The Loney

Andrew Michael Hurley

May 2016 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this eBook

Hailed as “a masterful excursion into terror” by the Sunday Times—the eerie, suspenseful debut novel from the author of Devil’s Day and Starve Acre.

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award
A Best Book of the Year, London Times and Daily Mail

“The terrors of this novel feel timeless . . . There are abominations here, and miracles.”—New York Times Book Review

“An amazing piece of fiction.”—Stephen King

“Completely terrifying.”—Paula Hawkins

“Vibrantly written.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Stunning” —Jeff VanderMeer

When Smith was a boy, he and his family went on an Easter pilgrimage with their local parish to the Loney, a bleak stretch of the English coastline, to visit an ancient shrine in search of healing for Smith’s disabled brother. But the locals were none too pleased to welcome them, and the two brothers soon became entangled in a troubling morass of dangerous rituals.

For years after, Smith carries the burden of what happened that spring. And when he hears that the body of a young child has been found during a storm at the Loney, he’s forced to finally reckon with his darkest secrets—and the terror they carry with them.
“The masterpiece by which Hurley will enter the Guild of the Gothic”—Guardian

“Fans of Shirley Jackson are sure to savor . . . Tight, suspenseful writing makes this masterful novel unsettling in the most compelling way.”—Washington Post

Ratings and reviews

How to describe Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney? Some of the adjectives which spring to mind are gothic, eerie, assured, suspenseful, and sinister. The bulk of the book is an extended flashback to a trip the narrator and his mute and intellectually disabled brother Hanny took with Mummer, Farther, their priest, and several fellow parishioners to a creepy house in Lancashire known as Moorings. This particular trip was the last in a series of annual pilgrimages to a shrine at which Mummer believes Hanny will miraculously become "normal." The flashback is prompted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton at Coldbarrow, a second creepy house located not far from Moorings. This opening is much more jolting to the reader than it sounds, because when Hanny is introduced on the first page, he is a respected pastor, author, husband, and father. How he was "cured" is the central mystery of the novel. Was it a miracle from God, as Hanny's bestselling My Second Life with God suggests? Or was it the result of a darker bargain? It is this tension between Mummer's version of Christianity and the ominous atmosphere at Moorings which gives The Loney its power, although Hurley's description of both locations provides a clue: "St. Jude's [the Catholic church attended by the narrator's family in London] was a monstrosity. . . . From the outside it was imposing and gloomy and the thick, hexagonal spire gave it the look of a mill or factory. Indeed, it seemed purpose-built in the same sort of way, with each architectural component carefully designed to churn out obedience, faith or hope in units per week according to demand. . . . I often thought there was too much time there [the Loney]. That the place was sick with it. Haunted by it. Time didn’t leak away as it should. There was nowhere for it to go and no modernity to hurry it along. It collected as the black water did on the marshes and remained and stagnated in the same way." One thing that really struck me was Hurley's selection of names for his places and characters. Take "Mummer," for instance. I am used to the British referring to their mothers as "Mum," but I had never seen "Mummer" used as a name before. A mummer, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "[a]n actor in a traditional masked mime." Is Mummer's faith an act? What might she be hiding behind that mask? The insular village in which she grew up, with its own language and traditions, was "within spitting distance" of Moorings, Coldbarrow, and the Loney, so perhaps her expectations of the shrine's healing power are not those of the traditional Catholic pilgrim. Nuances like these elevate The Loney above the other horror and mystery novels with which it might be shelved. I received a free copy of The Loney through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

About the author

ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEY lives in Lancashire, where he teaches English literature and creative writing. He has published two short story collections. His first novel, The Loney, won the Costa First Book Award, was short-listed for the James Herbert Award, and was published in twenty territories.