Description
'Deliciously chilly' - Guardian
'Humming with suppressed hysteria and madness' - The Times
'Wonderfully evocative' - Heat
Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . .
In the first brisk days of autumn, a woman arrives in Scotland having left her job at an all-girls school in London in mysterious circumstances. Moving into a cottage on the remote estate of Hare House, she begins to explore her new home. But among the tiny roads, wild moorland, and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.
Striking up a friendship with her landlord and his younger sister, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch.
Sally Hinchcliffe's Hare House is a modern-day witch story, perfect for fans of Pine and The Loney.
'A beautiful, slow burn of a novel, eerie and shimmering in equal measure' - Mary Paulson-Ellis
Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . .
About the Author
Sally Hinchcliffe was born in London but grew up all over the world in the wake of her father's diplomatic career. She spent many years working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew developing research systems for taxonomists until a two-year sabbatical in Eswatini gave her the impetus to take her writing seriously. After completing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, her first novel, Out of a Clear Sky, was published by Macmillan. She moved to south-west Scotland to work as a writer and freelance editor full time, when she is now out exploring rural Dumfries and Galloway on her bike. Hare House is her second novel.
Reviews
A beautiful, slow burn of a novel, eerie and shimmering in equal measure. The bewitching prose brilliantly evokes the bleak glories of a remote Scottish landscape, while the subtle shifts of plot and perspective lure the reader towards an unsettling denouement where nothing is quite what it seems. A dark uncanny read and all the more satisfying for that -- Mary Paulson-Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker and Emily Noble's Disgrace
Eerie and subtle . . . This deliciously chilly tale dodges the expected outcome and maintains a delicate balance between psychology and witchcraft right to its disturbing end
* Guardian *A tale humming with suppressed hysteria and madness * The Saturday Times *
The atmosphere of sickly oddness creeps up with wonderful control. Hinchcliffe has a superb sense for the slightly off detail . . . Hinchcliffe has crafted an exquisitely, horribly unreliable narrator. But if the character is not to be trusted, the author very much is: Hare House is a marvellously nasty piece of distinctly Scottish gothic * The Times *
Dark and absorbing . . . A compelling chiller redolent of Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal, Hare House treads the treacherous line between the real and the supernatural with dexterity. It is also a beautiful, if sinister, evocation of the Dumfries and Galloway landscape -- Fiona Rintoul * The Herald *
Wonderfully evocative * Heat *
A deeply unsettling modern-day tale of witchcraft * Woman's Weekly *
Hinchcliffe writes atmospherically . . . Fans of the supernatural will find much to enjoy in this eerie tale * Literary Review *
Slightly gothic, it is a quietly eerie novel, beautifully written, one that keeps a reader alert * Belfast Telegraph *
Marvellously atmospheric . . . The atmosphere of sickly oddness creeps up with wonderful control. Hinchcliffe has a superb sense for the slightly off detail -- the strangeness of a house that seems to contain a presence even when there's no one else there -- Sarah Ditum * The Times *
Splendidly sinister and shrouded in forbidding atmosphere, Sally Hinchcliffe's assured second novel Hare House is a slice of wintry folk horror featuring witchcraft, curses and madness * Yorkshire Evening Post *
This thriller is the perfect novel for winter * Health & Wellbeing *
Book Information
ISBN 9781529061673
Author Sally Hinchcliffe
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Pan Books
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 220g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 130mm * 20mm
