REVIEW: Little Eve
“It is a lonely thing to be a monster.”
Contemporary horror author Catriona Ward caught me by surprise with her Shirley Jackson Award-winning novel Little Eve, set mostly in 1920s Scotland. I’ve never read anything by her before and I am psyched to read more. Ward tackles religion, doomsday cults, power and control, and giant snake gods with timeless prose and unreliable narration.
I haven’t read much contemporary gothic horror (with the exception of the incredible Silvia Moreno-Garcia) but Little Eve hits the nail on the head with the exploration of the supernatural or drug-induced (or both?) horrors of Altnaharra, a castle inhabited by the cult leader figure of Uncle and his prisoners? Lovers? Children? The unknowing is essential to both the reader’s unease and the characters’ indecisiveness about their status. Do they love Uncle? Do they fear him? What the fuck is in that honey he makes them eat off his fingers??
In keeping with gothic themes, Altnaharra is a bleak, dreary, rain-battered peninsula. When the tide turns, the inhabitants are trapped behind gates of icy water, cutting them off from the nearest village of Loyal. Not that they’d be welcome in Loyal anyways; the townspeople’s hate and fear fills the town in the same way that Eve, Nora, Alice, Abel, and Baby Elizabeth (Uncle’s followers) are filled with the benison that keeps them tied to Altnaharra.
The only experience I have with religion was attending my Jesuit undergrad, but even I could parse out the pretty obvious religious undertones. Eve has a peculiar relationship with the snake who lives in Altnaharra, sometimes believing she sees through his eyes. The cult’s religion is unclear, which adds to the ability of Uncle to alter the rules any way he sees fit, including withholding food. I kind of thought that Eve would eat an apple against his wishes or something, but maybe that would be a little in-your-face religion-wise.
While the prose was beautiful and vivid, there was a lack of that specific kind of horror writing that chills you to the bone. I love to be almost grossed out by horror, but no shivers climbed my spine during my reading of Little Eve. There was some body horror, but even the sacrificial elements felt like they could’ve been deepened to a more disgusting level. But maybe that’s just my preference as a gross girl!
Overall, Little Eve was a fun, confusing, beautifully written piece that could have been written now or fifty years ago, a noteworthy feat when half of the horror novels out right now are like There’s A Ghost In My Alexa. I’m interested in books that creep me out! Or make me feel weird about seals! Looking forward to more Catriona Ward.
RATING: ☆☆☆☆