BOOK REVIEW | MARYNEIL 1962 | ABIGAIL F. TAYLOR

 BOOK REVIEW | MARYNEIL 1962 | ABIGAIL F. TAYLOR

ABOUT THE BOOK

Warned by a soothsayer at a traveling fair that something evil is about to come to Maryneal, sixteen-year-old Delah Nix chalks it up to carnie theatrics and ignores the woman's suggestion to leave before dark. But then her sister is savagely attacked on their way home, and her murder leaves the small farming community stunned. The authorities scramble to place the blame on a deranged man, the carnival workers, and even the nearby Indigenous community.

 Delah, however, starts to suspect that something supernatural is afoot when a childhood friend, bitten in an attempt to save Delah's sister, gains powers and a thirst for the county's livestock. As much as he is enjoying his super speed and perfect hearing, Delah senses there will come a point of no return and begins to desperately search for a way to save her friend before he hurts himself or the girl they both love. With the full moon approaching and no salvation in sight, Delah is faced with an unconscionable If she can't find a cure, she'll have to kill the boy next door.

REVIEW

Reading is a very personal experience and sometimes a book does not hit home despite the fact that you want to like it. Maryneal 1962 unfortunately for me, was one of those books.

Now don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with the book. Maryneal 1962 does a lot of things well, and I really admired those aspects of the story.

The book revolves around Delah Nix, a sixteen-year-old girl in small town America. One evening, after returning from the local travelling carnival her sister is brutally murdered by some kind of animal.

Her sister dies despite the intervention of a local boy, who is subsequently injured by the animal that somehow transforms into a man after it has been shot.

After this there are a number of strange incidents in the community all pointing back to Delah’s childhood friend Hardy.

Maryneal 1962 does a load of things well. After the initial death of Delah’s sister, we get to see the aftermath of the incident and the overarching effect it’s has on Delah, her father and the community as a whole. Abigail F. Taylor explores this with sensitivity and depth, conveying the variety of emotions that families and individuals go through when they experience such an inexplicable event.

In addition to this, we see that Delah is not your typical teenage girl and we follow her as she comes to terms with the fact that she is not like the other girls in the town. This comes to light when she realises that her feelings towards her friend Barbie are more than just friendship. Taylor handles this with empathy and thoughtfulness, describing a young girls blossoming feelings and sexuality well. 

Furthermore, Taylor does a really good job of evoking the feeling of the time that the book is set in. The setting of the book is well realised with both the good and the bad aspects of the period.

Whilst there are these great facets to the story, let’s get to the matter of why we are here – the horror. Abigail F. Taylor is very adept at describing the horror aspects of the story and manages to convey the terror powerfully and this comes to the fore in the final act of the book.

So, with all this, you would think that I would like the book more than I did, and I wished I did. I can’t tell you what it was that turned me off or didn’t hook me in, but I am not going to spend time analysing the reason, it just was! And this goes back to my earlier statement of reading being a personal experience. Sometimes a book can just reel you in and other times it just doesn’t work, which is fine because not every book is going to hit home. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. 

Maryneal 1962 is a novel for those readers who like an engrossing historical horror that builds up the terror with comprehensive character work, an emotive look at grief and the effects that loss has on those around it.