I've reviewed two of C. J. Cooke's eight previous novels here at the Nameless Zine and I've been comparing her to some other female authors who have been carving out their own niches: Alma Katsu, Jaime Jo Wright and Catriona Ward. This third highlights that she's carving out a niche of her own, one in which we can still see those other authors as influences but in which Cooke's own voice has gradually become dominant.

Like Katsu, she writes historical fiction to look at societal issues within a genre framework. Like Wright, she alternates her chapters between two different characters in two different times. Like Ward, her narrators aren't always reliable, albeit for very different reasons. However, she has a particularly strong focus on women's issues, she always includes a supernatural touch and she stays close to home whenever possible, all three of the books I've read set at least partly in Scotland and two of them entirely.

In 'The Ghost Woods', she continues with those themes. The societal issue at hand is Scotland's mother and baby homes, places in which young unmarried mothers would stay until their babies are born and adopted out to new families, but which were poorly regulated and rife with abuse. The two times are much closer together than is typical, 1959 and 1965, meaning that there are characters who appear in both or cross over from one to the other and the two timelines merge by the end of the book. The location is Lichen Hall, a private residence run by Mrs. Whitlock, the younger wife to a retired microbiologist, and part of a family that was cursed generations ago by the witch Nicnevin, Scotland's Hecate.

In 1959, it was unacceptable to be a single mother, getting pregnant out of wedlock ruining the reputation of the family at large. Seventeen-year-old Mabel Haggith from Dundee is pregnant, but she has no idea how. She honestly believes that she's still a virgin and, while we get strong hints as to what really happened much later in the book, she thinks the doctor is either lying to her or has made a mistake. Then again, she believes there are ghosts in her body so whatever's moving inside her must be one of those.

In 1965, times were changing but even Pearl Gorham, a twenty-two-year-old nurse, is rejected by societal norms. She knows exactly how she got pregnant. Her boyfriend Sebastian left her so she screwed Bobby without care or protection just because she could and that was all it took.

Both of them end up at Lichen Hall, where they'll work to pay for their keep, to the degree that they will help deliver other women's babies because Mrs. Whitlock firmly refuses to allow any doctors on the premises, sticking to that rule even when her husband, who's suffering from dementia in 1965, collapses. If you're not seeing red flags already, you're not paying attention.

The chapters alternate for the most part between Mabel in 1959 and Pearl in 1965 and are told from their perspectives, but there are other girls at Lichen Hall too and they occasionally have the opportunity to tell their side of things too, like Aretta and Rahmi, the two girls who we get to know in both timeframes. Not everybody gets to go home because not everybody is welcome at home after having a baby outside of marriage. To continue the outsider theme, some of the girls become lesbians too, even though they were all knocked up by men.

Almost everyone in the story is female. Mrs. Whitlock runs the show, taking every opportunity to make money out of whatever's happening; her husband is kept very much in the background, even before he goes down with dementia. There's Mabel and Pearl, of course, but they're never the only girls at Lichen Hall. In Mabel's time, there's also Morven, Elspeth and Julia, and later Rahmi and Aretta, who cross over to Pearl's. The only prominent male characters are children, initially just Wulfric, the Whitlocks' grandson, who runs considerably free and is soon a problem for Pearl, who becomes his tutor, but later Sylvan.

And Sylvan is special, which brings us to the supernatural side of things. We were introduced to Nicnevin before chapter one, so it's there from the start, and multiple characters see strange things in the woods behind the house. There's some sort of weird creature back there and we're led to believe there are bizarre rituals held there too. However, Sylvan is strange from the very moment that Mabel gives birth to him. He seems to have lights underneath his skin, something that Mabel sees immediately but which fades, only to manifest again when he's adopted out to the Askews, who promptly return him.

With the realisation that Sylvan isn't going to earn Mrs. Whitlock any money because nobody's going to want him, she kicks Mabel and her baby out of the house and they take up residence in a shed behind it, outsiders even from a house of outsiders. However, as he grows and exhibits a sixth sense, she promptly moves him back in and puts him to work as a seer, bringing in clients who need answers to questions that they can't get any other way. After all, Sylvan sees things. He knows what Little One's name will be before it's given. He sees Sebastian outside, though he has no idea who Sebastian is. And he sees Morven in the ice cream place, without having a clue what ice cream is. Of course Mrs. Whitlock finds a way to monetise his gift.

There's a lot here to digest, much of it revolving around the very concept of mother and baby homes, why they were tolerated by society and what really went on within them. It speaks to a time and its prejudices, with young women practically shunned and often without it being their fault. Sure, Pearl and Bobby were absolutely responsible for what happened, but Pearl pays the price and Bobby doesn't. However we read Mabel's story, what happened wasn't her fault and Morven was certainly knocked up through rape.

Given that all of them were wronged by men, it seems appropriate that they end up in the care of a woman, Mrs. Whitlock, who wrongs them in different ways. This isn't an anti-men polemic, even if Cooke accurately highlights the double standards of the day; it's a fictional exposure of an institution maintained by a society that didn't care what happened to these young women and shuffled them out of sight and mind. They had all become outsiders and thus not worthy of notice, except for the babies they could feed back into society.

There's another level to this and the revelation very early in the book that the entire east wing of Lichen Hall has been consumed by mushrooms didn't escape me. Everyone just ignores it and carries on regardless, without any consideration to what such an infestation might mean to the health of the pregnant women living in the rest of the building. Today, we'd expect the place to be shut down for health and safety reasons. Back then, nobody cared because they were firmly and deliberately looking the other way.

All the best aspects to the book for me had to do with this historical backdrop, meaning that it worked a lot better for me as a historical novel than a horror novel. It seems easier to compare it to something like Joan Aiken's 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' which exposed the horrors of workhouses and private orphanages within a dramatic framework than, say, Stephen King, who surely must have been an influence here, given that Sylvan rather literally has "the shine". The various supernatural elements, from the creature in the woods to the fairy dust cast at crucial moments by Mrs. Whitlock, seem neatly freaky but don't hold a candle to the real horrors.

I liked this novel and Cooke riddles her stories with value beyond mere entertainment, but this one didn't play as well for me as the other two that I've read. It has more depths than 'Book of Witching' and they reach much further, raising things that camp out in the brain afterwards to make us think, but it's less consistent. Some angles are explored fully, right down to the detail that there's a happy ending here but only for two characters, which seems entirely appropriate given the context. Others aren't and some, including the supernatural angles, don't feel fully formed. That said, I'm thoroughly invested in what Cooke is doing with these books and happily look forward to the next one. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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