This novel starts by dragging us into the bushes, and entangling us in a dense, lush, damp forest of prose that twists and grows into a setting, a character, a child who is inexplicably alone. She is unafraid, but hungry. Desperately vulnerable, but somehow perfectly content. She sleeps in the woods without getting her dress dirty, and when she needs something, she finds a way of taking it. Abandoned, abused, lost… but she defies us with happiness, with taking joy in the natural world. A voice in her ear, perhaps an imaginary friend, perhaps a possessing spirit, drives her onwards with gruesome, shocking, and sad fairytales. She consumes the stories as though they are sustenance.
As the story unfolds, we meet other people, also driven by sad stories that whisper in their ear. In particular, we meet David, who sets out to help the girl. Their connection is instantaneous, worrying in a way. But by this point we understand that this child is more than capable of taking care of herself. David, maybe not so much. The girl tells David her name is Sarah, but this is likely a lie.
There is something transgressive and unpleasant in the idea of an infant who is so self-sufficient, manipulative, poised as a predator. There is something deeply suspect about the adult males who take her under their wing. The novel’s brutal climax is a relief in a way, restoring a kind of natural order and justice, a punishment by proxy of men who hurt little girls.
But nothing about this novel is easy to understand. Even the title, which Gransden claims to have picked at random, is a word shuttered inside its own referents. Anemogram: that which is recorded by an anemograph. Anemograph: a self-recording anemometer. Self-recording, a self recording itself, itself recorded… it is a fitting title, for we come to see that the self being recorded in this story is itself recorded by another self, a Tinker who tells tales and moves the world.
Yet for all this mystery and ambiguity, the novel pushes forwards with a fierce narrative drive towards its awful, inevitable climax and its gripping denouement. There is a gradually deepening sense of horror as the story twists our sympathies and allegiances in unpredictable directions. Gransden holds out answers, then rips them away, leaving the reader effectively stranded and vulnerable in a world made alien and weird.
There is a deep concern with the relationship between human-made and natural environments. The characters move around the edges of the countryside, where building sites encroach upon the woods, and trees are staked through with metal. These liminal settings are key to the novel’s unsettling atmosphere; a Macdonald’s car park or a transport cafe are places steeped in weirdness, a sense of dislocation. Sarah longs for the woods, to be engrossed in the wild minutiae of the undergrowth. In some way, it is as if she has sprung up from these edgelands, a vessel for the battle between humans and nature. Again, the title may – or may not – provide a clue.
One thing is certain, and that is Rebecca Gransden‘s superlative and thrilling prose. It is mesmerising to read, hypnotic and terrifying. Gransden spins out webs of delicate beauty, then drops in a hungry spider. She is fearless and compelling. anemogram is a uniquely weird novel, which leaves the reader unsettled, excited, and full of questions. Highly recommended.