The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson

Liam Higginson delivers some slow building, darkly effective Welsh folk horror in his debut novel The Hill in the Dark Grove. The story centres around Carwyn and Rhian, the last of a long line of famers who scrape a living from tending sheep in the hills of North Wales. But it goes much deeper than this, with Higginson providing historical glimpses of the area and its often violent past as the story progresses.

When The Hill in the Dark Grove opens, Carwyn and Rhian are in fairly desperate straits – digging sheep and their spring lambs out of a snow drift. Soon they are also rescuing a couple of lost hikers. Those hikers have strayed into an overgrown paddock that Carwyn has ignored for years. When Carwyn goes down to investigate he spies an old statue in a hole. Carwyn excavates the statue and after he does so, slowly becomes obsessed with excavating the site further, sure that he will uncover a trove of valuable ancient artefacts. As this obsession grows, Rhian is left to manage their failing farm, which seems to be affected by more than just seasonal difficulties.

As Carwyn starts to withdraw Higginson switches the point of view from to Rhian. In doing so, Higginson manages to maintain a sense of creeping dread. In a way, Carwyn is too far gone to be react normally to the seemingly unnatural occurrences on the farm. This growing obsession, and its impact on their relationship, is juxtaposed with flashback chapters which focus on how the two met and their courtship, and the potential future that Rhian turned her back on to be with him.

Higginson captures the wildness and loneliness of the Welsh landscape but also digs deeply into its troubled and superstitious history. Standing stones, burial mounds, malicious statuary all make an appearance – feeling at once of a piece with the harsh landscape and antithetical to the humans who live there. All of which builds to make The Hill in the Dark Grove an effective piece of folk horror and an impressive debut.

The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson

7.5

7.5/10