You are invited to imagine yourselves as warden for an old graveyard, and choose eight books, preferably horror/dark genre, to take with you to cover your shift; here you can discuss why you chose the books.
As well as the books, wardens are allowed one song/album to listen to. Again, an explanation for this choice is required.
You must also discuss one luxury item you can bring, which must be inanimate and not allow communication.
If you’d like to take part in The Graveyard Shift then please submit an application to gavin@kendallreviews.com
A new shift is about to begin. The warden for the week’s #GraveyardShift is…
Catriona Ward
*** THE MUST-READ GOTHIC THRILLER OF 2021 ***
‘The buzz is real.. I haven’t read anything this exciting since Gone Girl’ – STEPHEN KING
‘This spectacular gothic fantasy is one of the most extraordinary thrillers of the year’ – DAILY MAIL
‘Catriona Ward is the new face of literary dark fiction’ – SARAH PINBOROUGH
This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.
All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.
You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. But you’re wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it’s not what you think…
You can buy The Last House On Needless Street from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Books
The Haunting of Hill House By Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece is as remarkable for its prose and cunning circular construction as for the deep unease it provokes in the reader. This was the first book that scared me as an adult. I read it on a bright summer morning. I still recall the horror that crawled over me, more awful somehow, for the sunlight streaming in the window. Shirley Jackson is afraid of the dark, but perhaps even more terrified of the perils of mundane, everyday life. Which fate is worse, the novel asks; to be consumed by Hill House, or to dwindle into old age, a poor woman, surplus to her family’s and society’s requirements? As the mesmerising opening paragraph states, ‘“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.’
The Five By Hallie Rubenhold
A marvel of scholarship that re-centres our centuries-long obsession with the crimes of Jack the Ripper, focusing a lens on the lives of the canonical five victims: Mary-Anne Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Rubenhold exposes false, deeply embedded historical assumptions about these women and unveils the prurience and misogyny through which the cases are often viewed. The beauty of this book is often in the meticulous detail, which brings the women vividly to life. It’s moving, too. I was in tears as I read the last few pages of the book – which is simply a list of the possessions – some practical, others small personal treasures – that each woman had on her when she was found.
Get in Trouble By Kelly Link
This Pulitzer shortlisted collection of short stories changed the way I write, and maybe even how I see the world, a little. Whether it’s a superhero whose only power is to hover a few feet off the ground, or a family trapped into a fairy bargain in rural Kentucky, Kelly Link makes the fantastical seem real, and vice versa. ‘The Ghost Boyfriend,’ about a new kind of doll for teenage girls, ‘I Can See Right through You,’ about an aging movie star who visits his old lover on the set of her ghost-hunting reality TV show, and ‘Two Houses,’ a tale about a haunted spaceship are particular favourites of mine. The final story about pocket worlds is almost a metaphor for the book – you slip in and out of her universes with ease, dazzled by each one.
I’ll be Gone in the Dark By Michelle McNamara
This true-crime account of the decades-long hunt for the Golden State Killer has its own tragic backstory. The author died before finishing the book, after a five-year obsessive trawl through the crimes which scarred her mind and heart. Her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt, helped finish it and the book was published to great acclaim in 2018. Michelle MacNamara never lived to see the Golden State killer unmasked and arrested later that year, nearly forty years after he began to terrorise Southern California. Her ability to bring the crimes alive, restore them from numbers and facts into visceral, heart-breaking scenes of life and loss, is unparalleled.
IT By Stephen King
I remember first reading this at the age of twelve. It introduced me, as I imagine it will generations of readers yet to come, to contemporary horror. I loved the vast canvas of it. It carries such strong themes of community and friendship, and the potential pitfalls of all those things. Despite its length I finished it in days. It’s just so exciting and impossible to put down.
