Book Review: In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey ****

Charles Hayden and his wife Erin first met and bonded over the obscure Victorian fantasy novel In the Night Wood, by Erin’s distant relative Caedmon Hollow. After their daughter’s tragic death on her sixth birthday, however, the two are estranged, each trapped in his or her individual grief and, in his case, guilt, when they discover that Erin has inherited Hollow House, the ancestral manse where Hollow had lived and written the book, on the edge of one of the oldest forests in Britain. They cross the Atlantic in the hopes of escaping their own demons and, in Charles’ case, of finding material for a biography of the mysterious author. Instead, they find themselves drawn deeper into Caedmon Hollow’s world, where the forest is deep and dangerous, and little girls can get lost forever in the fulfillment of a dark bargain made long ago.

This is exactly the type of book I like—gothic; carefully structured, with people and events echoing and referring to one another; allusive; and deeply rooted in British folklore. I would love to give it 5 stars, and if half stars were allowed I might consider four and a half. Its biggest flaw, however, which I could not ignore, was its portrayal of Charles’ wife Erin, especially considering that she ends up playing a pivotal role at the climax. To me, Erin barely exists at all, as she is consumed by her grief for her daughter. There is reference to her having been an attorney, I believe, but the only time I can ever remember seeing her as a person is at the time of her meeting with Charles. Maybe it’s necessary for the plot and I’m suffering from a failure of empathy (I can’t even imagine how devastating it must be to lose a child), but her obsessive wallowing starts to seem self-indulgent, and it’s hard for me to believe she could rouse herself to the extent she does. Charles also comes off badly in his apparent willingness to allow her to essentially destroy herself, though again, it could be argued that this is necessary to the story. I also found the ending a bit abrupt. Some of the aforementioned problems I had might have been assuaged if we had seen something of what followed and—assuming that Erin might have begun to heal from her grief—a fuller, more rounded picture of her.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

From October 29, 2018