Gnawing Grief
A review of Blood on Her Tongue and the bog body folklore our ancestors tried to drown
It’s my birthday month this month🎊 and so in my book club we are reading two novels that I have longed to read for months.
Between the 1-18th we are reading Blood on her Tongue, which incidentally, I have finished now and will be talking about today. It is easily a 10/5 ⭐read for me and might be my book of the year!
Then between the 19th and the 31st we shall be reading The Salt Grows Heavy, ranked a higher ⭐ book in places so I am HIGHLY anticipating this novella next, especially since BoHT exceeded my expectations!
I went into this novel utterly blind, simply knowing that many of my Bookish Besties on Fable had it on their TBR was reason enough to read it — but it helped seeing a creator here and there that I trusted endorsed the book also, I dutifully avoided specific details online any time the novel came up.
I strongly recommend you do the same.
However, if you're cheeky (and I suspect you are) and insist on continuing to read this review (I mildly suspect that you will), I'll try and explain why you should immediately swipe your arm across your entire TBR pile to make room for this book this coming weekend.
Grab your pen to take notes!
As a child I was fascinated by bog bodies.
Other kids were buying my little pony novels at the Scholastics book fair and I was out here begged my Mum for enough money to buy this! (picture not shown as its truly gruesome!)
How was this permitted at a PRIMARY school book fair; and
Ummm, how morbid was I as a child, that this is what I wanted to read? 😂 dont answer that second one..
The truth is I was enamored by these bodies, the way the peat preserved them so perfectly. How some still emerged clad in coloured clothing, as if paused by time and were only laying down to sleep in the murk.
I used read and re-read this little book. Imagining how CPR might be able to jolt the found body back awake, for then they could then answer my childish questions about what happened to them? I yearned to know what their name was, what year do they remember it being, how they came to be there, what were they running from or to?
The same questions anyone throughout time has had about the bodies as they were discovered I suppose. As I got older my interest shifted to nature, lore and history.
But when ever a body was discovered in a particularly strange way, say stones tumbled into mouths, limbs staked to the Earth, maimed in a peculiar way and with no artifacts to explain who this person is..of course that story, fictional or not, becomes a foolproof recipe to pique my attention.
In BoHT we follow Lucy, who immediately receives a disjointed letter from her twin sister, Sarah, detailing complaints of her ill health. A migraine, that will not abate. Before Lucy can make sense of this letter, a second message swiftly follows. A telegram from her brother-in-law, Michael. A frantic note begging Lucy to come at once, exclaiming only that the situation is dire.
Van Veen proceeds to unfurl the story before us like an expert surgeon.
We follow Lucy as she begs leave from her job as a companion to travel hastily to her brother-in-law’s estate, Zwartwater. The story then starts in earnest, following Lucy’s recount of Sarah’s ailing body and spirit as she spirals mercilessly into madness. Induced by the strange bog body found on the property.
This body was found by the peat cutters working for the Zwartwater estate. As the earth was cut away for fuel, this body was discovered face down, a large stone forced into its mouth, and the body its self pinned to the earth, to keep it exactly where it was found.
The workers want to put the body back, and had to be heavily bribed to stay on to keep working, for they belived the corpse to be cursed!
Van Veen writes this part of the story to echo old folklore, I was so pleased with all the details that had been included to make the find seem real!
In centuries past, stones were sometimes placed into the mouths of the dead.
If it was believed to be a witch, it was placed there to stop her from cursing them.
If it was a plague victim, it was used to stop the spread of the sickness which might spill from its mouth even after death.
Anyone who died violently, suddenly, or suspiciously like a murder or a suicide or a vampire victim, well then it became a ritual of containment.
Typically our ancestors would bury these bodies at a crossroads so the soul couldnt couldn’t become re-tethered to the body.
In this case if there was no cross roads easily accessible and if the body was believed to be any of these things, then they would anchor the body with pins or stakes where it fell or to where its final hiding place would be, in the hopes it would never emege to be discovered again.
