"A household that left a tree embedded in a roof was not a sane or healthy household."

Five not quite sane or healthy siblings gather to bury their domineering father, and to celebrate the marriage of the oldest son to the bog wife - a woman who is supposed to rise from the marshy land surrounding their crumbling estate.

This year, though, it seems she’s a no-show . . .

As time goes by, and the promised swamp tart fails to materialize, the family sinks deeper into despair, and things just get weirder. Though not a horror novel, per se, this was definitely one of the strangest books I read in Spooktober. What an eerie, languid, mesmerizing read it was! The author did a great job of making me care about these characters, and I was genuinely worried for their safety. (And, sanity.)

Though I doubt I’d ever want to read this book again, it’s certainly one I won’t forget any time soon.

I loved the premise of this book, but I've come to the realization that Kay Chronister's writing style just isn't for me (I felt similarly about Desert Creatures). There's some brilliant stuff here, and the writing is sometimes so lush and fascinating, but the narrative and character work really didn't come through for me, though I'm fortunately in the minority.

While I didn't hate this book, it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I appreciate the gothic Appalachian setting but didn't feel connected to any of the characters.

Such a different book! Vey moody and atmospheric, the characters were well developed and the story was cutting. Will be looking forward to more form this author.

Great story and idea! The rich long history with the family is very engaging, really helps the story

Thanks to NetGalley and Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for the ARC.

It was a little slow to get into at first, but it was so intriguing. There is a very fine line between the modern world and the folk magic of the Appalachians that the family subscribes to; even when the true background of the Haddesleys comes out, there's still something in the bog that lingers with them. If there's one thing, I noticed that it explored gender roles/performances with Charlie's treatment by the family even before he's physically disabled, and I wish there was a bit more explored with that.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6953954595

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/50671d9a-2164-44a5-a4d8-9b81d1891988

Check out this review of The Bog Wife on Fable. https://fable.co/review/1844907c-fc48-4872-b409-8b1842b96140/share

Book: The Bog Wife
Author: Kay Chronister
Pub Date: October 1, 2024

This book was so confusing to me. There seemed to be so many things going on and I never felt like I got answers to anything. I guess frustrating is the better word to use. Just not for me. Thank you to Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for this sneak peek.

I really savored the environment in The Bog Wife. I enjoyed my time in this bog of West Virginian Appalachia. I felt mud and moisture, the heat and then the cold, beat back by burning dried peat. I didn't feel attached to the characters necessarily, but they were interesting company while we shared our time in the bog together.

Despite all the environment there was to savor, I did feel like this story was sort of slow to get started, then ended too quickly. I ended up wishing the whole book was flavored a lot more like the last hundred pages or so.

Ultimately though, I enjoyed my read, and I recommend it if you enjoy the grotesque (though this is maybe grotesque lite).

I finished this book almost a month ago and have been struggling to put together my thoughts on it. I think that part of what is stumping me a bit is that this book kind of defies genres. If you’re expecting a straight-up horror novel, you’re going to be disappointed. It is certainly a gothic novel – the sense of ominous mystery and dread that permeates your typical gothic novel is definitely present – though not necessarily gothic horror specifically. The best I’ve got to describe it is a gothic eco-horror domestic thriller.

Thematically, there’s lots of family secrets, enmeshment, as well as family expectations and tradition. When the Haddsley siblings bury their dying patriarch in the bog, the bog reneges on its ancient compact and does not produce a bog wife. In this one event, it seems that the rule book gets thrown away, and we see each of the siblings cope with that in their own way.

My favourite of the siblings is Wenna, I think because I strongly relate to the black sheep of the family who tries to strike out on her own but sometimes finds herself falling into old patterns. I really enjoyed learning about each character’s personality, past, and place in the family.

I also think I wish that there were more explanation and resolution in the ending? The situation with THAT family member’s return, why they were gone in the first place, how any of this was possible… I’m not sure. It all just ventured into a bit of ambiguous, surreal, almost cosmic vibes at the end there.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance copy for review.

While I wish this had leaned even further into being an Appalachian folktale/Southern gothic eco-horror, it was still a great take on a gothic story deeply rooted in the environment (pun intended).

My one struggle with it is that I didn't like any of the characters (and I don't think Chronister intended for them to be likable) so I never got fully invested in the plot or the outcome for the Haddesley family. Even so, this is a great title to pick up to get you into the vibes of Autumn and spooky season.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press, and Counterpoint in exchange for an honest review.

