Dale Bailey’s new novel In the Night Wood is assertive with its intertextuality. It begins with two epigraphical quotes, one from Mircea Eliade’s The Forbidden Forest and the other from the Brothers’ Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel”. A prelude follows that “quotes” its fictitious novel-within-a-novel called In the Night Wood, attributed to the (also fictitious) obscure Victorian writer Caedmon Hollow. The Forbidden Forest is about a man who, after the death of his wife and child, searches for his estranged mistress in the forest where they had met years before, and the quote refers to “the existential necessity of listening to stories and fairy tales.” Those familiar with “Hansel and Gretel” will understand the context Gretel’s tearful lament “How are we to get out of the forest now?” and recognize its interrelation to the Eliade quote. Then, as though its thematic architecture still lacked sufficient clarity, the passage from the imaginary Caedmon Hollow novel is also about a frightened little girl lost in a forest, informed by an enchanted oak that her “Story is rich in coincidence” and “is not a happy Story” (the capital “S” in “Story” is the author’s). It is unsurprising that Bailey’s novel turns out to be a self-reflexive fairy tale involving the tragic death of a child, marital infidelity, little girls lost in enchanted forests, is full of coincidence, and is not a happy story.
That story, a dark fantasy flavored with historical metafiction, begins when young Charles Hayden steals a copy of the forgotten children’s novel “In the Night Wood” from his grandfather’s library. His pilfered copy disappears not long after he reads it, but Charles grows up obsessed with the book and its author. Years later, literary grad student Charles meets Erin, a direct descendant of Caedmon Hollow. They fall in love, get married, and have a daughter, before the novel jumps another decade into the future. Erin is the next living heir to Hollow House, Caedmon Hollow’s ancestral home, and the couple uproot their American lives to live there when the previous, childless heir passes on. A lot has happened in the intervening years. Their marriage is now in ruins: Charles had been having an affair with a colleague, and their daughter Lissa died in an accident as the affair came to light. A trickle of clues suggests there is a relationship between those two circumstances, the result being that Charles is now on sabbatical from his university position (it is clear he will not be welcome back) and Erin, addicted to prescription drugs, cocoons in her grief.
Charles hopes to write a biography of Caedmon Hollow to resuscitate the author’s reputation and his own. Living in Hollow House, with its proximity to Eorl Wood (the purported inspiration for Hollow’s novel) offers all the inspiration and incentive he needs. He may even find the biographical information he needs in the nearby village of Yarrow, whose unofficial historian, Silva, takes an interest in his project.
Charles discovers there might be more to Hollow’s infamous novel than its reputation as a simple allegorical fairy tale suggests. A local girl, around Lissa’s age at the time of her death, has gone missing. Erin, in her drug-induced haze, is sketching bizarre likenesses of the Horned King, the villain of her ancestor's novel. Charles keeps seeing vague, human-like figures near the wood that seem to blow away with the wind, and the more he digs into Hollow’s past, the more real-life correlations to its fantastical allegories surface.
This premise has all the makings of a solid, atmospheric dark fantasy. Bailey’s silvery prose, plush with descriptive embellishments and perceptual insights, evinces an appropriate Victorian-ness. These attributes also slow the story down. The narrative’s progress stalls sputters for two thirds of the book, stretching out or repeating the same dramatic beats. Erin grieves and regresses and grieves and regresses. Apparitions of the Horned King and Lissa appear and disappear. Charles’ will-he-or-won’t-he attraction to Silva goes nowhere, except that her daughter Lorna reminds him of Lissa so he wants to spend more time around her. Things pick up when the novel finally opens its box of secrets for the final act, but Bailey lets Erin out of the fridge too late for us to care, then stuffs Silva into it in her place.
Stories always work best when the plot, no matter how meticulously devised by the author, progresses from a believable set of choices made by the characters. In the Night Wood often feels as if the characters make choices pre-ordained by the needs of the plot. The opening epigraphs do more than just set the tone and lay out its themes, they direct its inclinations and formulate its path, striving to manufacture layers that only end up weighing it down.

Now that the weather is finally turning gloomy, you might be looking for an atmospheric read. Look no further! This book blends folklore, English countryside, mysterious books, missing children, and a wood that beckons....

I enjoyed Bailey's short stories that I also read this year, and I may have a slight preference for those because they were more along the lines of dark fantasy and sometimes humorous, always full of humanity. Sometimes I felt trapped in this book because it gets a bit circular, and you know that the characters are doing dangerous things and the author is just going to make you watch it happen! But that's part of the overall tone of the novel that is so effective. Some of the characters feel more like archetypes than individuals, but again, that suits the book too since there is a layer in it of another book, also called In the Night Wood.

