Thirst

This disturbing tale begins with the dedication, ‘For those we sacrifice,’ that promises to challenge our complacency. It does so in the form of a fantasy adventure that moves through mystery and menace to a violent finale. The beginning of the story proper is prefaced by an incident in which a boy disappears while playing in the woods with a friend. We see what happens to him. Burdock is drowned in the nearby river by a spectral woman who smells of putrid flesh and stagnant weeds. But his friend, Gorse, who goes home alone, knows nothing of this and it takes him the remainder of the book to realise what has happened and to meet a ghoulishly transformed Burdock again. The boys’ bucolic names give a clue to Maimsbury, the village where they live, oddly thriving in a land of failed harvests, and, five years after Burdock’s disappearance, we find Gorse just about to enjoy Yeldthanc, one of those quaint annual festivals like well dressing that, as any watcher of The Wicker Man will know, might turn out to be rather more sinister than its folksy trappings. Meanwhile, from a distant famine-stricken village, a determined young woman sets out to find work in Maimsbury, and to find her fate cruelly ensnared with that of Gorse. If you were just to read the book for its thrills, for its expert orchestration of cat and mouse chases, and for its repellent descriptions of bloated reanimated bodies, there’s enough here to satisfy you. Simpson winds up the tension expertly, as one horrific revelation follows another. But there’s more. There’s Simpson’s layered description of village life and its rituals, and, most important, the playing out of the meaning of his dedication. At the last, Gorse is faced with a difficult choice. Will he stand with family, community and the way things have always been done, and sacrifice one innocent life for the good of all? Or is there another way?