| Title | : | The Quickening |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published March 28, 2013 |
Rachel and Dan -- in love, expecting their first baby and also mourning the sudden death of a close friend -- want to go somewhere hot in January. When Dan produces a ring and tells her he's already booked a luxurious resort on Antigua, the holiday turns into a honeymoon. Everything should be perfect. And, at first, it is.
But Rachel's experience of the island soon turns from idyllic to disturbing. As furniture shifts and objects fly around, a waitress begs her to leave, and a fellow guest starts to frighten her, Rachel realises that something sinister is going on. When the waitress is found dead in the hotel grounds, Rachel realises her only hope is to persuade Dan they should leave. But Dan seems to have his own reasons for wanting to stay, and soon Rachel is unable to decide who -- or what -- she should be most afraid of.
The Quickening Reviews
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When I started reading The Quickening, it had only been rated by two other readers on Goodreads, and both of those had given it just one star. I don't know whether this had an effect on my reaction to it - perhaps, subconsciously, I enjoyed it more because my expectations were so low? - but in any case, I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be compelling, well-written and thoroughly entertaining: a good old-fashioned creepy ghost story with a modern horror twist.
It's a simple story which moves quickly and holds the reader's attention with a series of strange incidents, creating lots of tension and casting doubt on each of the characters. The protagonists are Rachel and Dan, a pair of newlyweds who, after a rushed wedding, embark on a three-week honeymoon in Antigua. Rachel is filled with inexplicable dread from the moment she looks at a picture of the resort, and when the couple arrive there, bad luck seems to follow them - from a smashed glass on their balcony to the mysterious death of a waitress who works at their hotel. However, Dan blames Rachel's paranoia on her pregnancy and insists they stay. But why does it seem as if Dan is already familiar with the island, when he claims to never have been there before? And who is the shadowy figure Rachel keeps spotting?
The narrative is atmospheric and keeps you guessing all the way through, from the fast-moving opening (maybe a bit too fast, but it does the job of hooking you from page one) to the dramatic denouement. I loved the mystery, suspense and supernatural touches, and in fact I was impressed by how effectively the 'ghost' and various dark secrets were worked into the story. It feels a bit gruesome to say this given how the book ends, but for something with a lot of scary/horrible things in it, this was really, really fun. Although: .
The Quickening is part of the Hammer imprint of horror novels and ghost stories, which also includes Helen Dunmore's
The Greatcoat and Jeanette Winterson's
The Daylight Gate. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than both of those. You could criticise it for being silly and full of clichés, I suppose, but I would argue that's what makes it entertaining. It's fun, schlocky and, eventually, genuinely scary - what more could you want from a Hammer Horror book? I'd recommend this to ghost story/mild horror fans wholeheartedly, and it would also make a great holiday read... Though perhaps not if you're going to Antigua. -
Rachel gets knocked up by Dan who then proposes, they get married, and fly off to Antigua for their honeymoon. But a malevolent ghost from Dan’s past threatens their wedded bliss – it’s The Woman in Black: Haunted Holiday Edition!
It’s easy to see why, in a talk about the book, Julie Myerson mentioned her influences are Henry James and MR James because The Quickening is coma fuel. It’s not quite as bad as Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, a story that haunts me to this day for its pure tedium, but it does have a lot in common with MR James’ upper-middle-class Edwardian nonsense. Well-off Brits enjoy a holiday and are bothered by spooky things seen out the corner of the eye – that’s basically the premise of a lot of MR James’ sleepy stories.
The Quickening is boring and filled with ghost story clichés. Rachel and Dan are one-dimensional dummies that aren’t even worthy of contempt for being so flat and uninteresting (Rachel is whiny, Dan is indifferent, you are counting the pages until the end). They meet other dreary holidaymakers, drink drinks, sit in chairs, swim in the ocean, sleep in a bed. Ok – so just like every other tourist who goes to Antigua. And that’s also most of the novel!
The clichés appear here and there to break up their uneventful schedule. Did that glass move? No, Rach, you’re imagining it. Ok, Dan – wait, did those curtains rustle? Etc. Scared yet? Dan suddenly turns into a scary husband for no reason, Rachel turns into the jumpy wife; who’s paranoid and who’s not, one character goes slowly crazy – it’s all stuff that’s been done a hundred times before without any original reimagining. The pregnancy angle reeks of Rosemary’s Baby too.
