BOOK REVIEW: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Stephanie O'Connell | 18 October 2014 | Reply

BOOK REVIEW: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Faber & Faber
August 2014, $29.99
Reviewed by Steph O’Connell

8/10

Through the Woods is a wonderfully creepy collection of five graphic stories about the sinister things that lurk in the darkness, between the trees, inside the people we know and love…

The illustrations made the stories, sometimes not needing any words at all to get the point across, and at other times adding the little details that would be hard to “show” through narration in a standard, text only story or novel.

Beyond the creepiness of the stories, everything about this book is physically beautiful, right down to the extra details of the cover(those white twigs and branches, and… creepy hands, are all raised). This is a gorgeous book to add to your collection, even if you’ve never read a graphic novel before.

I will be keeping an eye out for more books by this author, and plan to use her website to tide me over until then:
http://emcarroll.com/ (Scroll down to see the rest of her work.)

Our Neighbor’s House

Three girls stay behind while their father goes hunting. Before he leaves, he tells them he will be back in three days, but if he’s not, they should make their way to the neighbour’s house. We join the girls seven days later, as their hope is dwindling, their food supplies are running low, and yet the don’t leave their house, overcome with a strange lethargy.
And then a stranger comes in the night, or so the oldest sister says.

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A Lady’s Hands Are Cold

A young girl enters into an arranged marriage, makes her way to his big, lonely manor, and hears singing in the night.
It’s a dark, haunting melody that no one else admits to hearing.

I married my love in the springtime, but by summer he’d locked me away.
He’d murdered me dead by the autumn & by winter I was naught but decay.
It’s cold where I am and so lonely, but in lonliness I will remain,
unloved, unavenged & forgotten, until I am whole once again.

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His Face All Red

The narrator is jealous of the life his brother leads and the way all the people in the town look up to him.
One night the two brothers go into the woods to hunt a beast that is killing the local livestock, but only one of them comes back… at first.

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My Friend Janna

Yvonne and Janna are best friends. Janna “sees ghosts” and Yvonne makes noises in the walls to convince people Janna’s gift is real… But then one of them becomes haunted…

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The Nesting Place

Bell’s mother told about the monsters that live among us, just out of sight. And then she died.
When Bell goes to visit her brother over the school holidays, she stumbles into the woods and finds something sinister, and realises that maybe her mother was right all along…