Mercia’s Take by Daniel Wiles

[holyzombiejesus]

Finished this last night and still thinking about it. It's the story of a miner in the black country in the late 19th century and reads a bit like Cynan Jones doing Cormac McCarthy. Ben Myers - a writer not fit to be mentioned in the same thread as others referenced here - reviewed it for the guardian...

"Michael Cash is a hewer – he descends into the subterranean shafts and tunnels of the Black Country to swing a pickaxe at the seams of coal that run there. If a more perilous occupation exists in England in the 1870s, then it perhaps belongs only to the often-orphaned children who are paid a pittance to drag the wagons that Michael and his colleagues fill, and whipped if they stop to scratch the sores made by the chains that bind them.

Here, subterranean stalls propped up by planks can collapse instantly, killing those who made them, and noxious gases permeate. In a good week, Michael earns enough to buy leeks and potatoes with which his new wife can make broth to feed the family, but not enough to pay for his six-year-old son Luke's schooling. A bony roach or two lifted from a dreary pond supplements their diet. Like so many miners, Michael's main motivation is preventing his son from having to follow him down into the Dante-esque circles of hell that Daniel Wiles brilliantly evokes in this confident and moving debut.

Sun-starved life above ground in a cruel November isn't much better. Here, "ossdrawn barges churned up silt from the cut floor as they slithered past ... One boat held so many people that some nippers even swam behind it in the dark matter, only visible by the light that hung behind the boat. Dogs swam with them, their eyes reflecting like buoyed beacons." A change in fortune comes when..."

It's so great, still thinking about the world Wiles builds. It's only 200 or so pages long too and I found myself putting it down before I really wanted to as there's so much to savour in the writing.

[Inspector Norse]

Had this on my list for a while, looking forward to reading it. There seems to be a movement in recent years of stuff that does a kind of mish-mash of historical fiction, folk horror, kitchen-sink realism and nature writing. From this to Myers (I liked The Gallows Pole, he seems to churn out a lot though) to the Paul Kingsnorth one to M John Harrison's (brilliant) latest, there's some kind of ineffable, intangible thread there.

[holyzombiejesus]

Had this on my list for a while, looking forward to reading it. There seems to be a movement in recent years of stuff that does a kind of mish-mash of historical fiction, folk horror, kitchen-sink realism and nature writing. From this to Myers (I liked The Gallows Pole, he seems to churn out a lot though) to the Paul Kingsnorth one to M John Harrison's (brilliant) latest, there's some kind of ineffable, intangible thread there.

Was that the one about the town with the big wall?

Myers reminds me of this dick at secondary school who always used to draw gruesome pictures whilst making silly gruesome noises.

[Inspector Norse]

Was that the one about the town with the big wall?

No think that was his last one, also meant to be good but not read it. The one I mean was about weird stuff going on with rivers and ponds.