Caroline Hardaker is a poet and novelist from the northeast of England. She has published two collections of poetry, and her work has appeared worldwide in print and on BBC radio. She is Writer in Residence for Newcastle Puppetry Festival and is currently collaborating with the Royal Northern College of Music to produce a cycle of songs to be performed throughout the year. She lives and writes in Newcastle.

Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker

Including illustrations from bestselling illustrator and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, Mothtown is the unsettling and eerie new novel by Caroline Hardaker, perfect for fans of Midsommar and Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland.

As a child, David could tell something was wrong. The kids in school spread rumours of missing people, nests of bones and bodies appearing in the mountains. His sister refused to share what she knew, and his parents turned off the TV whenever he entered the room. Protecting him, they said.

Worse, the only person who shared anything at all with him, his beloved grandpa, disappeared without a goodbye. Mum and Dad said he was dead. But what about the exciting discovery Grandpa had been working on for his whole life?

Now 26, David lives alone and takes each day as it comes. When a strange package arrives on his doorstep, one with instructions not to leave the Earth, a new world is unfurled before David, one he's been trying to suppress for years…

CURATOR'S NOTE

Silvia Moreno-Garcia raved to me about this book, which is weird and haunting in all the right ways! – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "Hardaker's prose is pensive, melancholic and lyrical."

    – The Fantasy Hive

  • "Mothtown broke my mind in the best way. It is a touching story of a grandfather who discovers a secret about the nature of Universe (think Lord Asriel of His Dark Materials, but more domesticated) and his grandson, David, who tries to follow him into the place he goes. Revelation, transformation, and madness follow in this absolute song of a book."

    – Chris Panatier, author of The Phlebotomist

  • "Mothtown is an ambitious, intimate portrait of an isolated mind and the atrophy of societal bonds. A real treat for the fans of Kazuo Ishiguro and of Susanna Clark's Piranesi, it's one of those books that will stay with you for a long time."

    – Gabriela Houston, author of The Second Bell

  • "Hardaker will put a spell on you with her sleek and haunting prose,"

    – Silvia Moreno-Garcia, bestselling author of Mexican Gothic
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

"Something solid drives through my gut, like a wall of water, and I'm a ghost. Split down the middle.

No… a human knot, plummeting down rocks and bony roots until I hit earth. My head cracks against something sharp and my skull splits, from my ear to the nape of my neck. Something like smoke pours out, but wet and warm. It curls up and around my face in a red veil. The earth licks and holds me still like a great wet tongue.

All is quiet. For a moment, all is quiet.

But from the silence, a shrill ringing builds in my ears. A scream, like an eagle testing the sky. Like I'm inside a brass bell. Trying to shift my joints is like bending the branches of a tree, so I push into the mud, sending feelers out to understand the state I'm in. Count my body parts, one, two, three. Grass tickles inside my left ear. My right palm rests on a rock, slippery and black. My jumper is twisted and pulls against my throat. Burnt orange knit, little brass sparrow button, splattered with black. My head throbs, and the hollow twists and weaves like the ocean.

There's no time.

Light flashes through my fringe. Too long. Why didn't I shave it close, in case I had to run? I brush it from my eyes and smear a clod of cold mud across my forehead. Behind and above, something delicate snaps and a shower of pebbles tumble down the crag face into the ditch.

They're here.

I turn my face into the earth and force every muscle to move. Every bone screams as I rise. Little details embedded in the earth are floating from side to side – pebbles, dangling bracken, my fingers in the soil, as if there's a lag behind my eyes. I cover my face with my hands, and when I pull them away, they're cupping blood. My palms are deeply lined, scored with pain. They look so old. When did I get so old? Why did I wait so long to run?

I retch into the ditch and my throat rips as easily as wet paper. All is red. This is worse than the ache; this is tissue tearing beyond repair. I grab my neck and make everything tight.

Pin it all closed, hold it together. I've made it this far. I can breathe. Move.

From my knees, I claw up the ladder of jutting roots. The black soil feels like clay. My legs drag uselessly behind, as if I'm a thick, sallow worm, heavy with water.

One, two, three more and I'm over the ledge. Rolling on my back, a lilac sky shifts behind swaying branches. I can't lie here. I can't go back. It's too late. I've done too much. And then, a whimper in the quietest part of me: I never thought it'd be like this.