Book review: Cries from the Crypt by Adam Nevill

Cries from the Crypt by Adam Nevill

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first came across Adam Nevill a few years ago when I borrowed his novel The Ritual from my local library in London. I worked at the time with charity events, including treks, and the story's plot piqued my curiosity as it was about four male university friends going for a hike in Sweden and things going horribly wrong for them ala Deliverance and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (with the supernatural thrown in.)

A few years later, now living in a remote farm in Brazil, I noticed that Nevill had made three short stories available for free on Kindle. Through that download I found out I could get this ebook for free from his website if I signed up for his newsletter. The ebook featured alternate endings to some of his novels and, what interested me, his thoughts on writing horror plus a pair of short stories.

I'm in firm agreement with Nevill's view on writing, that it's all about revision. Getting something down on paper is easy; the trick is to revise and revise, until you are happy with each sentence. If you can find a way to fall in love with revision, you can probably make it as writer (though on this part Nevill may disagree as he's fairly pessimistic about the horror market.)

From having read The Ritual plus the short stories here and a few of his novel samples, I've also realised that Nevill is a master at nature writing. He really knows how to conjure setting, whether it's a dark forest in Sweden, the Lake District or the English southern coastline. He's at his strongest when writing folk horror. The first story in this collection, “Little Mag’s Barrow”, about a narcissistic London media type that gets tricked to spending a night in a creepy cottage, is worth the download alone.

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