Without getting into spoilers, once you get to the end, none of those cheap ghostly goings-on marry up with the story Myerson’s clumsily constructed. They were very obviously there to remind you that you were reading a (pitiful) ghost story instead of some dull holiday romance book for bored housewives, not because they made sense in the plot. If you read this, ask yourself how any of the things leading up to it fit in with regards the big “reveal”, and then ask yourself “why now – why did gsdjiojdsg choose this moment in time to do all of this?”. The twist ending, far from being shocking, comes off as a desperate and amateurish move to startle readers from the comfortable doze they’ve been in up to that point.
The story is a snoozefest but the writing is competent and, like a lot of modern novels, eschews quotation marks for dialogue. That might put some readers off but I liked the way thoughts, speech and narration all blended together naturally. It’s also relatively short (a “quickening” read, ho ho!) so it’s mercifully over quite soon. Those are the only real positives I can glean from this!
Julie Myerson’s The Quickening joins the other recent Hammer Horror books – Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, Helen Dunmore’s The Greatcoat, Lynne Truss’ Cat Out of Hell – that have turned out to be incredibly poor horror offerings. Maybe if you’re a MR James/Henry James fan you’ll find something to enjoy in this book (though you’ll probably be tut-tutting that things aren’t going slow enough); otherwise, I’d skip this and try Shirley Jackson instead for quality, genuinely creepy horror storytelling. -
It took me the first few pages to work out if I had actually read this before.. I was sure I had read a Julie Myerson story before, but I found out quite early on that it was actually 'Sleepwalking' that I had read which features another pregnant woman who is having doubts about her marriage.
In this thriller, Rachel and Dan have just got married, and Dan has booked them an amazing honeymoon in a beautiful and idyllic resort in the Caribbean. From the very start, things go wrong. Rachel sees things that no one else sees, things fall off walls, she feels unwell and a waitress tells her she must leave the resort instantly. Soon, Rachel isn't sure who she can trust, and if she is going mad... or been driven mad... but why?
Very frightening actually, and I didn't see the twist coming; it kept me up late! -
This is another ghost story from the people from Hammer and it was an entertaining read but there were a few things that I wasn't so keen on. A newly wedded couple go on their honeymoon to a tropical island but things start to go wrong when things go bump in the night.
This is well written, the sentences and dialogue have been well crafted. The lack of dialogue demarcation actually makes an interesting view on the flow of the story, and the first half of the novel is quite gripping. However, I did find at times I was getting increasingly irritated with the character of Rachel - she became whingy and to be honest, if I was Dan I would have left her to it. The ghost was good, but appeared too many times, I wasn't scared of him and I would like to have discovered more of his story.
I bought the hardback and it's a pretty object, I can appreciate the interesting writing style and really enjoyed the first half. Its worth a read, if you like ghost stories, but like me, you might find you want to leave Rachel behind on the island. -
This was an incredibly quick read, and I read it in a day, which is usually unheard of for me with an almost 300 page count. It was fast paced and jam packed and skipped all the usual set-up and jumped straight into the action.
It was effective too. I was constantly edge-of-seat and engrossed. Rachel and Dan, while both equally unlikable and strange, were also interesting characters. Dan, being so controlling and “off”, made you question whether or not rude and off putting Rachel was really crazy or not.
The end is ambiguous. Not in the sense that we don’t know if Rachel was haunted by Hamilton, our mostly unfriendly ghost: we do. But were Rachel’s suspicions of Dan throughout the book real also? Or was she just simply possessed? I’m not sure. And why harm the lovely innocent resort staff?
Ambiguous can be good, and I’m on the fence about whether or not this is a moral cautionary tale nailed perfectly (her suspicions were real) or a slightly rushed psychopath tale (she’s simply just possessed and/or mad).
May update score after more thinking; may give it an extra star if I find it sticks in my head for a while. 3.5 for now. -
Rachel and Dan -- in love, expecting their first baby and also mourning the sudden death of a close friend -- want to go somewhere hot in January. When Dan produces a ring and tells her he's already booked a luxurious resort on Antigua, the holiday turns into a honeymoon. Everything should be perfect. And, at first, it is.
But Rachel's experience of the island soon turns from idyllic to disturbing. As furniture shifts and objects fly around, a waitress begs her to leave, and a fellow guest starts to frighten her, Rachel realises that something sinister is going on. When the waitress is found dead in the hotel grounds, Rachel realises her only hope is to persuade Dan they should leave. But Dan seems to have his own reasons for wanting to stay, and soon Rachel is unable to decide who -- or what -- she should be most afraid of.
Another imprint from Hammer Horror which aims “to bring compelling and intelligent horror to a whole new market with a modern and sophisticated twist” aka Smart Horror.
The Quickening is a good fast read; a creepy premonition, whispered cryptic warnings on arrival at the idyllic destination and there is something dark and menacing lurching along a sunlit beach with "...black dirt on its hands. It had come to the island looking for her."
