Joe Donnelly - Stone

[andydecker]

Joe Donnelly – Stone (Barrie & Jenkins, 1990, posted edition Arrow Books, 1992, 514 pages)

Little Chrisse is playing in the wood near the those two standing stones of old and gets crushed to a pulp by some trees. Some time later successful civil engineer Alan Crombie and family move into Cromwath House in Scotland. It is an old manor build by a Victorian tycoon Dalmuir out on the peninsula. The standing stones are part of the grounds. It is a troubled family. Young Tommy is a healthy eight year old boy, but his mother Helen is suffering badly from depression. And the twins, Kathryn and Elanie, four years old, are bright and healthy. But they don't speak. Period. It is no health issue, and all the consulted specialists are a bit baffled.

Shortly after moving in things get difficult. Alan gets lost in rooms that should not be there, which doors opens to nightmarish worlds full of blood-thirsty monsters. He dismisses this as hallucinations, especially as he is witness of Helen getting fucked by a monstrous shadow. Tommy is being hunted by monsters coming out of the stonework. Also a dream?

After being against the remote house at first, Helen becomes obsessed with it and neglects the children. Alan discovers that Dalmuir build the house on a place of pagan worship, he razed the whole ring of standing stones. The cellar is constructed in its midths. In the vicinity the shadows come alive, something has been woken. The vicar dies in his car, driven from the street by something which can't exist. Cattle gets shredded by some wild things. The teacher is being ripped apart at night in the woods by some critters. Tommy is gobbled up by the house and chased through some catacombs, only to be rescued by the twins who can seem to move through the hidden parts by will. And Alan has to discover that his wife is on the verge on a breakdown while he is being tempted by the beautiful village doctor.

TBC

This is the second big novel of Scottish writer Joe Donnelly who published 8 horror novels in the 90s. The plot is a typical set-up often seen at the time. Donnelly is a writer who likes it epic, where other writers describe something a paragraph long, he goes for the whole 5 pages or more. The prologue is nicely bloody and has a mean edge to it, but the next 200 pages are much more restrained. The story lacks a memorable villian - there are still 150 pages to go, so who knows? - and most parts feel (at times too) familiar, but on the whole this is nicely done and not boring.

[andydecker]

Alan discovers Dalmuir's diary which tell of strange deaths. Local historian Beth, the daughter of nice neighbour Tom who has seen his dead son between the stones. More animals and people get gobbled up in the night by creatures. Helen gets finally possessed by the bad influence, while old handyman Seamus whose blind mother has the second sight nearly get killed when the roof becomes alive. When Helen finally gets mad and tries to strangle Doctor Alex, everybody meets to compare informations. As Beth reports, the standing stones are a gate to the old pagan powers, the Gleidhidh Gruamach, the dark keeper of the ways. And there is a second house in the house, a ghostly realm.

On the night of Midsummer hell breaks loose. Tommy is supposed the last important sacrifice, done in by his own mother. The neighbours and Alan come to the rescue, while the house transforms into a kind of fun house. Some live, some die.  The gate gets closed, by the fairy twins and Ben and Seamus, who disrupt the menhir circle by blowing it up.

While the last chapters are big spectacle and some of the deaths are gory and nicely realised, the novel suffers from lacking a good villain and some neglected characterisation. The "touched by the fairies" mute twins are a deus ex machina from the start, the desintegration of wife Helen is presented only by witnesses and never from her sight which - in such  a long novel - is a missed chance.

But like already noted, I didn't thought it boring and it is a 500 page novel for once I didn't begin to browse or took the short-cut of reading the end. I got two other novels by Donnelly recently and will give them a chance.

[ripper]

Thanks, Andy. I couldn't help thinking that it sounds like something Guy N. Smith would have written back in the 80s, only GNS would have polished it off in half the page count, and ramped up the violence and s*x. As an aside, what is it with disfunctional/troubled families moving into strange old houses?

[andydecker]

Jun 30, 2022 14:19:55 GMT ripper said:

As an aside, what is it with disfunctional/troubled families moving into strange old houses?

I blame Stephen King. Or Richard Matheson.