I wouldn't exactly call this book horror. It doesn't neatly fit into any category other than environmentalism. I liked it anyway!

A teenager whose father goes on the run, (From the mafia? From politicians?) becomes the manager of his family's estates. Finding himself in charge, he soon indulges in his favorite pastime of hunting. As the tale progresses, his hunting grounds become the _target of Progress. Will his friend's mother be able to hold it off? She is known as a "Wise Woman", (read: Witch) after all, and she vows to stop it.

Who knew that environmentalism was a thing in the 30's? I'm not sure it was a thing, other than the observations, often witty, made in this story.

Quote: "How would some townsman feel who loved his city, and knew that a band of farmers with their ploughs threatened his very pavements and would tear his high buildings down? As he would feel, fearing that turnips would thrive where his busses ran, so I felt and feared for Lisronagh."

These observations brought this story alive for me. In spite of the fact that I do not care for hunting, there are several hunt scenes in this book that did not bother me. (In fact the fox hunt was kind of exciting!) Probably because the animals hunted were valued and utilized, not just tossed aside when the hunt was over.

What prevents me from showing all the love for this story, was the wordiness of it. I'm not the kind of reader that loves page after page of descriptive passages about scenery. There is a bit of that here, but it's not as involved as some gothic novels I've read- The Mysteries of Udolpho, for instance. I feel like I have to mention this, because it may interfere with other reader's enjoyment of the story.

Overall, this book turned out nothing like I expected. Will our young hero and his friend's mother be able to do anything to stop Progress?

Quote: "No teaching could make me care for these strangers as I loved this wild land, and all the grief of which a boy is capable was darkening now round my heart, when I thought of the bog about to be partly spoiled and partly to be cut altogether away."

You will have to read this book to find out.

Recommended for fans of gothic novels!

A free copy of this book was provided to my from Valancourt Books, in exchange for an honest review. This is it! ( )

An enjoyable, semi-autobiographical novella from Lord Dunsany, set in Ireland in the late 19th century. The narrator is the son of a landowner, home from Eton for the holidays. His father disappears just ahead of Irish nationalists come to kill him.

Much of the book is taken up with accounts of the narrator's hunting - geese and snipe in the bog, a fox hunt, and so forth. Bits of Irish folklore and the politics of the time filter through. Later in the piece, the narrator finds out his father had leased the bog to a British consortium intending to mine the peat. As this happens, the book veers into the tension between progress and tradition, until the curse of the title comes to pass.

The paperback I read was part of the 'Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult,' but there is very little 'occult' going on here. An interesting piece of Dunsaniana, and also of interest to those who enjoy Ireland. ( )

If you are reading the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult edition of this book, DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION!! At least not until you have read the story itself. I started to read the introduction and find that the editor gives away plot details and what I suspect will be spoilers - stupid man!!

I will read the introduction in full once I've completed the novel and will amend the above if I find that I've done Mr Wheatley an injustice. Now I have to try to forget the bit I just read so that it doesn't spoil my enjoyment. Shall I hit my head on the table, or use a frying pan to pummel out the knowledge?

UPDATE: I'm sure that Mr Wheatley wasn't actually a stupid man, but he did fill his introduction with a reasonably detailed summary of the story which was a massive spoiler. OK, he didn't say what happened at the very end, but the introduction contains no examination of the text, and just a few sentences of (admittedly interesting) biographical info, being otherwise pointless. Anyway, that's the first two pages of the book reviewed.

This book is something of a Curate's Egg - good in parts. The first 20 or so pages are very atmospheric and seemed a good sign. The next three quarters of the book is taken up with long descriptions of the narrator's memories of shooting various wild fowl. If your idea of getting in touch with nature is to lie in a field and blow bits of it apart with a shotgun, you may find this interesting, but I found it interminably boring (I'm a semi-rural vegetarian townie, though, so go figure). These sections are interspersed with little gems of Dunsanian fancy involving the eponymous Wise Woman, her son, ruminations on Tir-nan-Og, the Celtic otherworldly Land of the Young, and Irish Home Rule politics. These will-o-the-wisps in the grey mist kept me going - just - to the last quarter, which takes off again and was reward for perseverance.

What did work very well was the narrative device of the story being told as the memoir of an old man looking back on the formative years of his youth, interspersing his tale with his musings on youth and old age, and apologising to the reader for occasionally rambling off topic. This I found endearing, despite my disinterest in, if not to say disapproval of, the protagonist's penchant for killing birds and beasts.

All-in-all, a mixed bag and a bit of a disappointment, given how much I've enjoyed Dunsany's other writings. Not that it's badly written, of course, but for me this could have been reduced by about half (I'd allow him a bit of hunting, as he likes it so much) and would have been five times more effective. ( )