“….every year a few people drowned - The Loney had been pushing their bones back inland as if proving a point”
It is Easter weekend and a group of people are on an annual pilgrimage to attend a shrine on the bleak and craggy Lancashire coast. They are a small dedicated cohort of 4 couples, accompanied by their spiritual leader, Father Bernard. The group consists of the narrator (un-named) and his disabled brother, Andrew (“Hanny” to his brother); the pure and devout Miss Bunce and her fiancee, David Hobs, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and the narrator’s parents Mummer and Farther (Mr and Mrs Smith). Father Bernard is considered by most to be a poor substitute for their much loved priest, Father Wilfred, who had recently died in mysterious circumstances.
They reside for the weekend at “Moorings”, a derelict, dark house with its own secrets and portents. The bleakness of their surroundings seems to represent their piety and spiritual suffering in their hope of finding a cure for Hanny’s disability, which will hopefully take place at a local shrine on Easter Sunday. In contrast, another house across the lethal waters of the bay named “Thessaly”, taunts us with its offering of spiritual destitution and pagan practices. And there is always the constant reminder of the ever-present sinister villagers and their killer dog….
We thought it had the makings of a good film with its descriptive imagery and ominous enticements, finding it “scary”, “perplexing”, “frustrating” and unfortunately even “boring” in places. The initial response contrasted sharply between thoroughly disliking the novel to completely loving it, but either way it gave rise to an interesting and absorbing discussion.
The plot follows the narrator’s story, travelling back and forth through his lifetime, which most of us found both distracting and fascinating at the same time. Hurley seems to suspend the story in a limbo between the strange and the supernatural. The book is full of atmospheric contrasts and we reflected on many examples, such as the description of a sheep giving birth to her lamb in dark and stormy circumstances creating a dramatic conflict between the miraculous and the “gothic sinister”.
It was felt by some that the book neither mocks the believer nor admonishes the non-believer. However, this was countered by the feeling that religion was dealt with in a cynical manner and that blind faith was made ludicrous through its characters’ rituals as, for example, in the ceremonial wetting of Hanny with the fetid well water. The book certainly had an eerie mix of religious fervour and pagan superstition. Although tense and nail-biting at times, the adventures of the brothers sometimes tipped over into the “Famous Five” as time and again they made their way across the lethal waters of The Loney. Again, however, we were drawn back by the descriptions of the Lancashire landscape with its sense of impending danger to powerfully sustain our curiosity and imagination:
“a dead mouth of a bay that filled and emptied twice a day”
or
“the soggy afterbirth of winter”.
Hurley describes the landscape and the characters in it with intricate detail but taunts us with questions begging for answers.
Some of us expressed feelings of unease which the claustrophobic atmosphere created in the reader, but we all agreed there were touching moments in the human relationships between the pilgrims, like the narrator and his disabled brother Hanny, or the friendship between the brothers and Father Bernard. Also, the clumsy devices which were planted to help with the development of the plot, like the dead priest’s lost diaries or the letters found in the locked room in “Moorings”, merely contrived to frustrate, leaving us to make our own way to find explanations. It certainly kept our meeting buzzing, if nothing else!
We also agreed that the characters were cleverly defined and realistically portrayed and that Hurley drew our sympathy and dislike for them with equal measure. Nevertheless, the book left a deep impression, if only for the contrasts and the dynamics which drives it. “The Loney” certainly played with our minds and although it was not originally intended as a gothic horror it certainly contained all the elements.
And so on this night, as darkness fell in the shadowy depths of the “The Vic” after thoroughly analysing and demystifying “evil” versus “good” for an hour or more, our dedicated group took comfort and some relief, in food and refreshment, to talk only of lighter, more day-to-day things and laugh a little... As it was Anne Marie's birthday, we celebrated with a cake.
“The Loney” was awarded 3.5 marks out of 5.
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