Crisp writing, great pacing, tense (loved the rising levels of panic) and genuinely disturbing...maybe one to leave behind if you are heading off to sunnier climes -
Newlyweds Rachel and Dan are expecting their first baby and have gone on honeymoon to Antigua. Strange things start happening straight away, drinking glasses shatter into tiny pieces, a chandelier becomes detached from the wall and flies through the air and Rachel is having terrifying dreams that seem real. She starts to doubt everything around her and becomes suspicious of Dan who acts like he's been to the island before although he says he hasn't.
The suspense gradually builds throughout this short ghost/horror story and I was never sure what was going to happen next. I also liked the fact it was set in the hot, sunny Caribbean instead of a more common ghost story setting and it was no less creepy for this. -
I requested this book when I saw it on the list at the Reading Rooms in Ipswich. I have read several of her other novels and really enjoyed them. I didn't realise that this was a novella from The Hammer horror genre. It is a ghost story, or maybe a possession. Either way it is somewhat like drinking a frothy coffee when you thought you were getting an espresso. Not great, not bad, far fetched, lot's of unanswered and unexplained plotlines-did i like it? Not much.
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Well, I'm sad to say this but this book was really bad. It was neither scary or surprising. Basically the first chapter pretty much summarizes the entire book and the rest is just an endless repetition of the couple fighting and the woman acting hysterical over nothing ending with a lukewarm (anti)climax you can see coming way off.
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This was a really creepy tale and quite gripping but at the end I was just thinking 'well, what happened there then?!' Very strange but a good read - 8/10.
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I read this Hammer horror novella on holiday and found it a compelling page-turner. Picking it up again to review it, I read the entire book again and realised how very clever it is.
In this haunted honeymoon story, Myerson uses a magician’s masterly sleight of hand in order to distract us from what’s really going on.
Newly pregnant, Rachel has been rather bulldozed into a quick wedding and a honeymoon in Antigua. On the way from the airport, the driver bizarrely says that her husband is on the island. ‘Not now. Always. He cannot leave.’
This echo from The Shining (You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know. I’ve always been here) sets the tone, and when they arrive at the resort, even the words, ‘Rachel held the towel to her wrists, her throat,’ made me see her stemming blood, rather than enjoying scented towels.
Myerson’s staccato reporting style, without inverted commas, makes the writing feel tense and fast-moving. Rachel’s point of view is edgy from the start – the empty suitcases look ‘depressing’; she sees a figure on the beach and shivers. Every tiny observation is used to ramp up the tension.
The real horror of the piece is Rachel and Dan’s marriage. We’ve all known a Dan – he’s the partner of a friend of yours and none of your women friends can stand him. He’s a foul-mouthed, irritable loser, a liar and a bully. When Rachel is first upset by a horrible ghostly encounter, he is drunk and bad-tempered. ‘What now?’ he says, and then drags her into his lap. His lack of sensitivity and sudden, selfish advances make us see him as a sexual predator rather than an amorous newly-wed. When she wants him to feel the baby moving, he can’t drag his eyes off the cricket. Most food nauseates Rachel and Myserson brilliantly uses descriptions of Dan gobbling with gusto to make us feel revolted on her account.
The depiction of the haunting and the way it overwhelms Rachel is skilfully observed, but what is truly masterful is the way Myerson uses our suspicion of the odious Dan to distract us from other possibilities in the story. Reading the book a second time, I realised that I had taken in details that screamed of someone else’s guilt, but brushed past them when Myerson, with expert timing, threw in another despicable facet of Dan’s character. And I’m not giving away the ending here, because Dan is also a guilty man.
I write psychological suspense stories myself, and I can only admire Myserson’s clever ruse. Rachel is pregnant and has been rushed into marriage. She is partially in denial about the nature of her relationship and later reveals that she suffers from anxiety. This all makes her vulnerable and unstable in our eyes. The ghostly events and real murders on the island destabilise her further so that we accept gaps and inconsistencies in her point of view, which only serve to make us more fearful for her and her unborn child.
The only downside to this is revealed in other reviews – some readers are irritated by Rachel as a rather hapless victim, always spoiling the holiday fun with her fainting fits. It is true that this could detract from our identification with her, but it is part of the book’s masterplan, which certainly worked on me.
Read it twice – once to be taken in and a second time to admire how brilliantly Myerson achieved this. -
The Quickening is one of a series of shortish horror novels commissioned by Hammer from authors who aren't generally known for writing horror. Other writers who have written for Hammer include Jeanette Winterson, DBC Pierre, Helen Dunmore and Sophie Hannah, and this offering is from Julie Myerson.
