Hare House: An Atmospheric Modern-day Tale of Witchcraft – the Perfect Autumn Read

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It’s just a little too open-ended, a little too conventional and a little too culturally conservative for my taste. The hints of local legend and folklore is also well handled: Cass casually introduces the idea of there being witches, almost as though she were merely discussing the weather. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The owners of Hare House, the Hendersons, have been unlucky – perhaps even, as is later suggested, cursed. I really enjoyed the writing style, the beautiful descriptions of the Scottish setting and the tension that was created as odd, creepy things began to happen.

Whilst all the ends aren't quite tied up, the writing is exquisite and the heart-racing conclusion is just as satisfying. So, I think it’s likely I just wasn’t a good fit for Hare House and I imagine that readers who enjoy these kinds of stories - rather than get trapped in them against their better judgement - will find it well worth their time. Essentially, this didn’t quite have enough plot for my taste, feeling to me more as directionless meandering, but also didn’t go deep enough in exploring its characters to read like a character study. But among the tiny roads, dykes and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad. And yet, when I finished it, I found myself disappointed and left wanting, although I couldn’t really articulate why.

There are particular scenes and descriptions I can’t stop thinking about: the countryside surrounding the house, particularly when snow falls and an eerie quiet is tangible; the narrator’s feelings of freedom and release as she learns to cycle; the bare, shadowy gloom of Hare House, too big and too old for its inhabitants. The unnamed, unreliable narrator (two pet hatreds of mine) is both dull and creepy, and I object to the way that Hinchcliffe implies (through both her and Janet) that unmarried women above a certain age are unhinged.

I have always loved hares – they carry a sense of wildness and an other intelligence that rabbits lack and it is no wonder that they have been connected to witchcraft and shapeshifting through folk lore. The blurb in the back mentions “a deeply unsettling modern-day tale of witchcraft” - it never got there. The subplot involving Rory is underdeveloped, there's insufficient back story about his family, Cass's fits of hysteria get repetitive and the ending is confused - and feels unlikely, bearing in mind what has happened in the previous scene.

The story is filled with suspense and the possibility of discovering at least one manslaughter under the influence of alcohol and am answer to whether Janet is a witch and what happened to make her so bitchy and cold. I bought this book ages ago (a 99p special, I think), but I didn’t get around to it till now, possibly because I thought it might be a bit samey when compared to books like The Skeleton Key or The Dark Between the Trees or Pine.