Book reviews: One Came Back by Rose McDonagh | Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

Despite their superficial plot resemblances, these two novels offer very different takes on the back-from-the-dead thriller, writes Stuart Kelly

The literary world is truly a cavalcade of coincidence. I have never subscribed to the idea of a fixed number of basic plots, and in almost every case I think idiosyncrasy is more interesting than similarity. Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, Roger Corman and Jimmy Murakami’s Battle Beyond The Stars and Pat Mills’ The ABC Warriors all have the same conceit, but they are fundamentally different. These two novels are both, broadly speaking, commercial thrillers with a Scottish setting. Rose McDonagh’s summarises the conceit as a grabline on the cover: “He died twenty years ago… so how is he standing in front of her?” It is pitched as modern gothic, and compared to Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney and Francine Toon’s Pine.

Alice Feeney’s forgoes the hook, instead having a fake vertical slash revealing the words “READ ME” and queasy mirror-reversed letters in the title, and more importantly, an endorsement from Harlan Coben. But it is broadly the same: Grady Green is a bestselling author and is on the phone to his wife when she knocks someone down. She disappears from the scene at the cliff edge, as does the body. A year later, grief-stricken and suffering from writer’s block, he takes up the opportunity to write on a remote Scottish island, where he glimpses a woman startlingly like his wife.

In McDonagh’s novel, Emily is working in social work in Edinburgh when she thinks she sees Nicky, who died in a car accident when they were at secondary school together. As she gets to know Nicholas, he seems to know things that only her dead friend could know. Moreover, other friends can also see an unsettling resemblance.

The opening quite vividly describes Nicky and the younger Robin going climbing, unsupervised, and feeling “like demi-gods” until the accident. There is then a sudden cut, revealing this is the narrative as imagined by Emily. It is an effective destabilising of the relationship between reader and narrator, and it is regrettable the rest of the novel does not continue with such strategies of unsettling.

The narrative switches between the present day and the past, and although there are some neatly rendered moments, it never quite coheres. Moments like the younger Emily and Robin playing with a Ouija board or daring games in an attic with Emily and Nicky do not really ignite; nor does a feature like the gradually uncovered drawings of animals in Emily’s flat or her dreams of extinct species ever deliver some “click”. They are atmospherics without consequences.

Although it tries to situate itself in folk horror, it reminds me more of the psychological thrillers of Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, or Sophie Hannah, especially in the conflicting nature of childhood recollection and the stifling nature of friendship; but McDonagh does not reach the same intensity and paranoia.

Rose McDonagh | Contributed

A lot of the narrative is conduced in dialogue, but there is also copious texting (and internet searching) which to my mind contributes to the ephemeral feel of the novel. It might be realistic, but the characters seem terribly dull. Although the modern day parts are set in Edinburgh, it is remarkably unspecific – a “Dickensian haze” and an “Irish-themed pub” are hardly ways to root a novel in place. The Highland parts are equally pallid with nondescript descriptions. McDonagh seems intent on unwriting her own book. In a graveyard Emily “felt like the bodies were directly underneath those mossy lumps” only to say “I knew that was not the case”.

As it approached the end, I realised that it was highly unlikely that there would be a satisfactory conclusion. “All this happened years ago. I have a partner now, and a child” we are told, as if we cared about Emily’s romantic misadventures in the first place. That she has pica during pregnancy is another non-thing. It is not that the novel ends tantalisingly unresolved, it merely peters out.

Alice Feeney | Contributed

The opposite is the problem with Feeney’s novel, although it is not the only problem. In this, absolutely everything is explained and tied up, and it is eminently guessable along the lines of being the only possible solution, if temple-grindingly unbelievable. But rather like Midsomer Murders, it really hardly matters. Although it purports to be set on a Scottish island, “Amberley”, the village green, church dedicated to St Lucy, and quaint names like The Stumble Inn, Whit’s End, and The Lane With No Name mean it is probably a part of Scotland twinned with Midsomer.

The novelist who in part narrates is warned of thinking things are like Stephen King, and the checklist of legends of dead children, no birds, author losing their marbles and plagued by mysterious reader, purloined unpublished manuscripts, possible cults, and old relatives in attics make it easy to understand the error. What it is, is remarkably slick. The novelist Lisa Jewell might want to consult a dictionary before pronouncing it “a work of genius” (likewise Janice Hallett and “masterpiece”) but it is a perfectly serviceable product. It doesn’t seem inappropriate that the chapter headings – Good Grief, Modestly Ambitious, Same Difference – are all clichés.

One Came Back, by Rose McDonagh, Trapeze, £20; Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney, Macmillan, £16.99