Book Review : E.M Roy - Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies (2023)
Before moving to Montreal in 2002, I lived the first nineteen and something years of my life in a six thousand souls mining community, far, far in the woods. It's impossible to understand what it's like to live out there unless you experience it for yourself. Author E.M Roy obviously lives in such a small, claustrophobic community because her debut horror novel Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies captures the otherworldly dynamic of living "away from the world" and away from life itself to perfection.
Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies tells the story of Leonora Bates, a teenager haunted by a tragic family history. The death of her parents also haunts Eston, the little town she lives and estranges her from its fearful population. The precarious balance of Leonora's life explodes into little pieces when her girlfriend Tate disappears and she becomes targeted by the police as the main suspect. Under pressure, Leo will have to get to the truth of what happened herself before she becomes part of "the official story."
Small Town Living and Wilderness
This was somewhat of a 201 pleasure for me. It's a very self-aware debut novel in the sense that E.M Roy kept it simple and straightforward enough. A lot of first time novelist make it too complicated and lose the emotional center of their novel by trying to get every detail of their story out. This isn't the case with Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies. It's very much a novel about small-town living and the fear of the unknown. What makes this novel work is that its supernatural evil presence is both real and metaphorical.
Small-town people are terrified of everything that lies outside the realm of what they already know and E.M Roy makes a great use of the forest as this greater unknown where the limits of reality are stretched. She's not the first (and won't be the last) to use the metaphorical potential of the wilderness in storytelling, but the way she frames it as being just outside the limited "known world" of the population of Eston is original and fun. A lot of the ills it conceals are part of the local folklore, but not exclusively.
In order to achieve that, E.M Roy wrote support characters that reflect these fears. There's a cop characters who's particularly moving in that respect (not the detective, the other one who's name eludes me) who constantly takes intellectual shortcuts in order to fit Leonora's story into the reassuring reality he knows. He's completely accessory to Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies, but his outlook on live is crucial into understanding the predicament Leonora is in. He's both infuriating and awkwardly relatable.
Leonora Bates & Tate Mulder : teenage detectives
Another element of Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies that makes it fun is the protagonist themselves: Leonora Bates and Tate Mulder. Before the novel is split in two halves: "before" and "after" and you get plenty of Tate in the "before" part. These two could very well exist outside the confines of this particular novel. Their push-and-pull dynamics of self-discovery and Tate's obsession with the dark underbelly of their hometown is a storyline in itself. Good characters carry their own weight and Leonora and Tate really do.
Of course, their charm is inextricably link to their coming-of-age/coming out story. I thought it was a very different and eye-opening account of a coming out story in a small town because it doesn't have the typical conservative people telling Leonora she's sinning against God and whatnot. It's more life-affirming. Getting to know each other and understand their desires kind of unveils a new reality for Leonora and Tate. A new set of possibilities. It makes you root for them to see them come into their own as young people.
*
I liked Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies a lot. The ending was a little underwhelming for me to LOVE it, but it’s a quirky and clever novel that goes above and beyond its aim as a horror mystery. Now that E.M Roy has gotten that elusive first novel out of her system, I’m gonna keep an eye on her because there's a talent there. She’s a storyteller, but also a great atmosphere setter. I would recommend Let The Woods Keep Our Bodies to just about anyone. It’s a low-key rich and rewarding read.