At the heart of the story is a damaged marriage, with both people destroyed by grief with an added undercurrent of infidelity that hasn't even started to be dealt with. That may be the greater horror in the end.

In The Night Wood was full of things I love in books--creepy old houses, ancient folklore, families with mysterious pasts, and primeval forests teeming with real or imagined dangers. Overall I enjoyed the ride, but I can certainly see why it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Erin and Charles are fleeing from a family tragedy and a mysterious house in the English countryside seems like the perfect fresh start. Recently inherited by Erin as the last member of the ancient and wealthy Hollow family, the estate seems too good to be true and things quickly take a turn for the sinister. The live in estate manager has recently taken up drinking, the maids are quitting en mass, and everyone is haunted by dreams of something mysterious lurking in the wood surrounding the property. There are lots of dead little girls who all look alike and madness waiting around every corner. It's up to Erin and Charles to face whatever is haunting the Hollow family and end it for good.

While the story is entertaining and the setting certainly eerie, the language of the novel is a HUGE drawback. Every page of this novel is overwrought and it can get almost comical at times. Plus the repetition of symbolism/motifs occasionally feels like being beaten with a sledgehammer made of meaning. If you're at all sensitive to purple prose steer clear. That being said there we're plenty of generally unsettling moments and I really enjoyed the mix of Fantasy and Horror. You don't often see the ancient fae in Horror which is a shame because the original folklore about them can be truly frightening. I also would have liked to see the effects of the ending, but I guess it's a good sign that I liked it enough to be curious about what happens afterward. Overall I'd recommend it for lovers of both Horror and Fantasy and those who have a forgiving literary nature.

I’ve actually read Dale Bailey before. Ages ago. I vaguely recall an old paperback, liking it. But the main reason I wanted to read this book was the title/cover/description combination promising a dark fairy tale. I love fairy tales and dark is absolutely the best variety of them. And so this was one. A fairy tale for adults. About two adults who move to a great old manor in a pastoral England to try to get past the death of their young daughter only to discover the nearby woods just might be darker and scarier than a mere collection of trees. It’s a near perfect Victorian gothic premise and although it takes place in the present, it may very well have been a timeless tale. There is a mysterious Horned King (a very traditional English wood being) awaiting, nay, expecting a sacrifice. There is a bibliomystery (I can never resist those). There is a family drama. Quite a lot in such a slim volume that definitely doesn’t read slim. And yet the star of the show here is the writing, Bailey’s hauntingly atmospheric narrative spellbinds the reader, spirits them away into a place on the very edge of madness where supernatural and natural comingle in such a way as to make mere mortals seem like playthings. The character writing is also terrific, the quietly dissolving marriage of Charles and Erin, with him trying to manage his guilt with a project of discovering the secrets of the family he’s married into (yes, there’s even a cypher) and her giving into the overpowering grief and sliding into something of a chemical coma with interludes of obsessive drawing…it’s a relationship a real as it is devastating. But really this is a story about a book, a book that once brought Charles and Erin together, a legendary children’s story that really isn’t for children, and the terrifying truth behind its inspiration. Of course, it can just be read as an allegory about grief and forgiveness, but it’s so much more fun to go the fairy tale way. Sad, lovely, eerie…this was a thing of beauty, particularly for anyone who’s into psychological mindtwisters. Might not sing for everyone with its meditative pace and Charles’ questionable moral character, but personally I enjoyed it tremendously. And it’s a good October read too. A literary dark fantasy with a distinctly scary undertones. Great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[Note: I was provided an advance copy of this book by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.]

There's something about a dark, English wood. It's a fantasy trope in and of itself, and for good reason - woods can be scary, full of dark, gothic horrors, fae mythology, and all sorts of nasty things. And English woods -- well, you don't have to look far to find novelists that use the primeval woodlands as a source of inspiration and for a suitably spooky atmosphere.

And boy do we get atmosphere in Dale Bailey's new novel "In the Night Wood." The book tries to meld the ordinary with the extraordinary, juxtaposing the traditional opening of fairy tales -- "Once upon a time" -- with protagonist Charles' discovery of a spooky leather-bound Victorian gothic novel while on a childhood trip to England, and his subsequent meeting of the author's scion while the two were in graduate school together. It's a seemingly happy story of love, marriage, and literature. But as you might expect from the title, the darkness is never far from the surface.

