Graphic Content: Tales from Harrow County Library Edition

 Harrow County is one of my favorite horror graphic novels. When I reviewed it years ago, I was enraptured with its setting n the Appalachian hills of yesteryear, its worldbuilding where it introduces a whole secret world of haints and magic, and its coming-of-age tale of young Emmy accepting her role within both worlds. Emmy’s story felt like it was completed, and I felt very satisfied by the ending. However, I would turn down the opportunity to revisit Harrow County and Cullen Bunn’s Tales from Harrow County Library Edition for the most part, didn’t disappoint.

It’s been ten years since Emmy left Harrow County and now it has a new protector, Emmy’s best friend Bernice. There’s more to fear in Harrow County besides the supernatural as World War II is calling many young men away from Harrow County never to return. Except a strange song has called all the dead back and Bernice must find a way to stop that song before other, angrier things are summoned. The real world is affecting Bernice’s home, but it’s still in the firm grip of the supernatural.

Writer Cullen Bunn’s and Tyler Cook’s stories as well as Naomi Franquiz’s and Emily Schnall’s illustrations all work together to make this book feel like Harrow County while trying to break new ground. The book spends a lot of time establishing that Bernice is different; she’s an adult, in a surprisingly progressive relationship with the town nurse, and seemingly confident in her abilities. Bunn could simply rehash a few monster-of-the-week style storylines to scratch fan’s nostalgia itches, but he also widens Bernice’s world by introducing more strange residents of Harrow County that aren’t haints. There are elements that still feel like the same old ground readers know intimately, but Vol. 1 does a solid job of introducing this new Harrow County with Bernice at its center.

Have You Read This?: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

 

Family can be a source of comfort, but family can also be a source of anxiety, even trauma. When those who are supposed to protect us do the complete opposite, it can be uniquely terrifying. Jack Torrance running through the halls of the Overlook with a mallet is scary, but it’s particularly terrifying to Danny Torrance (and the readers when they are seeing Jack through his son’s eyes). The betrayal of grandparents might not have the sting of a parent emotionally harming a child, but those wounds can still run deep, especially when it forces someone to confront that grandparent’s influence on them.  T. Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones features a less-than-kind grandmother who has already sowed the seeds of trauma within the minds of her family. 

Sam Montgomery heads to North Carolina to spend some time with her mother in the family home, the one inherited from Gran Mae. Sam loves dearly, but she notices that something is off with her. The changes range from her nervous energy and weight loss to the more obvious redecorating of the house in a style more similar to Gran Mae’s. Gran Mae was a spiteful and controlling old woman whose influence has somehow lasted even after her death. Sam tries to figure out what is happening to her mother and hopefully save her.

Kingfisher seems to excel in creating narrators who are human as well as humorous. Sam has a wry sense of humor that she manages to maintain even as she catalogs all the strangeness around her. There’re a few spooky phenomena in this book, but the unease comes more from Mom’s odd behavior. The terror doesn’t really kick in until late in the book where the supernatural elements decide to stop hiding. It’s a tonal shift, but readers will be rewarded with an off-the-wall yet heartfelt ending, if they stick with the book. The book being a novella, and the likability of Sam, makes finishing this book as easy as a trip through a not-haunted garden.