The Darkest Part of the Woods

© 2004 Dru Pagliassotti
All rights reserved.

The Darkest Part of the Woods
Ramsey Campbell
2002, Tor Books
ISBN 0-765-30766-9

The Darkest Part of the Woods glitters like the eye of an insect, attractive but disturbing. It is a quietly haunting dark fantasy that revisits the age-old theme of a possessed woodland but imbues it with Ramsey Campbell’s trademark understated horror.

The story revolves around the Price family’s obsession with the mile-square Goodmanswood close beside them. Goodmanswood drove Lennox Price insane, is the source of his wife Margo’s artistic resources and inspiration, and led his daughter Sylvia to write a book on sylvan myths. His other daughter, Heather, is less affected by the woods, but her son, Sam, lived in one of the trees while trying to save it from being cut down and still limps as a result of falling after sensing ... something ... up in the tree with him.

When Sylvia returns from America in response to an unspoken summons, the quiescent power of Goodmanswood stirs, and soon the family is trapped in maze of visions, forbidden rites, strange infestations, ancient occultism, madness, and death.

Campbell can’t resist tying the tale to the Cthulhu Mythos, but the vastness of that horror is an awkward mesh with the tight, claustrophobic sense of obsession evoked by the rest of this novel. Those who pick up the book should do so not to add to their knowledge of the Elder Gods, but to appreciate the way Campbell weaves the woods into every aspect of the characters’ lives, making it an unavoidable and unwholesome influence on everything they do. That’s the subtle touch that has made Campbell one of the acknowledged masters of the field, and that is so often missing in contemporary horror.

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