FINAL BOY

Brother is a horror novel and it is an absolute cracker. It is familial horror. The setting is a farmhouse in Appalachia, remote and run down, and the family that live there are monumentally screwed up.

The main character is Michael, the younger of two sons. His brother Rebel pushes him around and is full of rage. These two sons of the family are our viewpoint into the world and their lives. Their lives are that the family abduct and kill women, generally hitchhikers. Rebel’s job is to find them and entrap them, and Michael is on clean-up duty. The novel is really imagining what it would be like to grow up in a family of serial killers – what does that do to you, what does the world look like for you?

And when there’s a glimmer of a normal life, of leaving this behind, will Michael be able to take it? And will Rebel and Michael’s parents let this happen?

The amazing thing that Ania Ahlborn does with this writing is whilst never shying away from what the family is about and how they got to this point, she manages to make Michael an incredibly sympathetic character. I’ve got no idea how she manages to do this so well, it is incredible writing, but you’re really rooting for a young man who has been involved in unspeakable things.

There are even moments when you feel for Rebel, who torments Michael mercilessly, because Ania Ahlborn shows you where all that hate and jealousy comes from.

There are some grisly moments, but they don’t feel gratuitous – they’re necessary to remind us that Rebel and Michael are not just young men struggling to find their own identity and path in the world but people who have been deeply involved in terrible, terrible things.

It’s just great, all the way through. It is heart-breakingly great. The last third is so relentlessly tense and filled with dread. It is the book that I read (following a review on Violet Prynne’s amazing YouTube channel) that made me go – right, I’m going to go all in on horror and find out just how much other great stuff like THIS is out there.