Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting
Sara Bayat’s debut novel is subtitled “A Norfolk Haunting” and presented as ‘unsettling things are happening in rural Norfolk’. It’s true that unsettling things are happening, but this is not a work simply of folk-horror. There are hints of ghostly presences, but this novel is more a sensitive and well-observed novel of character and human behaviour.
The novel opens in 1647 where Alice Spry is accused of witchcraft and subjected to the test of ‘dunking’. From Alice’s perspective, we learn that she probably drowned; her body is never recovered. We later discover that eight other women had also been accused and hanged. Thus, the dark shadow of a troubled past broods over this small rural village.
In the present, the villagers are shaken when a development company proposes a plan to build homes, cutting down a local woodland. What follows is a series of inter-connected, character-driven stories about local people. Death and loss are a regular feature of everyday, mundane life and grief is handled in different ways: séances, obsessive theft, ridiculous superstitions. In the village, the past is ever-present: bones buried under a rowan tree, mummified cats placed in the walls of cottages, strange curses carved on trees. The past and the present interact in a subtle and understated way.
The novel is a finely tuned, beautifully written exploration of character. Hesket’s well-remembered experiences with witchcraft shape its present; and that can never be fully erased. But we also see the challenges of progress and the dangers in trying simply to obliterate this past, not only in personal but in ecological terms.
Overall, this is an impressive debut. It is a short novel, and part of me wanted some more detailed development. But I can also appreciate its concision and the restrained nature of the narrative. Well worth reading.
