Pine: The spine-chilling Sunday Times bestseller

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But such remote places are where witches are truly at home, Toon continues, citing a scene from Andrew Fleming’s 1996 film The Craft where four teenage witches go out into the countryside to have a picnic and perform rituals. “A bus driver tells them: ‘Watch out for the weirdos.’ And they say: ‘We are the weirdos.’ They don’t have any fear about going into that sort of space. It belongs to them.” Toon makes evocative use of her northern Scottish setting. She works into her novel many of the strange stories about death, tragedy, the uncanny, and olden rituals still believed in by some and whispered by the locals. Ancient standing stones in the wilderness, forested areas where nearly no one treads and what they may or may not contain, and the harshness of nature in wintertime all add to the haunting atmosphere of the novel as do the rotten smells “like meat left in the sun, but different, more floral” Lauren frequently encounters in her own deteriorating home and in the woods. If I had one gripe – and I do – the resolution of the novel did not quite work for me. I’m not sure how to explain it further without spoilers, but I did have issues with it! So, there we go: a range of books that I got in 2020 – save for the Scott Lynch – and do regret not reading during the year. Is regret the right word? Probably not to be honest: I do not regret the reading that I did do last year at all. But these are books that I would like to find time to catch up with this year – before prize season hits us again!

The year’s end is always a great time to read a chilling novel: I remember finishing 2018 with Melmothby Sarah Perry; 2019 with Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley; and now 2020 with Pine, Francine Toon’s eerie debut.Toon balances us on a knife-edge of doubt. Was this woman a figment of Lauren or Niall’s imagination, conjured up to fill the void left by Christine’s death? Was she Christine herself? Was she a ghost? Were her intentions benevolent or malevolent? Because both Christine and Lauren were interested in New Age faith and healing, candles and tarot cards and something that touched on, perhaps, witchcraft. The edgy, offbeat prose really digs deep, it is a disjointed, haunting tale that is at turns terrifying and heart wrenching. Lauren sits at the centre of a maelstrom of adult emotion, her connection to her missing mother tennous and spiritual – meanwhile danger lurks in the forest surrounding her while her father falls apart and the community grows stranger and more off kilter by the moment. They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Who is the mysterious girl/woman and why are Lauren and older resident, Vairy, the only ones to recall seeing her with any clarity? The reader is given the impression that this mysterious creature is somehow related to Lauren’s mum’s, Christine’s, disappearance when Lauren was just a baby. None of the villagers will talk about Christine in any detail and her father, Niall, becomes angry and withdrawn when Lauren asks questions. Through different fragmented descriptions it is inferred that she is a beautiful and exotic witch from Edinburgh in the midst of people who have grown up and grown stale in a Highland village suspended in time and mediocrity. a b McAloon, Jonathan (30 January 2020). "Francine Toon: 'Witches are empowered women' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 29 September 2022.

Francine Toon’s eerie and unsettling debut novel Pine is set in a small and remote Highland town, where the nearest supermarket is 23 miles away, and the planned opening of an Aldi has been a topic for discussion for months. It is a community where everybody knows everybody else. So, it’s quite ironic that there’s a mystery at the heart of this story. Just under ten years before the events described in the novel, a young woman named Christine disappeared without a trace. Her partner Niall and their baby Lauren are still struggling to come to terms with this. The villagers gossip about Niall’s possible involvement in this disappearance, their suspicions fuelled by his alcohol problem and evident anger management issues. Lauren, who doesn’t remember her mother, is bullied at school, branded as the daughter of a “witch”. Christine might well have recognised herself as one – before her disappearance, she was into alternative remedies, crystal healing and fortune telling. In secret, Lauren is teaching herself spells and tarot reading from one of her mother’s books - her way of coping with a harsh and dangerous world. The repetition of the characters issues were mentioned in detail in every chapter. Okay Toon, I get it, Niall was a drunk. Do I really need reminding in every chapter? They say that the Thorn of Camorr can beat anyone in a fight. They say he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. They say he’s part man, part myth, and mostly street-corner rumor. And they are wrong on every count.The twists and turns keep the reader guessing and Christine’s ghost is the ever-present force which keeps them safe and eventually uncovers the reasons for her disappearance and releases her father’s demons. Splicing small-town domestic drama with grisly mystery and occult thrills, it’s a cleverly crafted debut Metro The prize was renamed in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the Godfather of Tartan Noir, in 2016. Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust.

Set in the Highlands of Scotland in a small village surrounded by Pine Forest. Lauren and her father Niall are struggling through life after the disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago. Neighbours whisper and gossip and appear to know more that they let on and when a local teenager goes missing the community come out in force to find answers. No, it’s face paint,’ Lauren says, lying. It is the one time of year she can wear something of her mother’s. It feels precious. Clandestine. At Sceptre, Francine was known for bringing warmth and creativity to her meticulous editorial process and for fostering strong working relationships with authors. She consistently championed under-represented voices and developed initiatives to make publishing more accessible and transparent to authors from all walks of life. Mentoring new writers was one of the most rewarding aspects of Francine’s time at Hachette. She loves nothing more than discussing a work-in-progress, from the big, thematic ideas to the minutiae of sentence structure. Before joining The Novelry, Francine Toon was a Commissioning Editor at Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton’s literary imprint, part of Hachette UK. She published distinctive, prize-winning fiction and worked on the novels of bestselling, world-renowned authors. The plot also has a nice mix of supernatural thriller and provincial town story. My favourite books are highly provincial (i.e. focusing on domestic, rural life with a focus on the role of nature/family in the community). It's unusual to find a book which fits this genre but is also hugely gripping. I read it in an afternoon and was hooked the whole way through.

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The Best British Poetry 2013 By Ahren Warner". www.wob.com. World of Books . Retrieved 25 January 2023.

Francine wrote Pine while working in publishing full time, inspired by her childhood in the Scottish Highlands and its culture of gothic storytelling. The setting is both beautiful and relentlessly claustrophobic, the author paints pictures with words and leaves the reader unbalanced yet fully immersed, it is a peculiar talent that held me in its thrall the entirety of the read.As they both stare into the dense branches of the pine woods there is a flash of white fabric, Lauren questions Billy who claims to have seen nothing but then claims to have a headache. Now an editor at Sceptre, she recalls being taught about selkies at school, how they shed their sealskin to assume human form. And when you’re at the beach, a seal popping up “could easily be the head of a person”.