ll know he is an animal lover through and through (you’ll also know he dislikes James Joyce’s Ulysses, and that his university degree nearly killed him). So, when you go into Good Boy, with a sense of dread that this may include gratuitous animal harm like other horror stories – I mean, animals in horror books usually die, especially cover stars! – be rest assured this is not the case.
What we do get instead is the story of a boy that vanishes from a plot of land in a small Northern town, and a woman who spies a man digging a hole in that very spot where he disappeared. From there, the story spirals into one of a cosmic coming of age mystery, the life story of a boy-turning-man and his faithful terrier companion. This is a nested narrative, as Margie spies Jim digging a hole in that cursed plot of land merely days after a young boy disappears without a trace, and Jim, the man digging the hole, recounts his life to her. Good Boy is a novella that I didn’t know where it was going, and the premise alone keeps this sense of dread always lingering.
Jim’s life is one of small scope but huge ambitions and sacrifices. The town is a small little dot on the map, the kind of place everyone knows each other, and time stands still, the young folk fleeing the nest, as it were, when they can for opportunities in the cities. It’s the kind of nostalgia that’s both unique and unquantifiable, distinctly Northern that even I, Southern twat that I am, cannot fully grasp except through association with movies like Billy Elliot or Brassed Off, and yet they are universal feelings. From people dead set against change and progress, the shunning of those seen as “other”, regardless of the trauma that’s happened to them, or the isolating liminality of the same few streets you’ve known all your life, Symester feels like a living, breathing out-of-the-way community.
And I will admit, I was expecting something darker. But I’m glad it never got truly dark, because this story is full of heart, joy, and love of dogs/pets/companions. Neil writes character that feel like they are truly alive, and even the simplest of minor character feels like their own person, something that always feels like it takes a book from being just a story and into it becoming an experience. Jim is both regretful for not living a more open life, and yet immensely proud of his lifelong goal, he’s so endearing to follow. Margie’s arc from suspicious denial to finding a new lease on life tugged at my heartstrings.
Whilst I’m talking of heartstrings, I need to warn you; this story WILL make you cry. If it doesn’t, you are without a soul. I am a dog owner – my partner and I have 3 of the furry little gits, all different flavours. Earlier this year, we lost of our Willow, an invincible Springer Spaniel, quite suddenly after a short illness. She was crazy and strange right up until the end. But there’s a moment in this book that was eerily similar to something that happened in Willow’s final days, and it’s a moment that broke me. It was a healing moment though, because it made me cherish those memories I have with her, of her spinning for her dinner, or her sprinting full bore after a tennis ball, or her sniffing out the stinkiest, dankest bog in the vicinity in which to cast her Bog Witch spells in. And it made me hold our dogs that are still with us just that bit closer, even if they are a bit smelly.
It’s a story that I wish to talk in depth about, but I can’t because a) it’s not out until October and b) that would be spoilers, but I have so much to say about this book! It is one of the most joyous, sad, bittersweet stories I have ever experienced, and it’s a story that has cemented itself as a must read, something I won’t stop championing, and a story that I think may be one of my favourites of the year. Good Boy is a beautiful story of love, friendship, sacrifice, and holding the darkness at bay with the power of dog.
With thanks to Wild Hunt Books for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. And fuck you, Neil. How dare you make me cry!
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