Intriguing and entirely engrossing - I could not put this book down. It was a beautiful mix of folklore and atmosphere that just had me hooked and ready to curl up with a blanket and tea. Not to say that this was a cozy read by any means, but the atmosphere it created was like a raining frightful night under the covers.

The atmosphere of this book was spectacular - dark and eerie. I really like folk horror and horror set in Appalachia, and bogs are just about the creepiest places I can think of. I enjoyed the convoluted family dynamics and touches of horror in this book, but I do think that it dragged on a little too long. The book could have been a lot shorter.

• Family secrets
• Betrayal
• Loss of identities
• Delusion
• Superstition

Imagine finding out that your entire life has been a lie.

The Haddesley’s are bog people. They care for the bog and the bog rewards them for their efforts and sacrifice.

When the patriarch of the family is ready to die, they have a rite of passage to release him to the bog. And in turn, the first born son will receive his bog wife.

But during this ritual, something goes horribly wrong. They followed their father’s instructions to the T. So why doesn’t Charlie have a wife?

In this slow burn southern gothic with folk elements, we follow this family and discover the truths that have been buried deep in the bog.

This book was infuriating at times. The brainwashing, and the naivety of the characters from living a sheltered life was so real. It’s a cult like experience reading this book.

I wanted more for Wenna. I need more for her. I’m happy for Charlie. He deserves a better life. But I am disappointed and confused by the ending.

Nora was my most hated character. And I think that Percy’s ending fit him quite nicely.

Five adult children mired in an Appalachian cranberry bog. An ethereal, ancient compact to care for and subsist off the land. A promise: that the bog would produce for each eldest son a wife hewn from the bog’s pulpiest bits. Until it doesn’t.

So begins Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, published by Counterpoint Press on Oct. 1, a moody, textural gothic replete with dank family mystery, a crumbling ancestral home, and many, many descriptions of sphagnum.

Spanning a calendar year, when readers meet the Haddesley children, their father — and precious patriarch — is dying. Their mother has been gone (where?) for over a decade. And to mark the occasion, wayward middle-daughter Wenna has returned home to participate in funereal rites. When those rites — drilled into their heads by their father with religious intensity — don’t work, each Haddesley child is left looking for an answer to explain why.

The thing you need to know about the Haddesleys is they have been insulated from, well, everything. Aside from outdated copies of gossip magazines, little-to-no reference is made to the world outside the bog. The eldest son leaves to run errands, but other than that, only Wenna ever ventures meaningfully away. All their life they have absorbed the same ornate, far-fetched family mythology that at once explains their origins, their duty, and their collective destiny. They don home-made ceremonial clothing, they live off canned goods and the little livestock and garden they manage to keep alive; their house falls into disrepair because it’s never occurred to them to solicit help. The outside world is a dangerous unreality. It is irrelevant. There is only the bog.

There is an obviously ecological-horror question being asked here: What do we do when the way we’ve always cared for the earth no longer works and the earth consequently turns against us? That question unfolds with an enchanting elegance, managing unfurl both quickly and ponderously at the very same time. But me? I couldn’t stop thinking about the church. About stories we tell children to help them make sense of the world. About the shattering power of a parent’s influence.

From this point of view, The Bog Wife is as much a story about distressed land and obligation to environment as it is of deconstruction, a term used by those of us raised in a fundamentalist community who then become adults and find themselves confronted with the unreality they’ve been taught to fear and abhor. It’s a complicated, emotional, and painful process, the unlearning. It’s asking questions that were previously prohibited, finding you no longer accept the origin story you’ve been given because when you look at yourself, really take a slow and steady accounting of who you are and the values you hold, you find that origin story does not describe you. And maybe it never did. Until reading The Bog Wife, I’d never thought about how this experience could be transposed onto other things, things like our attitude toward the earth’s care.

Reading The Bog Wife, I too was transposed. The Haddesleys are fiercely each themselves, complete with eccentricities and immovable opinions and blindspots undergirded by a ferocious devotion to one another. Their realm is hardened and cruel, yet also soft and relenting, laced with glimpses of magical realism that they each attempt, in their own way, to grasp. Reader, I was sold.

At Talk Vomit, we’re getting ready to release our fall American Gothic edition, which will live online. (No print edition this quarter; we’re shifting around a bit again.) As I was reading The Bog Wife, I was reaffirmed in the decision to spend the fall ruminating on what we can learn about ourselves through the banal fatalism and uncanny storytelling the genre relies upon.

