Number 62 - Silent Voices - Gary McMahon

 

Part two of Gary McMahon’s trilogy that I started last year with The Concrete Grove.

The tagline on the back of the book reads “IT’S CALLING YOU BACK…”

In my brain that tagline morphs into an earworm of the old Rainbow song “Light in the Black” which has the chorus “Something’s calling you back, like a, light in the black” and I did wonder, idly, whether you could rewrite the song lyrics to match this book.

However, “Something’s calling you back, like a nihilistic glimpse into a terrifying existential void” didn’t quite scan to the tune.

We are returned to the run-down council estate on the outskirts of Newcastle/Gateshead known as the Grove.  At the centre of the estate stands the Needle, a large tower block, and source of the energy that sucks out the soul of the area. 

Simon and his two friends went missing as young children in the Needle twenty years prior to the events in this book. They returned three days later with no memory of what had happened (and indeed thinking they’d only been a couple of hours), damaged and scared.

As adults, they lead vastly different lives, but are all still carrying the scars from the events of that weekend as ten-year-olds in the strange place hidden at the centre of the Needle. Simon has escaped the Grove completely. Or so he believes.  Something is waking and he finds himself drawn back to the North East to confront the events of his childhood. He seeks out his two friends who are facing their own weird happenings. Together they will face the strange forces gathering around them again.

I normally try not to compare with Stephen King but returning to the weird hometown to face up to the childhood trauma is such a King staple, it’s hard not to. In this book Gary McMahon seems to be channelling his inner King, with healthy dollops of Ramsey Campbell and a bit of Lovecraft for good measure.

And it works brilliantly.  There are some weird images that I know will stick with me for some time.  The plot propels itself along at a rattling pace. The characters are well drawn and totally believable. The steady encroachment of the supernatural is handled beautifully, and the characters’ responses are entirely plausible. Their growth from disbelief and rationalisation to acceptance is handled to perfection.

 I have book 3 ready and waiting in my TBR pile and I’m really looking forward to how this trilogy will come to a close.

This is written well enough that it would work well as a standalone novel, but there are obviously advantages to having read the first book in the series.

Whatever order you want to read them in, just read them.  You won’t regret it.