"In the Night Wood" is at one level a story of horrible (but mundane) tragedy -- the death of a child, the unspeakable sorrow and horror that springs from it, and the dissolution of a marriage. Charles and his wife Erin travel to England to live at the typically gothic and remote Hollow House in the Yorkshire wilderness, on the edge of the even darker, spookier Eorl Woods. Erin is the last descendent of the aforementioned Victorian author and has inherited the gothic manor house, complete with a double wall encircling the property and decaying, Celt-era ruins in the trees.

Charles hopes that dropping everything and living in Hollow House can help he and his wife heal from the tragedy that has ripped apart their lives and their marriage. The opening half of the novel depicts their journey to Yarrow and the ways that they attempt to reconnect with each other within the confines of this ancient English wilderness, with little success.

Bailey does a capable job of setting the tone of Hollow House and the nearby village of Yarrow -- it is appropriately quietly menacing and spooky, with a cast of eccentric characters. The central mystery is slow to emerge and is almost overshadowed by the quiet desperate despair of the two main characters.

To avoid revealing too much, one of the central themes revolves, unsurprisingly, around child death - there's the death of Charles' & Erin's young daughter Lissa, but also a mystery of a missing child, and a mythological story of sacrifice, and hovering over it all is a local myth of the Night God (or King), who is said to haunt the Eorl Wood. The Cademon Hollow novel at the center of everything, the one Charles found as a boy and dictated the path of his life, becomes a touchstone for the entire mystery.

While it is slow to get going, there are fantasy elements that emerge over the course of the book. Visions of faces and apparitions in the foliage come and go, and presences are felt within the cavernous Hollow House. The setting is appropriate, and anyone who are attracted to Gothic novels or settings will find a lot to like in this novel.

However, the denouement feels rushed and forced, and when the gothic horror does reveal itself there is a mixed message whereby it feels as though the author doesn't really know in which way he wanted to take things. Is this a story about being human in a mythic setting, or a mythic novel in total? I'm not sure Bailey fully knows, and it comes across in the novel as both, yet somehow neither. The end of the novel comes abruptly and I feel as if it could've used another chapter or two to wrap up narrative loose ends, several of which were left flailing around in the English wind.

There are things to like about "In the Night Wood." The juxtaposition of human tragedy and an all-too-human mystery at its center are compelling reading, as is the spooky setting of Hollow House and its environs. But the fantastical elements almost hinder the story -- I think I might have appreciated it more if Bailey had either made the fantasy elements either totally in the background, or gone "all in" as a fully fantasy novel. In the end, it's a little of both, and it keeps it from being a fully satisfactory reading experience.

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey was such a great story! I love the Victorian Era and I loved how Dale Bailey weaves elements from the Victorian Era and modern day.

Since the beginning there was something off with this book. It wasn’t the writing style or the idea. It was the main character. I didn’t like him from the beginning to the end and that killed all my enthusiasm for the book itself.
In addiction to that I’m not a great fan of scary books, so it cleary wasn’t the right book for me.

When he was just a young boy, Charles Hayden discovered a mysterious Victorian children’s book called “In the Night Wood”.  Years later, Charles is a failing scholar who is obsessed with the book that influenced his life. His wife is a distant relative of Caedmon Hollow, the author of "In the Night Wood".  When she inherits Hollow’s home, he moves there with her to run away from their shared tragic past--the recent loss of their six-year-old daughter.  Charles hopes that he can use this opportunity write a biography of Caedmon Hollow.  Digging deep into the past is never a good idea, however, and it quickly becomes apparent that “In the Night Wood” was inspired by the forest surrounding Hollow’s home.  But how much is truth, and how much is fiction? 

The writing style is one of the book's greatest strengths, and Caedmon Hollow's Victorian style house, the woods surrounding it, and the neighbouring town are all beautifully described.  However, I felt that the story somehow managed to feel too rushed, while very little actually happens. The story doesn’t have much substance.  In the Night Wood is quite short, but based on content, it could have easily been a novella or even a short story.

The major appeal factor of this book is that Bailey has created his own legend.  The story of “In the Night Wood” with the horned king and a little girl named Laura--a little girl who is so similar in both name and appearance to Charles' lost daughter.  However, Hollow's book is not quite developed enough to my liking, and instead Bailey pulls from Shakespeare and other well-known writers throughout history for later plot points, including a cipher that Charles must decrypt.

I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. Charles Hayden is a most despicable main character. He hasn’t learned from past mistakes. He cheated on his wife, and on his daughter’s birthday, his “secret birthday gift” to his now six-year-old daughter was that he was going to break up with his mistress. What a wonderful present. You’re too kind.  This would all be fair, but in present day he’s almost cheating on his wife again with another woman, another scholar with a similar name. He didn't learn from his mistake, which would also be okay, if he learned his lesson before the book ended.  He didn't. There’s no “I should have learned” moment or time when karma comes to bite him in the ass.  He doesn't get his comeuppance, which makes an unlikable character such as this one inexcusable.  He's also sexist, not only the way in which he views his wife, but in the way he views other women. The female scholar he works with on Hollows' biography is said to have her "prickles" because she won't allow him to patronize him.  He likes her despite her "prickles".  Ugh!

