Pine
Author: Patrick Ness
Published by: Walker Books
Pages: 325
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★★★
‘ They are driving home from the search party when they see her.
The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.’
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out on to the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.
In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like this are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.
Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when a local teenager goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.
My thoughts
This novel is really something else. An engrossing story set in the Scottish Highlands; it is wonderfully atmospheric. The plot is tightly woven and superbly written. There are elements of Mystery, Horror, Literary Fiction, Folklore, but at its heart lies a very real, very deep story of a family that has lost its way and a local community that is divided between pity and cruelty.
At the heart of the story is Lauren, aged 10 and a half, living with her father, Niall, in a tiny village near the Moray Firth. Her mother disappeared shortly after she was born, leaving Niall with a painful weight of betrayal that can only be eased with whisky.
It isn’t long before Lauren starts catching sight of a gaunt, bruised woman wearing just a white dressing gown against the cold. Others see her too but forget her the instant she’s gone. This leaves Lauren feeling extremely isolated and scared.
The author builds on this setup slowly for about two thirds of the novel, and then accelerates into thriller territory. But there is undoubtedly a strong sense of unease to the entire novel. The deliberate, mounting dread as the story reaches its conclusion is handled really well and I loved the final pages.
Throughout the book, the imagery is very intense in conveying the feeling of claustrophobia. The reader is instantly pulled into that atmosphere of a small town and the forest that surrounds it. These intricate details added to the dread that's felt throughout the story. It helped with the character development too, and I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters in such depth, right down to their very specific mannerisms. I really loved the eerie setting of the Scottish Highlands, which brought so much more intensity to the story.
Francine Toon has created an unshakeable atmosphere of solitude and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she brings together the gloom of a modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. This eerie tale with a supernatural edge is a haunting read. I love unsettling stories and this novel is beautifully unsettling.
Overall reaction:
