BOOK REVIEW | MISCHIEF ACTS | ZOE GILBERT

 

BOOK REVIEW | MISCHIEF ACTS | ZOE GILBERT

Good Morning!

It’s Sunday here and the sun is doing that rare thing of not hiding behind a load of rain clouds. 

I read this book last month (I think it was last month anyway!) on the recommendation of a friend and really enjoyed it. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Herne the hunter, mischief-maker, spirit of the forest, leader of the wild hunt, hurtles through the centuries pursued by his creator.

A shapeshifter, Herne dons many guises as he slips and ripples through time - at candlelit Twelfth Night revels, at the spectacular burning of the Crystal Palace, at an acid-laced Sixties party. Wherever he goes, transgression, debauch and enchantment always follow in his wake.

But as the forest is increasingly encroached upon by urban sprawl and gentrification, and the world slides into crisis, Herne must find a way to survive - or exact his revenge.

REVIEW

Mixing folklore, myth and history, Mischief Acts by Zoe Gilbert charts the rise and fall and rise again of Herne the Hunter and his influence on the lands and people of the Great North Wood throughout the ages and beyond.

Starting in the 14th century, the book passes through time and into the future with a cycle of stories where Herne is the starring role or in some role throughout the cycle up into the future.

Throughout the stories, Herne takes different forms and guises. At times, the figures that that the stories centre around are from actual history, at other times they are fictional characters.

Essentially a collection of short stories, the book starts with a fictional professor discussing the creation of the myth of Herne and how it has affected local history, and then moves onto the first story which is essentially the creation of the Herne, a skilled hunter who saves the life of Richard II before he meets his demise at the hands of a sorcerer called Bearman.

The stories evolve in language and prose throughout the book, starting with an epic type piece reminiscent of storied verse like Beowulf, to contemporary speculative fiction as the stories go to the future and in between this, the stories are punctuated with verse and chants.

Mischief Acts is an utterly beguiling book that reimagines Herne as a hunter, a trickster, a force of nature and finally as a saviour as the interest in him ebbs and flows throughout the stories. Split into three parts the book moves through the initial enchantment, then the disenchantment as the world around Herne moves into modernity and subsequently the reliance on myths and legends dissolves in favour of the scientific world and ultimately reducing Herne to a minor character. And finally, renchantment as the world needs something to believe in as science and technology fail as the climate changes to a destructive force.

All the way through the book, Gilberts prose is both evocative and bewitching as she takes you on a journey through the life cycle of a myth. One of my favourite reads of the month.