Throughout the story Charles Hayden reflects on his daughter’s tragic death and how he feels responsible. The way he says it makes you think that he isn’t actually responsible, that it’s just a reasonable level of survivor’s guilt.  A way for Bailey to make an unlikable character have some substance.  Then it’s revealed how the daughter actually died. Charles is 100% responsible for her death, which makes his woe-is-me attitude even more disgusting.  In the plot line of the story, a local child has been kidnapped.  Charles doesn’t react beyond how you or I would react to the thought of someone else’s child being kidnapped, despite the fact that he literally went through the experience of losing his daughter less than a year before. He should have had empathy for the parents of the missing child. He should have--at the very least--had it remind him of his own lost daughter and bring him to shed a single tear down his cheek. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure Charles is human.

The unlikability of Charles Hayden is exacerbated by the fact that his wife, Erin, isn’t well fleshed out. She’s grieving her lost daughter. That’s basically all we know about her. She doesn’t do much else except for wonder if her husband is cheating on her again once they move to Caedmon Hollow’s home.  It’s actually mentioned at one point that Charles can’t leave her because he needs access to the house she inherited. I repeat, "Ugh".  

This book has numerous intellectual discussions; however they’re mostly about things I’ve heard about a million times before--quotes like “Murder most foul” by Shakespeare, a definition of “automatic writing”, the story of Oedipus, and a brief mention of Occam’s Razor, to name a few.  

I recommend this book to those who want to read a book with a lot of literary references and a strong sense of place--the old Hollow House is beautifully described, as is the dark and treacherous woods that surround it.  If you do decide to read this, try not to mind an extremely unlikable main character who doesn’t grow or get what’s coming to him.

At first, I thought this book would just be another in the genre of scary wood near a haunted estate near an isolated English village. Those element are there, but it's so much more! I was kept reading, excitedly going from page to page, by the beautiful, careful writing, the characters of Erin and Charles, and the supporting characters as well. I loved this book.

Such a weird, wonderful book. A forgotten victorian writer, a grieving academic and a creepy fairytale book are the main elements of a fantastic story, incredibly well crafted, just a bit slow in the pace.

I wasn't able to get into the book. The writing style was hard for ME to enjoy. However, that is only one person's opinion.

The synopsis of this book had me expecting something completely different from what I encountered with this story. That being said I really enjoyed this slower adult fantasy.

At only 224 pages I expected to be able to finish this in a sitting or two. This is not a tale to be sped through. Rather it sits heavily on your mind and is meant to be sipped and savored rather than devoured. Long after putting this book down I would find it creeping back into my mind, its fantastic mix of fantasy, mystery, and family drama drawing me further in.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which Bailey introduced the fantasy elements into this book. They were not overpowering and the degree of certainty, or rather uncertainty, that they truly exist always matches the perspective of Charles as he muddles through his own tale. There is never a feeling of we as readers know more than the main characters of Charles, Elaine, and to a lesser degree Silva.

Another point that I was worried about after I began reading was whether or not the death of Charles and Elaine's daughter would make this an overly heavy, depressing read. At first this was the case but as the story progressed I never felt that the drama and sorrow were overly played out the way that some stories dwell on the death of a child so that there is nothing else. It was an important part of the story, but realistically handled in the way each parent handled their grief and how that does not always look the same even between partners in a relationship.

This would be a perfect read for adult fans of Holly Black's The Cruel Prince or The Darkest Part of the Forest as well as readers looking to recapture the magical writing of Katherine Arden (The Bear and the Nightingale) or Naomi Novik (Spinning Silver and Uprooted).

This story centers around Charles, a failed husband, father, and scholar who has a slight obsession with a Victorian children's fantasy author, Caedmon Hollow. Charles' wife is a long distant relative of Hollow, and after the death of their young child, they leave the States to stay at Hollow's remote English estate which his wife has inherited. While there, Charles digs deeper into Hollow's life on the grounds of writing a biography. What he finds is an eerie link to another world that may prove to be more than they bargained for. I really enjoyed the concept of this story. I felt the writing was very atmospheric and that you could really picture being in this small Yorkshire village, but overall I felt it was very slow. The bits that had to do with Hollow and the supernatural were interesting, but it just took a lot of time to get there. I felt like I had read the majority of the story before anything really happened. I was hoping for a dark, engaging Victorian-inspired story, but it just left me wanting just a little bit more.

