While reading Anna Bailey’s Tall Bones I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s This be the Verse. Yes, it’s the one which notoriously starts with an F-word and then, in a startlingly lyrical shift, tells us that “man hands on misery to man/it deepens like a coastal shelf”. At one point, one of the novel’s characters almost paraphrases this same thought: “Even if they live…we all end up with our children’s blood on our hands, one way or another”.

Whistling Ridge, the predominantly white, predominantly Baptist town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where Tall Bones is set, has a particularly high incidence of problematic parents. The worst dad accolade, however, must surely go to Samuel Blake, Vietnam War veteran, alcoholic and Bible-basher. His wife Dolly and children Noah, 17-year old Abi and young Jude bear the physical and emotional scars of his righteous wrath. But Samuel is not the only bad guy in the vicinity. Pastor Lewis uses the pulpit to incite hatred against anyone who is different, whether gay or outsider (imagine what he does to Romanian immigrant Rat, who is both). Landowner Jerry Maddox is a racist with a penchant for young girls.

As one can imagine, Whistling Ridge is hardly the most entertaining place on earth and so when Abi Blake disappears after a party in the woods, there is some hope that she might have simply escaped its suffocating small-town atmosphere. But her best friend Emma, guilty at having gone home without Abi, is afraid of worse. Sheriff Gains seems to share her opinion, even while seemingly hiding dark secrets of his own.

Tall Bones develops into a riveting thriller with plenty of dark, Gothic tropes – a missing girl, cabins in the woods, car chases, night-time escapades, fiery preachers, shady sheriffs. Bailey certainly knows how to build atmosphere and how to delay the revelation of the mysteries at the heart of the book. At the end of a horrific ride we are even regaled with some emotionally cathartic scenes.

I found Tall Bones to be great fun (although “fun” is hardly a suitable word to use for a novel featuring graphic violence and multiple stories of abuse). Only time will tell whether it will also be a memorable read for me – I doubt it though, since I felt it did not do anything particularly new with the tropes it relies on. Part of the problem is, perhaps, that the novel’s villains are almost irremediably flawed. Characters such as Samuel and the pastor have few positive traits if at all, and no serious attempt is made to understand how their characters have been shaped - in the case of Samuel there is a reference to a possessive mother and a disturbing event in Vietnam but even these traumatic events hardly explain the monster portrayed. As an atmospheric thriller, Tall Bones works perfectly. As a character study, it is less successful.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/tall-bones-by-anna-bailey.html ( )

While reading Anna Bailey’s Tall Bones I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s This be the Verse. Yes, it’s the one which notoriously starts with an F-word and then, in a startlingly lyrical shift, tells us that “man hands on misery to man/it deepens like a coastal shelf”. At one point, one of the novel’s characters almost paraphrases this same thought: “Even if they live…we all end up with our children’s blood on our hands, one way or another”.

Whistling Ridge, the predominantly white, predominantly Baptist town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where Tall Bones is set, has a particularly high incidence of problematic parents. The worst dad accolade, however, must surely go to Samuel Blake, Vietnam War veteran, alcoholic and Bible-basher. His wife Dolly and children Noah, 17-year old Abi and young Jude bear the physical and emotional scars of his righteous wrath. But Samuel is not the only bad guy in the vicinity. Pastor Lewis uses the pulpit to incite hatred against anyone who is different, whether gay or outsider (imagine what he does to Romanian immigrant Rat, who is both). Landowner Jerry Maddox is a racist with a penchant for young girls.

As one can imagine, Whistling Ridge is hardly the most entertaining place on earth and so when Abi Blake disappears after a party in the woods, there is some hope that she might have simply escaped its suffocating small-town atmosphere. But her best friend Emma, guilty at having gone home without Abi, is afraid of worse. Sheriff Gains seems to share her opinion, even while seemingly hiding dark secrets of his own.

Tall Bones develops into a riveting thriller with plenty of dark, Gothic tropes – a missing girl, cabins in the woods, car chases, night-time escapades, fiery preachers, shady sheriffs. Bailey certainly knows how to build atmosphere and how to delay the revelation of the mysteries at the heart of the book. At the end of a horrific ride we are even regaled with some emotionally cathartic scenes.

I found Tall Bones to be great fun (although “fun” is hardly a suitable word to use for a novel featuring graphic violence and multiple stories of abuse). Only time will tell whether it will also be a memorable read for me – I doubt it though, since I felt it did not do anything particularly new with the tropes it relies on. Part of the problem is, perhaps, that the novel’s villains are almost irremediably flawed. Characters such as Samuel and the pastor have few positive traits if at all, and no serious attempt is made to understand how their characters have been shaped - in the case of Samuel there is a reference to a possessive mother and a disturbing event in Vietnam but even these traumatic events hardly explain the monster portrayed. As an atmospheric thriller, Tall Bones works perfectly. As a character study, it is less successful.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/tall-bones-by-anna-bailey.html ( )

The instant Sunday Times bestseller; ‘one of the most exciting debuts of 2021’