Pregnant Rachel has just married Dan after a surprise proposal, and Dan has booked, also as a surprise, a honeymoon to Antigua. But as soon as they arrive, Rachel starts to feel uneasy. Objects move and disappear. Food suddenly tastes of blood. A strange man in a grey suit seems to have something he wants to tell her. And a few days into the holiday, a woman is murdered.
I did like the choice of setting, as it's unusual for ghost stories to be set in hot, bright, sunny environments, and I'm a firm believer that idyllic tropical locations can be just as oppressive and frightening as dark and gloomy ones. There's also some interesting things to be said about how the line between caring for someone and bullying them can be a very fine one.
The plot though is weak and largely predictable and the pace is very uneven with a rushed and slightly incoherent ending that comes after a plodding and repetitive build-up. All the direct speech is rendered without quotation marks, which works perfectly well in some novels but adds nothing to this one and simply irritates.
While I don't need characters to be likeable to enjoy a book, I do need them to be interesting, and nobody in this book fulfils that requirement. Rachel is a weak, insipid woman, the sort who picks at food and shows zero enthusiasm for pretty much anything, and despite everything she goes through I found it hard to sympathise with her. Dan is patronising and overbearing and it's hard to see what on earth Rachel could possibly have seen in him in the first place. It's obvious that something has to give, and what that something will probably be. The horror isn't particularly frightening, and the sense of claustrophobia comes more from being stuck with Rachel and her endless passivity than from any creeping unease.
I've no idea how long Rachel and Dan''s honeymoon was actually supposed to be, but no fictional holiday has ever felt more implausibly lengthy and eventful or more peppered with stereotypical characters, and I include in that the one enjoyed by Keith Barron and Gwen Taylor in Duty Free. At the point four-fifths of the way through The Quickening when Dan mentions they've 'only' got 10 days left to go, I actually laughed out loud, and not in a good way. -
Pregnant Rachel is surprised by her boyfriend, Dan, with a quickie marriage and honeymoon to Antigua. One they arrive, strange things start to happen, whilst Rachel is haunted by the presence of a ghost from the past.
This could have been a great story. The ending, if a little predictable, worked - if only the MC, Rachel, hadn't been such a whiner. Honestly I was half praying for Dan to bump her off. Also I didn't like the tense in which the story was told and the complete absence of speech marks made it difficult to understand who was talking at some points. Very much a missed opportunity. -
I can't think of this as a horror novel - it's more like a psychological thriller. There are attempts at paranormal occurrences, but they seem to flit away and are soon forgotten. There's not really anything in this novel that touches on the horror genre.
The characters fit a mold, and I can see why they are written as they are. They don't make for pleasant characters, but they do make sense, and they did fit in well with they psychological thriller angle I thought better suited this story.
The thing I didn't enjoy about this book as the lack of punctuation for dialogue. It did not make the novel easier to read, and I actually don't see the need to remove them. -
Its an easy read but I found it quite bland and not particularly gripping. I didn't feel especially bothered/interested in the characters and the chapters were all really long, which I also found off putting. I was glad when I'd finished it.
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Really enjoyed this. I loved the setting. Made me crave a holiday. It reminds me a lot of another book - The Honeymoon by Tina Seskis
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I love Julie Myerson but this isn't her best book. It's about a couple who go on a holiday to a Caribbean island after the woman falls pregnant, and are haunted by a strange presence. Myerson always has at least one really annoying character in her books but in this one every single one was deeply irritating. Callow, feckless, unlikeable. The ghost story wasn't bad, but it didn't really break the mold (unlike her amazing The Stopped Heart). The usual Myerson power-plot, where you just can't stop reading, didn't happen here.
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An unreliable narrator in manner of The Girl on the Train, but that's where the similarities end. While TGotT was elegantly written and structured for the most part, The Quickening's protagonist was annoying from the beginning and the story almost maddeningly predictable. I guess the best thing that can be said about it is that it's a quick read.
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Although there are some fine moments of suspense in 'The Quickening' in the first third or so of the novel, unfortunately I was expecting something a little more horrific for a novel commissioned by Hammer.
However, Myerson is particularly good at capturing the uncanny and the incongruous that does create an unsettling eeriness. Her admission that she is a fan of the classic ghost stories by M R James and Henry James makes sense in this respect. There is a careful creation of an everyday creepiness in Antigua that is very well done. For example the visions of the sinister pale man dressed in a dark business suit who haunts Julie are very well done in their evocation of suffocating psychological panic. At times, I was reminded strongly of 'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin, and perhaps my expectations were for there to be more of a supernatural dimension with the unravelling of the plot. That said, I felt that the novel's twist did work well, and I didn't anticipate it.
