You Let Me In, by Camilla "Baddy" Bruce
3.0 Stars
1-5-2024

Why can not two things be true at once?

Another dismal British tale of domestic abuse, dark magic, and dogging. As with the Witch in the Well, this story provides a twin narrative. There's one version in which the events are the result of fairy magic, and another version in which the events are the result of CSA. Both readings seem pretty valid. Actually, wait, there's a third reading, in which both of these things are true and the events are the result of both leeching fairies and childhood sexual abuse. :(

Overall I liked this one more than The Witch in the Well. The pacing is better, the main character is not as unpleasant to deal with, and the supernatural creatures, if they exist, have more life and vitality to them. Not like the sodden kelpie and her chained witch. Still, this is a pretty dark novel, and towards the end the narrator shades more and more towards the neurotic passive-aggressiveness that made the previous book so unpleasant. If you're going to impale someone's heart with a rune-carved spear, own it girl! Don't hide behind made up shadow children. And while the pacing in this is not terrible, it's still slower than it could be because of the author's desire (like in the Witch in the Well) to tell a twin narrative, where each event has two explanations associated with it. While I do often like art that contains its own critiques and counter-explanations (e.g. Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, e.g. much of Nabakov, e.g. Chappell Roan's Femininomenon), in this case the fullness of the critique does slow down the pacing. In the previous the examples, the critique is ~10% of the story, whereas here the critique is ~33% of the story.

Anyway. Bruce is a strong and inventive writer, good at coming up with both folk lore magic and interesting narrative structures. I'm looking forward to what she comes up with if she widens her scope and branch out to tell more varied tales.