The stone effectively silenced the corpse for good and was believed to prevent it from ever rising again.
And if it did rise — well, the stone was intended to be its first meal.
You are what you eat, after all.
After Sarah sketches and inspects this bog body, her health — both physical and mental — declines sharply and this goes on to impact the whole eatate.
But plain madness has been done before, so of course there's something more to this story, a fevered hungering, deep beneath the surface, that will intice you close before devouring your attention.
I shant say anymore, you need a morsel or two held back to feast upon for yourself, but suffice it to say — for me — this novel is the antithesis of what I expect in a Gothic horror novel.
The words of this story blossomed on each page to bring the whole retelling to life, the only thing improving the story was to also listen to the tale. The performance by Emily Tucker in the audiobook was phenomenal.
This is my first Johanna Van Veen novel and I found myself so disappointed that it has taken me this long to read any of her works!
The prose is so rich and atmospheric you feel as though your there in the thick of it. You become an interloper in the room along side Lucy, documenting Sarah's ravings.
I loved every dark, damp corner of this story, every stolen sapphic interlude, the tactful exploration of the times rampant misogyny with women's 'hysteria', and I even loved the grief that gnawed away at the inside of each characters. How it pervaded them in their own quiet, unique way.
All these aspects come satisfyingly together to make the fearful undercurrent of the story truly believable. Once I picked this novel up and started reading it, I could not put it down.
The only thing that stopped me from gorging myself on it in one sitting was the inconvenience of sleep. After which I had to painfully wait for the work day to finish before I could return. The short time I was away I felt starved for more details, of the bog body, of Sarah’d condition, of this world Van Veen writes so beautifully and darkly about. I was simply famished, desperate to know how the story would end.
It was so worth the wait. 😂
This story had me screaming “Arrrgh” more than once, had me pacing the kitchen.
Had me hassling my best friend (and my entire book club 😂 such legends to experience this with me) on more than one occasion with a random theory because I was so completely enthralled by this tale that I NEEDED to talk to somebody (many bodies) about it (my goodness if your reading or plan to read this please also come talk to me about this book!)
The symbolism was so deep in this novel, I have only scratched the surface for what Van Veen covers in this story in this post. To say more would lead us into spoiler territory and remember you were only suppose to read this AFTER you read the novel, I didn’t want to ruin your experience. So I’ve kept the heartier details obscured so this post can be an accessible little taster to draw you in.
But the author so completely cover’s all the details bought up in the novel, kindly leaving no loose ends, or plot holes.
Interestingly in my research for this article I learned that Veen is dutch for Peat.
Johanna Van (from) Veen (the peat), this leads my mind to wander fancy dark paths with this story. Further spurring on my dark consipracies of the characters in the novel!
If I ever meet Johanna, I shall be vulgar and ask her if she is Sarah??
Either way, as soon as it’s practicable, I'm acquiring a physical copy of this novel for my collection.
It's a story I want to return to again, and again to gorge myself on!
It was magnificent!
Phew you made it this far, well done.
Have I enticed you to read Blood on Her Tonge as well? Or are you just curious about bogs, blood, and lost lore?
Have you read it alread? Did you enjoy every single little pun I added into this review to pay homage to the story 😂📝👀 How many could you find? Tell me in the comments below.
Either way I’d love to invite you to subscribe to my substack here so you can be notified the next time I publish something.
You’re welcome to check out the archive of what I have already written as well.
If you do read this, know that you are very welcome to join the ‘Scream Between the Pages!’ book club. It’s my free, horror, sci-fi, dark fantasy centric book club.
Typically we read one book a month (this month two as they were kinda shorties) and we scream about the contents together in the chapter discussions, like group therapy. It’s great!
Up next: The Salt Grows Heavy. You’re absolutely invited.
I'm not reading this, it would terrify me. If you want to ruin my sleep i would pick these books.
Yet another book to add to my TBR xD this one is especially terrifying 😳😳