Gallows Hill by Darcy Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Margot’s parents have just died. She doesn’t quite know how to feel about that, as they sent her away when she was a little girl, and she doesn’t remember much of them. Nevertheless, she attends their joint funeral, and hesitantly inherits their home and business, the Gallows Hill Winery. When she returns to this home she cannot remember, she does begin to have little flashes of memory, and as she explores, she makes some unsettling discoveries. Perhaps the locals are right, when they whisper about the curse of Gallows Hill.
Gallows Hill was a fun read, though, as someone who has read most of Darcy Coates’s novels, I will say that I didn’t think this was her strongest story. Her writing was excellent as always, there was some good atmosphere, I enjoyed the characters, but aspects of the ending just seemed a little too convenient, which was the main drawback for me.
Margot was a cool character to follow. She was distant from Gallows Hill, not remembering her time there as a child. So we got to discover things along side her as she explored, but also got some unique insight from her occasional flashes of memory. I thought that this was clever, and added a certain charm to her searching. She was also quite strong willed, curious, and kind to others. Her abandonment as a child has left her with deep-seated anxiety that affords her another layer of vulnerability that works well for the tale.
As much as I liked Margot, it was Kant who really stole the show for me, so to speak. He was the manager of the winery, who had worked alongside Margot’s parents to keep the place running. He was quite close to the family, even when Margot was there as a child. So again, we gain a new perspective from him as Margot asks him questions and interacts with him. We come to see a different side to her parents through Kant, as well as a level head when the wine hits the fan. Kant was also extremely dedicated and caring, and I really appreciated the almost father figure that he became for Margot.
As for the setting, Gallows Hill had a lot of potential. Atop Gallows Hill, we have the winery, of course, but also a crumbling, labyrinthine house, evidence of the former success and liveliness of the Hull family. I always like books where we get to see the decay of something once great, and this certainly ticked that box for me. The winery was fun to explore, as were the old tunnels that were once a part of it. However, at the end of the day, this book could probably have been set anywhere else, and it would still have worked. So little focus was put on the winery that Margot could have lived half way across the town in a spooky house and we likely would have gotten the same story, just playing out a little differently. I may be alone in this, but I did come away wondering why the winery itself hadn’t been featured more.
As I said above, it was the climax that was the biggest let down for me here. I will obviously not spoil anything, but I did feel as if Margot came to her solutions much too easily, considering the struggle up until that point. So, while the bulk of the book was tense, it all sort of unraveled by the end. Perhaps I am being a little harsher than I would normally be, but I read this right off the back of From Below, which was one of Coates’s more masterful stories.
Still, all in all I enjoyed Gallows Hill. It may not be her best work, but it is still a comfortingly Darcy Coates story, with a spooky atmosphere, interesting happenings, and very human characters to root for, along with the evocative writing style I have come to love. I wouldn’t recommend it as highly as her previous books, but I would certainly say that I was happy to have read it. If I hadn’t, I would never have been able to meet Kant, and that would have been a damn shame.
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