LOST GIRL - A REAPPRAISAL AT GINGERNUTS OF HORROR

Writing this book exhausted me. Took me a while to settle afterwards. I'd never imagined anything as horrifying before. It's since become uncannily prescient (I hope the other half remains fiction). So I'm grateful for this kind & thoughtful reappraisal of my least read novel.

"Lost Girl was Adam Nevill’s seventh novel, published by MacMillan back in 2015 whose arrival attracted little in the way of media attention beyond the hardcore horror crowd, some of which noted its subtle change of direction for the author. By this time I first read Lost Girl I was already a long-term fan, but my current interest in this particular title was reignited very recently by Anthony Watson’s fascinating criticism Dreams and Shadows: An Exploration of the Novels of Adam Nevill. Watson’s thoughts on Lost Girl led to a long overdue reread of this incredibly bleak and startingly powerful title. Strangely, in articles concerning Nevill’s fiction Lost Girl rarely gets a look in, it never appears of the never-ending ‘best of’ lists recycled by sites such as Book Riot, even online horror groups such as the incredibly popular Facebook group Books of Horror routinely blank its existence. On closer inspection one might argue this novel is a genuinely overlooked modern horror classic, top heavy with an oppressive dystopian atmosphere and an overpowering cry for help as the environment is flushed down the toilet."