I think the problem I had with the novel is that I couldn't care very much about the main characters who seemed rather flat and prosaic. Although perhaps this was part of the Myerson's intention. As you will see if you read the novel, don't always mistrust the charming and interesting characters. I look forward to reading some of Myerson's other work, particularly 'Sleepwalking', which sounds like a very good read. -
A very creepy, somewhat surreal read. Dan and Rachel decide to go on a holiday/honeymoon to Antigua for what should be a few weeks in paradise. As soon as they arrive though, Rachel begins to sense something is very, very wrong. Strange things begin to happen around her - objects moving by themselves, lights smashing for no reason, and a strange, dark figure she keeps seeing who makes her feel cold and seems to be giving her horrific memories that are not her own. And husband Dan is acting odd, too, and may not be who she thought he was.
'The Quickening' was a good old fashioned horror story in a modern setting. There's a touch of M.R. James in the not-quite-seen horror that follows Rachel, and in the increasing atmosphere of dread. That these increasingly frightening occurences take place against sun-drenched beaches make them all the creepier.
Rachel is the typical unreliable narrator as well, we're never sure just whether what she experiences is real or imagined or a bit of both. She's definitely the one you root for (even before he starts acting odd, Dan's kind of a dickhead) but you don't know how much you can trust her. I did guess at one of the final twists, but not the ending.
Good book, but not as good as some of Hammer's other new releases - the Woman in Black sequel for example scared me sh*tless, whereas 'The Quickening' was tense and creepy and unsettling and weird but only out and out frightening a few times. -
I was very intrigued by the sound of this book, so I picked it out with apprehension. It wasn't the type of book I usually read, but I was so interested in the description that I knew I had to give it a go.
Honestly, I'm not too sure how I feel about this book. I freaking loved it in some parts, and in others I was completely bored. All I know is that the more I think about it, the more I appreciate this book.
It had aspects of everyday horror; with the main character appearing to go slowly mad, without the reader knowing if she really is insane, or if everyone else around her is in on a giant conspiracy. I won't be spoiling the ending here, but I thought it was more than powerful and will leave me thinking for a long time.
The plot of this story is fantastic, and I think any avid reader could appreciate it and enjoy it like I could. I think the issue I have with this book is the type of writing. The fact that there were no quotation marks did slow my reading down (although I still got through it in a couple of hours), as I had to keep going back and figuring out when someone was speaking and when they were thinking.
Generally, however, I really appreciate this book and I can see myself re-reading it again in the future. -
I read this book very quickly, it's the sort of book you just can't put down.
Do you remember the TV series Tales of Mystery and Imagination? This book reminds me of one of those stories. A mixture of psychological thriller and the supernatural.
The story is about Dan and Rachel, newly married, expecting their first baby, and on their honeymoon in Antigua. All is not as blissful as it sounds though, Dan appears to know the place and people well, even though he says he's never been there before, and Rachel seems to be having hallucinations.
There are many twists and turns in this fast paced story before it's horrific end.
Really enjoyed this. I've not read any of Julie Myerson's books before, but will definitely be seeking them out now. -
Rachel and Dan are expecting, newly married and on honeymoon in Antigua. Soon Rachel starts to experience inexplicable occurrences like exploding lights and mysterious warnings about her husband from hotel employees. She is also accosted by a strange man who claims to have known Dan years ago. And then a couple of women are murdered. Her increasing agitation and anxiety causes Rachel to suspect her husband of all sorts of heinous offences and she believes he's trying to kill her. There's a nice twist at the end which I didn't see coming. It was a steady tale with mounting tension and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
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Things that go bump in the Caribbean as newlyweds honeymoon in a paradise that turns out to be anything but. This is a Hammer book and, like the films it's a bit corny but with a few scary moments. It's short and an easy read, ideal in fact for reading on holiday, which is where I read it, funnily enough. It's not likely to win the Nobel prize for literature and it's not the best thing I've read by the author (but then again I've only read one other of hers), and the two main characters are irritating, but it will fill a couple of hours enjoyably enough. Whether it's actually a ghost story or a psychological thriller I still haven't worked out however!
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I'm an admirer of Julie Myerson and there's a lot to admire about the Quickening. This is a ghost story with an unusual setting - a honeymoon paradise island - which I loved. The novel is well-crafted, as you would expect from Julie Myerson, and I particularly liked the way she gives the 'paradise' and the posh hotel that slightly tawdry feel. It's everything I hate about posh holidays in the sun and more besides. A really gripping story from cover to cover and a brilliant contribution to the genre.