Once Upon A Time...

In The Night Wood, get ready to walk through your dreams or nightmares. Or, was it a dream after all? Life throws us some pretty bad curve balls at times. Sometimes you can tell the difference between what is imagined and what is fact. Sometimes you can not.

For Charles and Erin their world goes upside down. So they leave and go to Erin's family home in England to adjust. To start over so it seems. To find themselves once again. And we have the privilege of joining them.

This was a decent story. It kind of fell flat on a few things. But on most things, it didn't disappoint. It was a quick read and it will pull you along. It lacked something, but for the most part, it was a decent story.

This eBook was given to me by Netgalley for an honest review.

At 35% I am DNFing the book. It is not for me. The characters are shallow, selfish and honestly need a good psychologist to help them cope with their loss and problems. I do not mean that the book is bad (it's actually quite well written, but writing alone cannot save it) - it just isn't for me.

I received a free e-copy of In The Night Wood by Dale Bailey from NetGalley for my honest review.

A tale about a couple, who is grieving the death of their young daughter. They move to a remote estate in England that the mother inherits, to escape the reminders. Some very strange and eerie things begin to happen. The couple begins to see thing. Are they really seeing these thing, creatures or are they so grief stricken they are seeing things. A very dark, eerie fantasy.

Every page of In the Night Wood was a balm to my soul. How could I possibly say that about a dark story involving infidelity, child death, attempted murder, and drug/alcohol abuse? Because Dale Bailey is masterful, that's why.

Dark stories like this are my favorites. They challenge me to look beyond real life to find the things that lie beneath it, those base emotions and actions that remind us humans are still animal creatures despite our abilities with logic and reason.

The prose is winding and eerily beautiful. I enjoyed all of the characters, each adding their own nightmares to the larger one surrounding them. Every scene is a dark one and is marred by each character's personal hauntings. Demon faces work their way in and out of each setting, reminding the reader of the thin veil that exists at Hollow House and within the Eorl Wood surrounding it.

Don't expect redemption at the end either. I think the ending is perfection because it stays true to the tone of the entire book instead of caving to the fairy tale mantra of 'happily ever after'. It was surprising too with its hellbent sprint to the climax, a rare quickness to the story that I think suited it well.

There are times when the story itself seems confused but it's not. The delusions of the characters, throughout the span of time, add to the shifting, warping nature of the story. The book, and the story, has its own demands that it foists upon the reader. I liked this a lot but I can see where other readers might be put off by it.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed this book. This dark fantasy is a true treasure to those who like the haunting side of things and I highly recommend it to those who like to step into nightmares over running from them.

Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the author Dale Bailey for the opportunity to do so.

I found i couldn't relate to the characters and found it detracted from the story. This isn't to day the story is bad just wasn't for .me.

When I read the discription of In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey I thought this was going to be a great fantasy book. So I have to say I was a little dissapointed when there was hardly any fantasy element ín the book.

We follow Charles and Erin Hayden after the tragic loss oh their daughter. They move tó England. Because IT turns out that she is a descendant of the guy about whom Charles wants to write a biographie. Such coincidence. The book deals mostly with their grief. It's sas and I felt sorry for them but this book was supposed to be fantasy. There is this creepy wood next to the house and I liked the way Mr. Bailey succeeded ín making me creep out but sadly that was all.

I am giving 3 stars because I liked the idea and the Horned King.

One of the most creepily atmospheric books I've read in some time, Dale Bailey's übergothic In the Night Wood did not disappoint.

The lead character, Charles Hayden, is not an especially likeable person. I'm not sure whether this was intentional, but it's ultimately irrelevant in that one can nonetheless feel for him in his grief over his dead child. Charles' wife, Erin Hayden, is ostensibly an equal lead character and also has POV sections, but she lacks Charles' complexity, instead functioning as, basically, grief personified. She is little but a big ball of grief, and a sort of cipher for Charles to play off of.

There's a fascinating "literary mystery" in this book, wound up in the Haydens' personal tragedy and family history. I love the idea of the book within this book, and how the snippets of the former are is written as if it could have been an actual Victorian children's story. I love how it wriggles into Charles' mind, and apparently the minds of the local townspeople, in such a sinister way. I love how even though the narrative leans towards the legitimately supernatural, it's still more or less left to the reader to decide (like all the best Gothic novels!) whether to go with this interpretation, or whether to believe that the weird stuff is some kind of mass delusion, exacerbated by the legitimate insanity of grief.