Lanny

This book was exactly what I had hoped for: experimental, strange, surreal, interesting. It was more fantasy than horror, though I did take a break halfway through because the second section felt anxiety-inducing rather than scary. Ultimately it's about a boy who goes missing and the people around him struggling to cope. I particularly loved the myth, and the imagery, and the fast changes between perspectives. It's not told in a traditional way, so it won't appeal to anyone who likes things predictable. Not sure how I feel about the ending yet... it was well-executed and clearly thought out but perhaps not what I expected, not much left up for interpretation. I would definitely recommend this to the right kind of person.

It's an experimental prose poem, but it's so carefully structured. Dead Papa Toothwort seems a weird indulgence, the snippets of conversation he overheads curling on the page as we eavesdrop on the small village. “Pretty in a smudgy kind of way / all pumped up and shiny like a greased pig / cheers for that Ma, stout gives me the runs / jaunty little bit of topiary / godless, ferret-handling maniac / Mark smelt of rivers, we don't welcome hobbyists Malcolm.”

But Toothwort is necessary to frame the story Max Porter wants to tell. It's a fairy tale for the modern era. (And just as short) Lanny is a precocious child, his parents letting him exist in his sun-dappled world, free to let his imagination wander or they are negligent, bordering on irresponsible and even worse, opportunistic.

I loved this book! I took a chance on the title based on a brief recommendation I stumbled on online and was delighted to discover a captivating, at times scary, tale of a special boy in a small English village that is watched over by a very old, possibly malevolent, spirit.
It's not the sort of story I usually find myself interested in, but Max Porter invests such depth in his characters I felt I knew them, and had to find out what happened next. The story is told from the first person perspective of four primary characters, but Porter also weaves in the voices of many of the villagers through brief thoughts, or snippets of conversation heard by the spirit, Dead Papa Toothwort, a variation of the Green Man myth that lives in the forest outside the village. The result of this choice is that the village comes to life in a three-dimensional way.
The lives of the characters intersect with Dead Papa Toothwort in a way that is genuinely scary and uncertain and kept me guessing to the end.
I also enjoyed the way the tale straddled the territory between the human world and the ancient natural world where pagan spirits and faeries might live.. Although 90 percent of the tale is definitely rooted in a world that is familiar to me, the whole story felt magical.
I listened to the audiobook version, which I highly recommend. The voice actors portraying the characters and villagers do an outstanding job of expressing the characters' emotions. I will undoubtedly read the book eventually, as the writing is very good and features lovely turns of phrases best enjoyed with one's eyes, rather than ears.
Lanny is a book of modest length so it is fairly easy to breeze through.