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Tom Fletcher

Witch Bottle Paperback – 26 Nov. 2020

by Tom Fletcher (Author)

32 ratings

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A deeply atmospheric literary horror novel about the nature of repressed guilt, grief and fear: 'Unsettling, horribly gripping and touched with genius' says the Daily Mail

Daniel once had a baby brother, but he died, a long time ago now. And he had a wife and a daughter, but that didn't work out, so now he's alone. The easy monotony of his job as a milkman in the remote northwest of England demands nothing from him other than dealing with unreasonable customer demands and the vagaries of his enigmatic boss.

But things are changing. Daniel's started having nightmares, seeing things that can't possibly be there - like the naked, emaciated giant with a black bag over its head which is so real he swears he could touch it . . . if he dared.

It's not just at night bad things are happening, either, or just to him. Shaken and unnerved, he opens up to a local witch. She can't t discern the origins of his haunting, but she can provide him with a protective ward - a witch-bottle - if, in return, he will deliver her products on his rounds.

But not everyone's happy to find people meddling with witch-bottles. Things are about to get very unpleasant . . .

Witch Bottle is literary horror at its finest, perfect for fans of Andrew Michael Hurley's The Loney and Starve Acre.

Language

English
Publisher

Jo Fletcher Books
Publication date

26 Nov. 2020
Dimensions

15.4 x 2.8 x 23.2 cm
ISBN-10

1848662602
ISBN-13

978-1848662605
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Product details

Publisher : Jo Fletcher Books (26 Nov. 2020)
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 1848662602
ISBN-13 : 978-1848662605
Dimensions : 15.4 x 2.8 x 23.2 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 297,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 843 in Rural Life Humour
- 1,290 in Contemporary Horror
- 1,849 in Horror Fantasy

Customer reviews:
32 ratings

Product description

Review

Fletcher excels at infusing the mundane . . . with a slow-burning sense of unease ― Guardian

Unsettling, horribly gripping and touched with genius ― Daily Mail

An acutely unsettling folk horror with a superbly unreliable narrator ― Metro

Terrifying, slow-burning, exquisitely wrought ― Lancashire Evening Post

Fletcher has a most distinctive voice, and convinces me that there may be some truth at last in those rumours about a renaissance in British supernatural fiction. ― Lisa Tuttle, The Times

A story with an air of menace throughout - and I loved it! It's dark, unsettling . . . I couldn't put it down. It really explores the human emotions of loss, of grief, of loneliness and of self-preservation, one of those really unsettling reads. A haunting, dark and twisty story ― Books and Me

Daniel's traumatic back story makes it easy for the sceptic not just to accept but to enjoy and admire the supernatural element as projections from a deeply troubled mind. This gives the novel a political as well as a psychological edge, which I particularly appreciated. One of this year's favourite reads ― Anne Goodwin, author of Sugar and Snails

A remarkable horror story with superb world-building. The scares doesn't just come from the supernatural. The book weaves the horrors of war and climate change into the larger narrative, merging fantasy and reality. It makes for a haunting and poignant read. Witch Bottle is an intense and atmospheric folk horror that leaves an arresting impression. Recommended! ― Read by Dusk

I absolutely loved it. This book is the narrative equivalent of a "Magic Eye" painting - you know that there's more going on below the surface and try as you might to decipher exactly why it is, things keep shifting before your very eyes and the final picture eludes you right to the very end. And perhaps even afterwards . . . The perfect balance of a perfectly created fictional world and a realistic portrayal of an unsettling atmosphere and a wonderfully unreliable narrator. Dark, intriguing and profoundly unsettling ― On the Shelf

Impressive . . . Tom Fletcher pulls it off with aplomb. Witch Bottle is both a great and beguiling read. I love atmospheric and slow-burning horror novels which are top-heavy with an undiagnosed sense of the supernatural. I found Witch Bottle tremendously entertaining and am very happy to recommend it ― Gingernuts of Horror

Book Description

A deeply atmospheric literary horror novel about the nature of repressed guilt, grief and fear: 'Unsettling, horribly gripping and touched with genius' says the Daily Mail

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4 star		26%
3 star		16%
2 star		10%
1 star		10%

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L. Young

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 January 2021

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Been looking forward to reading this for some time but unfortunately it didn't match expectations or the description as a "gothic horror".

Rather than a "slow burner", this was a meandering tale that seemed to go nowhere for most of the time. I knew his milk round well enough though - could probably do a walking tour of the Cumbrian milk round now.

The landscape was bleak and vividly drawn - the author know how to set the scene, but I felt as though the story itself was lost and didn't deliver. The "hauntings" were uneventful, the "villain" were largely non-entities, and I found the character's back story to be a bit weak.

Overall I finished the book feeling unsatisfied and as though I had finished a chore that needed to be completed.

One person found this helpful

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Megan Taylor

Intriguing and compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 December 2020

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I loved this novel. At times I was reminded of Michael Faber’s ‘Under the Skin’ and Clive Barker’s incredible short story, ‘In the Hills, the Cities’, except Tom Fletcher makes it all his own. A brilliant setting and intriguing characters - I honestly couldn’t put it down.

