Review: The Log House, Baylea Hart

The Log House is a very strange novel. Set in a dark dystopia where humanity lives in worn thin communes, huddled away from the forest where monstrous children prey, murdering anyone they can catch, we follow Penny on her quest for revenge after she is cast out for a crime which becomes clear only as the story unfurls.

Warped by her past, Penny is a unsettling and repulsive protagonist, and her dogged, shambolic traipse through the forest has a nightmarish intensity that frames the grotesqueries of the plot excellently. There is a horror of birth and parenthood that runs through every word of the narrative, a profound body horror realised both by the hairy, murderous creatures hunting her, and the almost bloodless quietness of both the child she has left behind.

Because Penny - the fertile - inhabits a dystopia where childbirth creates monsters, and is surrounded by older, worn-down, people, living limited lives in dark houses splinter-filled houses, people who clutch after her and her son with the same uncomfortable intensity.

This is a book of madness, of suddenness, of hatred that seethes, and children that bring death. The cataclysm that brought about the dystopia is ill-defined, and the books main flaws come about when that aspect of the story is discussed. From a personal perspective, I would either say it need more space and depth to be expanded - to give us a relatable normality against which to play the nightmare - or to be glossed over with only the most general sense of a society slowly withering away. Dystopias breed questions, both as to their sustainability and their scope, and what little we learned of this one didn't give a clear picture of either.

But despite this, The Log House is a deeply creepy tale of threat and revenge, guaranteed to give you a landscape for your bad dreams for quiet some time.