Starve Acre. Andrew Michael Hurley. 2018.
Horror is full, of course, of terrible things happening to children. It’s frightening to be a child, as everyone knows, and it’s frightening, so frightening to love one - as all parents know. I always loved horror fiction, and horror films, but I don’t think it ever really affected me like it has after I became a parent. It isn’t just fear for the child that does this, either - certainly I fear for my kids all the time, but I’ve been afraid for myself too. That is the secret fear, the one that’s shameful to voice: what my child will do to me, and to the world.
Having a child is something you can’t take back. There’s a line from George Furth’s book for Sondheim’s Company, where the main character says about marriage that once you’ve been married, you’re caught: you can get divorced, but “you can never not have been married again.” I think about that all the time with regard to parenthood - even if something happens to my kids, I’m their mother forever. I can never not have been a mother again. I’ll never again be the relatively carefree self I was before them. And supposing nothing happens; supposing my children simply grow up into independent human beings themselves - what will that mean? Can I stomach everything they’ll do? Every way they’ll fail, or hurt themselves, or hurt other people, as all people will and must? Can I stomach the moment when I realize they have secrets from me, secrets I’ll never uncover?
Starve Acre is a book about a small child dying, and all that happens to his parents in their grief afterward, but its true horror comes from the parents’ realization that their son was already changing into someone they didn’t recognize, and maybe didn’t love. That’s the greatest horror, and the greatest fear a parent can experience, maybe: that when the child’s death comes, it’s a relief compared to living with whatever the child became. Because, again, you’re caught now - even if the child does die, relieving you of your burden to care for them, you can never not have been a parent again. You’ll always know that about yourself, now - that you didn’t really love your kid as much as you were supposed to.
You may always know, too - and this is something even good parents know, I think - the specific ways that being a parent broke you or made you lose your mind. The hope is that the breaks can be repaired, that maybe we’ll be stronger at the broken places. I hope that’s true. Nothing has ever made me feel as weak as being a mother, nothing has made me confront more the frailty of my own body and the limits of my character. At its best that’s a good thing; it’s humbling to know how weak you are, and strangely affirming to know that you keep going anyway. The parents in Starve Acre never learn this humility; they never stop thinking that they can fix whatever happened to their son, and they fail to recognize the specific ways they’ve both gone crazy. There’s horror in this, too.
I admired this novel very much but I don’t know if I enjoyed it. It would be like enjoying a punch in the gut that you might have deserved. There’s something bracing, certainly, in seeing a truth laid bare, but that doesn’t make it pleasant. I would recommend it, I think - it’s a beautifully told little piece of folk horror, where just enough lore and magic is revealed to you and no more. It’s very, very well done.