{"id":9032,"date":"2019-12-16T10:56:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T10:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=9032"},"modified":"2019-12-16T10:56:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T10:56:58","slug":"starve-acre-by-andrew-michael-hurley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/starve-acre-by-andrew-michael-hurley\/","title":{"rendered":"Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Starve Acre<\/a> <\/em>is a chilling little book – perfect to be read at this time of year, when the long dark nights are upon us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starve Acre itself is the name of a house sitting somewhere in the wild Yorkshire moors, miles from anywhere. It’s not a farm, although the land does include a large field, where once a mighty oak may or may not have grown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard and Juliette had moved to the house to bring up their young son. Yet their son has died – although it’s unclear what caused the tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point Richard and Juliette might as well be estranged. Juliette will barely leave her son’s bedroom, where she spends her time sleeping with and being near his things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard spends his time occupying himself with cataloguing his father’s books and conducting some amateur archaeology in the field. He’s determined to prove the existence of the tree – even though it seems to have been used as a hangman’s tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The family unit has fallen apart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The setting isn’t explicit, but sometime in the seventies – but life doesn’t move fast in these parts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juliette’s sister comes to stay and to try to rouse her sister from her bed. She’s putting a lot into a strange local spiritualist who might be able to help her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, Richard has found the skeleton of a hare in the field, and is getting unhealthily obsessed with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is ghost story and a beautifully atmospheric one. At a time of year when tales of MR James come to our minds, this fits squarely into that folk horror bracket. It reminds me too of the excellent Wakenhyrst<\/a><\/em> by Michelle Paver that also takes place in rural idyll-turned-nightmare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curl up to this on a dark night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starve Acre is a chilling little book – perfect to be read at this time of year, when the long dark nights are upon us. Starve Acre itself is the name of a house sitting somewhere in the wild Yorkshire moors, miles from anywhere. It’s not a farm, although the land does include a large […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[108],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9034,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9032\/revisions\/9034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}