The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

 

The Loney is a horror novel that explores the relationship between two teenage brothers.  Hanny, the elder brother, has been born mute and is considered intellectually challenged by many.  His younger brother, nicknamed Tonto, is the only person who can interpret what Hanny is communicating and serves as his protector and guardian.  The boys' parents, especially their mother, is determined that Hanny can be cured by the miracle of God and spends their breaks desperately visiting Catholic shrines.

This break the family along with their priest and several other parishioners has come to the Loney.  It is a desolate coastline where there is a shrine and a well with water that is rumored to be healing.  The group has come here several times but this time it seems unwelcoming.  They somehow get on the wrong side of several local inhabitants who seem threatening at times.  There are things hidden in the forest that are horrific.  There is a family living in a house cut off at high tide; the daughter is a teenager like the boys but confined to a wheelchair and hugely pregnant.  Hanny mistakes a wave from her as love and tries to go there constantly.  Will the trip be successful?

This novel won the Costa Award for best first novel.  It is not a gory horror tale but one that slowly builds suspense and maintains a constant sense of terror, low level at first but steadily building and exploding at the end of the story.  The reader isn't sure how Hanny becomes cured but there is both the drinking of the water and some arcane ritual at the girl's house which the reader doesn't witness which rackets up the suspense.  The story is told as a man looks back at that summer and what he and his brother went through and so much of the story is unclear as he never understood everything going on around him.  This book is recommended for horror readers and those who are interested in debut novels.