Spooky, sad, but ultimately optimistic take on humans dealing with adversity
4 stars
Listened to the audiobook, narrated by Finty Williams, over the course of a couple of long summer road trips.
An interesting and engaging book! It applies the setting of a women's prison in England to a meditation on death, injustice, and our obligations to ourselves and each other. It has a strong supernatural element, but most of the characters and plot points are grounded in the 'real world'.
The only thing criticism that I have is that the main character undergoes a very dramatic change of perspective at the beginning of the book. She starts out as an unfocused and disengaged woman with serious drug addictions. Her transformation to a highly-principled protagonist feels like it warrants a bit more interrogation that it received here.
Still, recommended, particularly for fans of Carey's other works.
M.R. Carey's second novel, Fellside, comes hot on the heels of The Girl With All the Gifts, his zombie near future novel. Carey, of course, is better known to fans of the genre as Mike Carey, the author of the Lucifer comics series and the Felix Castor novels, and while the reader will detect a definite strengthening of his prose style, the 'Carey' voice is familiar and welcoming.
The novel follows Jess Moulson, the so called Inferno Killer, as she is convicted of murder and shipped to a private prison on the Yorkshire moors, Fellside. From the start the feeling of Gothic seeps into prison, a vast, unknowable place that is only humanised by the people using it, whether that's the petty foibles of the prisoners and guards or the colloquial names the prisoners have applied to the different wings of the prison. Like the Gothic castle too, the past …
M.R. Carey's second novel, Fellside, comes hot on the heels of The Girl With All the Gifts, his zombie near future novel. Carey, of course, is better known to fans of the genre as Mike Carey, the author of the Lucifer comics series and the Felix Castor novels, and while the reader will detect a definite strengthening of his prose style, the 'Carey' voice is familiar and welcoming.
The novel follows Jess Moulson, the so called Inferno Killer, as she is convicted of murder and shipped to a private prison on the Yorkshire moors, Fellside. From the start the feeling of Gothic seeps into prison, a vast, unknowable place that is only humanised by the people using it, whether that's the petty foibles of the prisoners and guards or the colloquial names the prisoners have applied to the different wings of the prison. Like the Gothic castle too, the past of Fellside presses on the present, and there are secrets to uncover. When Jess nearly dies, she encounters something else, an unquiet spirit that refuses to rest and asks for help.
Despite the presence of the ghost, who guides and helps Jess, and who torments the prisoners, this is a very human horror story, a story of addiction, and corruption. Carey paints a picture of how dirty the prison is, from the illicit trades to the casual violence, made all the worse by the fact that Fellside is a women's prison; he cuts against our perceived wisdom that women are kinder, gentler beings by making the prisoners crude, violent, thuggish, and ultimately very human. The warders and medical staff are just as flawed, only the Governor is held up as being able to keep his hands clean, mostly because he is a remote figure who scarcely seems to be in touch with his own prison.
As Jess' story continues, from medical centre, to prison cell, to court as she appeals against the judgement she is forced to be a part of this world, to deal with the problems that it throws at her, and to try to survive as the corruption threatens to overwhelm her. It is perhaps to Carey's credit that he makes no attempt to spare her feelings, or to make her in any way tough. She's intelligent, determined, and highly imaginative, but she also gets beaten up a lot. Carey makes you care about her, my heart was in my mouth during the appeal hearing and I almost cried at her actions at the end of the trial.
It is hard to feel as sympathetic for the other chief protagonist in the novel, Liz Earnshaw. A lifer, and an incredibly violent woman, who despite a history of abuse, is never really portrayed sympathetically and acts as a lieutenant, servant, and general leg breaker, for the maximum security wing's Boss, Grace. For much of the novel she is presented as Rotweiller, a weapon to be used against the weaker members of the wing, and it is only late in the day that you realise, as a reader, that her story is unfolding in front of you.
Fellside is a powerful novel, one full of pathos and emotion. The Gothic setting adds to its power, and to the theme of corruption that runs through it. The structure of the book lets it down on occasion, chapters feeling too bitty at times, as if they could use a bit more meat, but in the large construct of the novel, they work well, keeping the narrative moving. Despite this I found the short chapters sometimes felt as if they could be integrated into another chapter, and that leaving them out on their own felt unnecessary. The other fault I would pick is that it feels as if part of Jess' potential wasted, there's something we're told about but it never really feels as if we're allowed to see it properly, despite it being presented as a linchpin of who the character is.
Despite this I would recommend Fellside to anyone who likes a more Gothic type of horror, with strong female characters and a good pace.
Hovering between a 3 and a 4 for this one. I really enjoyed some parts, including Carey's quick pace writing. I didn't like any of the characters. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes characters are unlikeable for a reason, but it meant I didn't really care about what happened to them individually. I did care about how the entire story unfolded though, and that's what saved the book for me.
My pre-read notes say "Apparently, it's all a surprise, but the author of the Girl with All the Gifts wrote a book NPR describes as '[a] supernatural fantasy [that] reads like a marriage between Stephen King and Charles De Lint, with a touch of Orange Is The New Black...'" And, yeah, that's basically it, with a few quibbles: I would describe this as Orange Is The New Black, with a touch of De Lint and Stephen King, rather than the other way around; and I think this book is really hurting itself with the "it's all a surprise" shtick.
Let's start with the un-spoiler-y parts: this is a good book. This is an important book. Those who turn their noses up at speculative fiction don't understand that at its finest it takes a simple question of "what-if" and uses that to deeply explore humanity, our existence and modern living in …
My pre-read notes say "Apparently, it's all a surprise, but the author of the Girl with All the Gifts wrote a book NPR describes as '[a] supernatural fantasy [that] reads like a marriage between Stephen King and Charles De Lint, with a touch of Orange Is The New Black...'" And, yeah, that's basically it, with a few quibbles: I would describe this as Orange Is The New Black, with a touch of De Lint and Stephen King, rather than the other way around; and I think this book is really hurting itself with the "it's all a surprise" shtick.
Let's start with the un-spoiler-y parts: this is a good book. This is an important book. Those who turn their noses up at speculative fiction don't understand that at its finest it takes a simple question of "what-if" and uses that to deeply explore humanity, our existence and modern living in ways that "literary fiction" cannot. And that's what Carey did with this book: he took the biggest issues of the '10's -- for-profit prisons, the opiate crisis, human trafficking -- and added a tiny "what-if" to cast a new and thought-provoking light on them. And, I guess this is where I'll spoiler tag, although I encourage you to keep reading, because as previously mentioned, I think trying to guess the "mystery" impedes the reading of Fellside.
The what-if is this: what if the protagonist can see a ghost. That's it, not that there are ghosts, or lots of people can see ghosts. One little trait of one main character that really shifts the entire narrative. Through the ghost, who Jess originally thinks is her victim, but who turns out to be Nasreen, a former inmate, Carey gets the chance to say a lot about what it means to be a criminal and what it means to be a hero. One of the core themes of the book is exploring the myth of a "lost-cause" and how by fighting for this ghost, Jess becomes a champion and, in turn, inspires other characters who have given up on themselves. Carey also has a lot to say here about how our current incarceration system inevitably causes recidivism by presenting impossible dilemmas of continued criminality versus victimhood.
What I liked the least about Fellside was the ridiculous commitment to mystery. It was abundantly clear to me from the beginning that the ghost wasn't Alex, but was Nasreen and to have the narration pretending otherwise was distracting. In addition, I felt like letting the reader in on that secret would help give insight into Jess' state of mind and the lies that we tell ourselves to try to heal ourselves.
Overall, I could easily see this book ending up in a high school English class curriculum, exploring the interplay of speculative fiction and contemporary events. (I kind of want to write that five paragraph essay now.)
