379 pages
Published 2024
Read from January 29 to February 5
Rating: 4 out of 5
This year, I hope to read books I truly want to read, instead of bulking up my numbers with disposable pulp that just happens to be brief. Reading for numbers has had a regrettable effect on what I read. I’ve been completely neglecting contemporary full-length fantasy, one of my favorite categories. I think I only read a couple of them all last year. Time to change that!
My partner R read this book just about a year ago, and loved it enough to recommend it in the highest terms. After reading it, I have to concur. Van Veen’s prose is understated yet beautiful, dispassionately depicting horrors of living and dead alike. The Dutch countryside is a character all its own, vividly described, haunted by the misty ghosts of wetlands.
As an abused young girl in the aftermath of World War II, Roos becomes attached to a spirit she names Ruth. Ghosts, in van Veen’s inventive worldbuilding, only linger when the body itself does; Ruth’s body has tanned for centuries in a bog, giving her spirit the classic appearance of a bog body. A mysterious widow named Agnes purchases Ruth’s autonomy from her horrid guardian. It turns out Agnes, too, is attached to an ancient spirit of her own. But that’s just the beginning of Dreadful’s Gothic turns.
My favorite thing about this book is the conceit of truly ancient ghosts. More stories should incorporate ghosts from millennia ago. But even without that particular niche interest, this is a beautifully rendered tragedy of obsession, possession, and trauma. An outstanding book.
