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Summary
Summary
"An impressively hectic spin on the Gothic tradition"--Telegraph
The winner of BEST HORROR NOVEL at the British Fantasy Awards by the author of The House on Needless Street!
What if it's not your mansion that's haunted--it's you?
Young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted by "her," a curse passed down through the generations that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak and death. For generations, the Villarcas have died young, under mysterious circumstances.
But Iris dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began, and where it must all end...
Perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Girl from Rawblood will pull readers through time into the early 1800s and 1900s, mesmerizing them with this lyrical story of cunning folk horror right until the breathtaking finish.
Praise for The Girl from Rawblood:
"Superb debut....Ward perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny."
--Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
"The Girl from Rawblood makes a powerful contribution to the British literature of the fantastic...There's a touch of Ted Hughes here, Emily Bronte and M.R James in this eerie and by turns moving story that spans generations...A definite book of the year for me."
--Adam Nevill, award-winning author of The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive
"The Girl from Rawblood weaves a spell that both terrifies and mesmerizes. As each layer of mystery is peeled away, more haunting truth is revealed. The book leaves the reader breathless in its gothic tale of fear, family, blood, and love."
--Simone St. James, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Born in England in 1899, Iris Villarca, the principal narrator of Ward's superb debut, grows up without human company, except for Tom Gilmore, a farmer's son with whom she forms a secret bond, and her father, Alonso, the only other surviving Villarca. She believes that a rare disease necessitates their seclusion at Rawblood, their Dartmoor estate, but as she matures, Alonso reveals the truth: isolation is the only way to save Iris from a ghostly presence that destroys the Villarcas when they fall in love, marry, or have children. As WWI begins, Iris violates her father's interdictions with horrific repercussions for both of them. A flashback to 1881, related by Charles Danforth, a doctor privy to Alonso's complex past, reveals other horrors. Later, new viewpoints, spanning the years from 1839 to 1919, focus on the family's women as each negotiates the powerlessness of her situation and time. Sharply evoked particulars-Devon's landscape and period medical science emerge with special vividness-help root the spectral phenomena. Wade perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny. Agent: Sam Copeland, Rogers, Coleridge & White (U.K.). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The old family mansion known as Rawblood, on Dartmoor in southwest England, is a madman's dream, a fit setting for Ward's atmospheric debut. When the novel opens in 1910, 11-year-old Iris Villarca lives there with her father, Alonso, attended only by the loyal Shakes; the other servants have gone. Alonso has told Iris that the family suffers from a hereditary disease, and the only defense is to follow the Rules. Chief among these is the need to keep other people away, since it is a death sentence to join anyone to the family. Iris defies her father by forming a bond with Tom, the son of a neighboring farmer. Tom tells her about a murdered girl buried at Rawblood; is this the source of the horrifying presence that haunts the house, bringing destruction whenever she appears? In addition to a ghost, Ward folds Victorian medical research, lobotomy, child abuse, opium addiction, consumption, a Gypsy's curse, WWI, and other elements into a plot that shifts between time periods, generations, and distinct narrative voices, each layer deepening the mystery and drawing readers along.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A haunted family manse overlooking the majestic moors of the British countryside, an orphaned young woman at the mercy of heartless relatives, a Jekyll-and-Hyde doctor - these are among the strikingly familiar elements of Ward's debut novel. A Gothic tale that spans 80 years, from 1839 to 1919, "The Girl From Rawblood" chronicles the downward spiral of the Villarcas, a Spanish-British clan whose ancestral home, Rawblood, is stalked by a ghost, known only as "her," who rains misery on this benighted family. Under Rawblood's roof, Mary Villarca flies into rages and stabs out her own eyes with a poker. (Found on the floor beside her, "the tip still glowed red.") Her son, Alonso, becomes "addled with opiates," and his daughter, Iris, the novel's central narrator, impales him with his own hypodermic needle during a bloody fight. Even the family dog dies of "fear." Alonso, once a budding immunologist like his idol and contemporary Pasteur, likens "her" to a disease. As he explains it, "she travels in our blood, passed down." She is "a biological inheritance, as much as a spiritual one." Blood-borne pathogens, both real and metaphoric, figure prominently in "Rawblood." The most interesting chapters are set in the 1880s, a time when superstitions about the connection between physical and mental illness were giving way to the emergence of a "bright landscape of science." If only "Rawblood" cohered around the notion of illness as metaphor. Instead, the narrative rambles off to sunny Italy, then back to misty England, where Iris, heeding a message her father sends her in a dream, sets Rawblood afire. The novel is told from the perspectives of five characters: Iris Villarca, the last of the line; Charles Danforth, her maternal uncle; her mother, Meg Villarca; her grandmother, Mary Hopewell Villarca; and Tom Gilmore, a stableboy who serves as Iris's romantic interest. Adding to the confusion, the timeline zigzags back and forth over the decades for no apparent reason. In the end, this multigenerational saga strains not only the storytelling talents of the author but the patience of the reader.
Library Journal Review
Ward's textured debut opens in 1910 with young Iris Villarca. "This is how I come to kill my father. It begins like this," the 11-year-old girl says, setting a tone of dark overcast that will continue to the last page. Iris lives with her father at Rawblood, an estate on England's bleak Dartmoor moors with a dark history and unmarked graves. Iris lives by a strict set of rules that center on a singular focus: do not form any relationships, unless you want yourself-and others-to die. The last of their line, the Villarcas are trailed by a deadly curse that not only haunts those they love, but sickens any family member who tries to leave the property. Needless to say, Iris rebels against her father's rules and sets her sights on hapless farmer Tom Gilmore. Their budding romance unleashes a wonderfully twisted narrative that moves among time periods and points of view. VERDICT Despite a confused and stilted reading (owing to an overreliance on sentence fragments) in some of the chapters, Ward's layered and skillfully crafted novel weaves elements of classic gothic and horror into a remarkable story populated by unforgettable characters, palpable atmosphere, and rich lyricism. Imagine the darkest and goriest undertones of Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, and Shirley -Jackson, and you'll have an idea of what Ward offers here. [Winner of Best Horror Novel at the British Fantasy Awards 2016.-Ed.]-Erin Entrada Kelly, Haverford, PA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
