Ancient Appetites

The opening sentences of this novel draw the reader into a colourful and imaginative tale that twists and turns to throw up surprises of all kinds from beginning to end. The Wildenstern family brood darkly over the 19th-century County Wicklow landscape through which its younger members roam in search of wild engimals or ride on tamed engimals, when they are not overseas consolidating the family’s enormous wealth and power. The family is dominated by the Patriarch, and to become Patriarch the bizarre Rules of Ascension allow male family members to kill those who stand between them and this pinnacle of power. When Nate, 18, returns from Africa after two years on a hunting expedition, he is concerned with nothing more dangerous that capturing the Beast of Glenmalure, a fierce engimal that roams the nearby forest. The engimals are part animal, part machine, an anomaly in the Darwinian chain that preoccupies Gerald, Nate’s cousin and ally. The mysterious death of his older brother compels Nate to fear for his own safety and that of his remaining brother. Family members have certain powers that make them stronger than other mortals, giving them extraordinary healing abilities and longevity, factors that enable the mysterious family ‘ancestors’ to add to the bloody drama played out in the enormous, rambling Wildenstern home.

 Ancient Appetites  is packed with bizarre incident and adventure, and some humour too, bordering on the burlesque at times, but there is little subtlety in the telling, the reader is not required to fill in any gaps; all is revealed at all times. Perhaps a firmer editorial hand would have resulted in a tighter narrative with greater depth, especially in view of its target audience – it carries a warning ‘not suitable for younger readers’, although much of it would appeal enormously to readers of nine and upwards.

Victorian preoccupations with science and Darwinian theory, post-Famine Irish politics and gender issues all impinge on a gothic mix of reality and fantasy that will doubtless leave readers anxious for further annals of the gruesome Wildenstern family.