Withered Hill by David Barnett

Book Review

Rima Devereaux

Sophie is a young woman living in London who parties hard and whose friends are moving away from her in different ways. She is kidnapped and taken to a remote village called Withered Hill – the evocative name belies the lush vegetation but points to a deeper reality – the inhabitants of which practise a hedonistic form of paganism. She is told that she will be allowed to leave the village when she is ready. The book traces the progress of Outside, with a countdown to her kidnapping, showing how she was led to the village through her encounters in London. Interspersed with this is the tale of Inside, where Sophie talks to the villagers in an effort to discover what being ‘ready to leave’ means, and also takes part in various rituals where all inhibitions are set free.

It is not possible to say more about the plot without giving away the appalling twist at the end, which has something of The Stepford Wives about it. But as the reader journeys with Sophie Outside, she meets other people in Sophie’s life: her previous boyfriend, Jamie; her new boss, Mandy; her slightly nerdy work colleague, Colin; and her new boyfriend, Tom. The author cleverly toys both with Sophie’s emotions as she interacts with these people and with the reader’s emotions as we try to make sense of events. Who can be trusted, if anyone? What is really going on?

The book deserves comparison with the classic 1973 folk horror film The Wicker Man and the David Pinner novel Ritual on which the film draws. However, in my view, Withered Hill is even more horrifying than The Wicker Man, which opposes good and evil in a more traditional way by contrasting Christianity with the remote Scottish island’s paganism. There is no such comfort, slender as it is, in Withered Hill. Instead, in a process that hints at Stockholm syndrome, Sophie orchestrates her own fate and believes she is working with the villagers to come to some form of enlightenment. The contrast that is set up in Barnett’s novel is, in fact, between the paganism of the villagers, which they themselves see as morally superior, and the dissolute life that Sophie has previously been living.

In summary, I could not put this book down, but it was not an easy read. It is disturbing and haunting, and its effect stays with you. I highly recommend it.