2 people found this helpful

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Karbuch

Slightly creepy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2021

Verified Purchase

Slightly creepy but nothing really terrifying.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Unsettling & Deeply Atmospheric Gothic Horror

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 November 2020

Witch Bottle is terrifying and deeply unsettling modern gothic horror with an intoxicating infusion of normal, quotidian moments woven into the story alongside the chilling, supernatural ones. Since he walked out on his family, Daniel has lived a solitary, soulless life in a remote part of Cumbria… he doesn’t have his hair cut, he never shaves and seldom showers. Instead he dreams about the fantasy novel he will one day write and immerses himself in the routine of his daily milk round. Daniel once had a baby brother but he died a long time ago, and his marriage didn’t work out. So now he’s alone and the only demand on him is coping with unreasonable customer demands and the vagaries of his enigmatic depot boss Bean, who doesn’t just look like a runner bean but is also ‘tall, flat and tough.’ But things are changing. Daniel has started having nightmares, seeing things that can’t possibly be there… like the naked, emaciated, stinking giant which voraciously consumes flesh and bone, and which Daniel knows instinctively is a ‘real thing’ happening ‘somewhere beneath the surface of the world.’

And it’s not just at night that bad things are happening to him… more and more locals are seeing ghosts, and who are the increasingly numerous, creepy and threatening Fallen Stock men who collect heaps of animal corpses from ‘the shadiest corners’ of farm yards? Shaken and unnerved, and with a deepening inner knowledge that ‘something terrible approaches,’ Daniel opens up to local white witch Kathryn from the La’al Tattie Shop. She can’t discern the origins of his haunting, but she can provide him with a ‘witch bottle’ to protect from unwanted spirits if, in return, he will deliver her products on his rounds. But not everyone is happy to find people meddling with witch bottles and things are about to get a whole lot worse… This is a compulsive and engrossing work of literary horror complete with a rich, immersive atmosphere and a creeping sense of claustrophobia Fletcher portrays so well. The tension throughout rises palpably with each page turn and the evocative landscape is as beguilingly bleak as it is compelling. This is a menacing, slow-burn, imaginative read and one I highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful

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David Harris

Haunting and powerful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2021

I'm very grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for an advance copy of Witch Bottle to consider for review.

This is an impressive book, a fusion of classic horror with a story of modern life and broken relationships which left me feeling deeply uneasy.

Daniel is a delivery worker. Every morning he wakes before dawn and bikes to the depot where he loads up his van under direction from "the Bean", a wiry, enigmatic woman who runs a food wholesaler serving the scattered communities and businesses of western Cumbria. Daniel spends his day driving up and down the fells and along the coast, trying to keep on schedule, juggling his stock and battling with the weather, other van drivers and the vagaries of the customers. When it's going well, he feels like Postman Pat - though the money's not very good. When it's going badly... well, if you read the book you'll find out.

Daniel hasn't always worked like this, living in a house borrowed from an uncle and going nowhere in his career. He used to live in the town with a wife and a daughter: the moment he walked out on them is the opening of the book (occasional chapters give flashbacks to that life, gradually filling in the picture - a nightmare pregnancy for his wife Ellie and alarming echoes beyond that to his own childhood). On that day Daniel sees the first hints of the dark and fantastical things that will haunt him on his deliveries, in his lonely cottage and, increasingly, in the relationships he's trying to build. There is something sinister going on out there, in the fields and on the roads. Fletcher matches it with hints of a troubled wider world too: a war that seems to be several notches worse than those we're aware of now, the descent of the health service into uncaring chaos, the repeated justification for a man bullying women that 'he's a real man, he's how men used to be'.

Against this alarming background of war and the rumour of war, Daniel does find some warmth and love with Kathryn, who owns a baked potato shop. (Some of the chapters are seen from her point of view). Kathryn is also a practitioner of magic and the matter-of-fact acceptance of this in the writing - it's presented as more a logistical than a supernatural problem - drives much of the story. Kathryn needs to make her deliveries, but she's stuck in the shop all day and Daniel doesn't think the Bean would be pleased if he combined them with his rounds. That practical approach is very much the mood of this book, presenting the fantastical and (increasingly) the horrific in a muted "what can you do?" way that is more and more unsettling - it really brings the atmosphere of horror home to see it brought home (as it were).

As well as contributing to the eerie effect of the novel, that normalisation also reflects the truth of what is going on here. Kathryn warns Daniel that the menacing hooded figure he sees outside his cottage has a connection to him - only by working out what it is might he be free of it. The bottle of the title can mask the symptoms, but not provide a cure. So the book is - besides many other things - an exploration of Daniel's past, of his mistakes, even as he's trying to hold onto his job. Daily routines, work problems, bickering with colleagues and managing the van make up quite a bit of the story alongside some glorious evocations of the Cumbrian landscape (and allowing a bit of a respite from the growing darkness - though it's always threatening). But so do memories of Daniel's marriage, the despair at trying to get a difficult baby to sleep. And so do unsettling memories of his own childhood. All of this seems to be connected, somehow, as it is with the darkening state of the world.

Overall a deeply moving, deeply troubling book - and one I'd strongly recommend.

2 people found this helpful

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