3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A mash-up of Gothic romance, Jamesian horror and Sapphic love story
It's 1890, and Norah Mackenzie's father, a Glasgow businessman, has died, leaving his affairs in disarray. The lion's share of his debts is to a company owned by Lord Alexander Barland, so Norah writes to Barland, pleading with him to wipe the financial slate clean and spare herself and her mother from penury. In the course of their correspondence, they agree that, in addition to the cancellation of the debt, 32-year-old spinster Norah will marry the lonely Lord Barland and live with him at Corrain House on the north coast of Scotland.
And so, accompanied by some atmospheric scene-setting, Norah is deposited outside Corrain House, 'a squat grey limpet on an iron grey cliff, looking half-minded to jump' surrounded by haar during the day and impenetrable blackness at night, to marry a man she knows only from his letters. Given no time to unpack, she is whisked off to the family kirk to meet the 'tall, stone-cut, austere' Lord Barland for the first time at their perfunctory wedding. She is stunned to find him distant and uncommunicative, so unlike his eloquent, sensitive letters.
Norah spends far more time with the housekeeper, Agnes Gunn – described, like Barland, as 'austere' – who seems to be the keeper of Corrain House's secrets. Lean and sinewy, compared to Norah's 'unfashionable' curviness, she challenges Norah's status as mistress of the house behind the thinnest veneer of deference. They seem destined to be enemies. But there's a fire in Agnes's eyes that draws Norah inexorably towards her, and the attraction appears to be mutual. When their eyes meet, 'there is more than camaraderie'.
But while they embark on a complicated relationship, there is far more going on than repressed longings or a battle for control of the estate. Corrain House and its environs aren't just a gloomy location for Norah to live out her days. It's a land that refuses to be tilled, grazed or mined, terrain that rejects the people who have settled on it, and it's chipping away at Norah's mind. She sees ships on the sea that shouldn't be there, hallucinates spectral stags and ghostly revenants and fears that the rowan tree in the courtyard is a focus of ancient evil.
(Image: Rebellion Publishing)
A consistently enjoyable mash-up of Gothic romance, Jamesian horror and Sapphic love story, The Needfire works as well as it does because we become so quickly and easily invested in Norah, in her relationship with Agnes and her determination to penetrate the many mysteries of Corrain House that we're prepared to follow the authors anywhere, however fantastical or melodramatic it gets.
The Hardy duo know how to pitch their prose so that it deepens and enriches the mood without becoming florid or bombastic, writing with such delicacy that even the most sensational imagery and breakneck twists are framed in haunting and lyrical passages. Even when the undercurrent of pure fantasy-horror that's been lurking in the margins finally bursts climactically into the open, the prospect of the beleaguered Norah's heart being broken is still what we fear the most.
