#ReadingLife: The Watchers

Today's spooky read is The Watchers, by A.M. Shine, and it hit my radar earlier this year thanks to the trailers for the film adaptation - which I have not watched, but plan to soon. Shine is Irish, and the novel is set in Connemara. His author bio states that he's passionate about the Gothic horror tradition, and The Watchers is certainly Gothic. In the true sense. Today, the term "Gothic" most often references the aesthetic of a novel, but, more substantively, it refers to "the battle between humanity and unnatural forces of evil." A bleak and hopeless landscape is of course a part of the overall haunting atmosphere of this genre. 

The novel opens with a stinger prologue that immediately raises all the fine hairs on the back of your neck. We then cut to our heroine, Mina, a struggling artist who makes most of her money at the gambling tables, and who spends her days and evenings at a local pub sketching strangers. She's a watcher herself. She takes a job from a barfly friend: transporting a parrot to a buyer in Connemara. She never reaches her destination. Instead, her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, her phone dies, and after a cold night spent in the car, she sets off on foot...into the dark and scary forest. 

Pro tip: don't ever go walking through the dark and scary forest. 

What follows is genuinely terrifying and pulse-pounding at moments. I, admittedly, read the bulk of the book in the daylight, and saved less hair-raising books for just before bed. There's two twists, one I anticipated...and which turns out not to be as twisty as I expected. The horrors are not, in fact, manmade. I was anticipating a Cabin in the Woods situation, but it turns out nightmares are real. Yikes. And the second twist is The Sixth Sense-worthy, and very cleverly woven into the narrative. The type that makes you reflect back on all that came before with an "ooooh. Okay. I can see it now." And which doesn't make you feel foolish, only delighted by the author's cunning subterfuge. 

Without spoiling too much, I'll recommend this novel to anyone who likes a dose of fairytales and folklore with their horror, and who enjoys the Irish flair for lushly drawn environments and introspective characters.