Ayoade on Top By Richard Ayoade
Richard Ayoade’s 240 page, almost scene by scene analysis of the long-forgotten Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle ‘View from the Top’ stretches its parody of film criticism so far it breaks into genius. Filled with footnotes and earnest interpretations of each shot of the lustreless 2003 cabin crew dramedy, it’s a well of surreal hilarity – and somehow also a lacerating indictment of everything wrong with film and celebrity culture.
Melmoth the Wanderer By Charles Maturin
This lengthy puzzle box of a book redefined the limits of the gothic novel for me. It is composed of many, many enclosed narratives, ranges across hundreds of years, from Pacific Islands to the Spanish Inquisition to nineteenth-century Ireland. Through it all stalks the dark figure of the Wanderer, haunting his descendants through the generations. It was a strong influence on my debut novel Rawblood, about a family on Dartmoor who are killed by the white spectral figure of her if ever they marry, or have children. Melmoth is a tough read, but the technical ambition cannot fail to impress and nested within its many pages are some plot strands of vivid beauty.
Watership Down By Richard Adams
I will never understand why this is perceived as a children’s book. An ode to community, friendship and cooperation, all seen through the eyes of rabbits, ‘Watership Down’ is wonderful, horror-filled and tragic all at the same time, in all the best ways. The book plunges you into a fully realised world, with its own spiritual belief, vocabulary and urgent priorities. Adams’s descriptions of the British countryside make the heart ache. A perfect fable, characterised by both light and shadow, like sun and cloud chasing one another over the downs.
Album
I’m Your Man By Leonard Cohen
My family moved from the US, to Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco when I was growing up. There was a lot of travel, usually driving along rutted roads in the heat. I’ll always remember driving through Morocco, in particular, with the windows open, this album blasting. My whole family loved Leonard Cohen, and we all saw him live twice in London before he died. And ‘I’m Your Man’ has stood the test of time. It’s somehow perfect pop, threaded through with Cohen’s darkness. It’s an unlikely fusion and I love it.
Luxury item
Very cold, dry white wine.
The Last House On Needless Street
This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.
All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.
You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. But you’re wrong. In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it’s not what you think…
You can buy The Last House On Needless Street from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Rawblood
For generations they have died young, and now fifteen-year-old Iris and her father are the last of the Villarca line. Confined to their lonely mansion on Dartmoor, they suffer their disease in isolation. But Iris breaks her promise to hide from the world and dares to fall in love.
It is only then that they understand the true horror of the Villarca curse, the curse of the bone-white woman who visits in the night, leaving death in her wake.
You can buy Rawblood from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Little Eve
Eve and Dinah are everything to one another, never parted day or night. They are raised among the Children, a community of strays and orphans ruled by a mysterious figure they call Uncle. All they know is the grey Isle of Altnaharra which sits in the black sea off the wildest coast of Scotland.
Eve loves the free, savage life of the Isle and longs to inherit Uncle’s power. She is untroubled save by her dreams; of soft arms and a woman singing. Dinah longs for something other.
But the world is at war and cannot be kept at bay. As the solitude of Altnaharra is broken, Eve’s faith and sanity fracture. In a great storm, in the depths of winter, as the old year dies, the locals discover a devastating scene on the Isle.
Eve and Dinah’s accounts of that night contradict and intertwine. As past and present converge, only one woman can be telling the truth. Who is guilty, who innocent?
You can buy Little Eve from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Catriona Ward
CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Stephen King praised her latest gothic thriller, The Last House on Needless Street, saying, ‘I was blown away. Haven’t read anything this exciting since Gone Girl.’ The Last House on Needless Street is published by Viper (Serpents Tail) and Tor Nightfire. Ward’s second novel Little Eve won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award, the August Derleth Prize at the British Fantasy Awards and was a Guardian best book of 2018. Her debut Rawblood also won the 2016 August Derleth, making her the only woman to have won the prize twice. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and shortlisted for various awards including the Tom Gallon Trust Award from the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London and Devon.
Follow Catriona on Twitter @Catrionaward
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