“‘Yes,’ said Nora, and she hoped that the transformation was a way of going back — beyond the vanishing point, beyond what she could remember, to the fullness and warmth and completion that always eluded her. All her life she had been so lonely. She did not want to be lonely anymore.”

xoxo

Monica

Five siblings that may or may not have a special connection to ancestral land in the Appalachian mountains have to reckon with their ambivalent feelings towards each other and their familial legacy after a rite of exchange with the land does not yield the promised results. The messy and complicated dynamics between all of the siblings feels real and lived in. This is the perfect autumnal pick and is best read beneath your favorite tree.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this novel!

The Bog Wife follows the Haddesley siblings (Charlie, Wenna, Eda, Nora, and Percy) who have been raised in a dilapidated home overlooking a bog they have been sustained by for generations. In order to renew their compact with the bog, they must perform a ritual sacrifice, the consequence of which is a new bog wife for the eldest son. Wenna, having fled from the home ten years prior, returns on the eve the ritual, finding herself drawn back into the house, her family, and the bog.

The Bog Wife is an Appalachian gothic through and through, the descriptions of the house and landscape so run down and in a state of decay and ruin. Chronister does a fantastic job at crafting an environment that is eerie and hostile and unknown. The writing here really shines, and if you're a fan of the gothic, you are going to really enjoy how Chronister explores the genre.

While Wenna is set up as the sort of main character in the blurb, we spend time with each of the siblings, reading for their perspective as the events of the novel unfolds. They each have distinctive voices, which is great. Some of them are more interesting to read from than others, but that's to be expected with multiple points of view.

The pacing of this one is pretty slow, the novel more interested in looking at the familial dynamics within the house as the characters begin to piece together parts of their family past.

The ending that the novel builds to is great, though.

As I said, I would definitely recommend for folks who like the gothic, as well as fans of eco-speculative fiction.

The Haddesley family have always been the bog's custodians. They take care of the bog and the bog takes care of them. This includes giving the bog the family patriarch at the end of his life in exchange for a bog wife for the new patriarch, mother to the next generation. Except this time. When Charles Haddesley the Tenth dies, the eleventh does not find her, and the siblings are thrown into chaos. Eldest daughter Eda decides that a family can continue in more than one way. Middle daughter Wenna returns after a decade away, only meaning to stay for the rituals, but eventually realizing that this is the perfect moment to break the pact and get her family to a better place. Nora, the youngest daughter just wants to hold her family together. Percy, the younger son, who would have made a better patriarch, sets out to make a bog wife of his own. And eldest Charlie, who was never built to be patriarch, starts to dig into secrets that none of them want to know, all while the house and their lives crumble around them.
Atmospheric. Spooky. Gothic to the max. Beautifully written. Full of dark shadows and also a possum with three feet. The Bog Wife was everything it promised to be. I loved it. My one and only complaint is that Nora was so annoying. But other than that it was so good. And it goes such wild places. I was so wrong about how it would end. Fantastic book.

I had a few issues with the world of the book and the consistency of the story.

That said whatever my issues The Bog Wife is hypnotic, interesting, wild and incredible. Chronister weaves a tale of 5 adult siblings struggling in an abusive cycle that has proceeded them for many generations. This works as a climate story and an abuse story. Fascinating. Will be recommending it everywhere.

A gothic folkore story of dreams! It's definitely leans more towards the weird side of horror, it's beautifully written and utterly compelling, character driven but the plot is solid too

The Haddseleys have always lived in the house by the bog. When the family patriarch dies, he is fed to the bog, and the bog spits out a wife hewn from the peat for the eldest son to marry. As their father lays dying, the five Haddseley siblings are forced to confront their ancestry and grapple with what it really means to live in tandem with the wild landscape that surrounds them. When the ritual that is supposed to produce a bog-wife fails, the siblings are each drawn on a separate path as they try to make sense of their failings and find a place for themselves in a world that is no longer operating by known rules.

I absolutely loved the subtle magic underweaving this book, but I loved even more the dynamic of the Haddseley siblings and watching their personalities slowly unfold throughout the story. Eda, the eldest, used to taking care of her family; Charlie, always considered a disappointment by their father, disconnected from the land he is supposed to inherit; Wenna, the runaway who comes home in time to witness their father's death; Nora, dreamy, childlike, and needy; and Percy, the younger son who wants desperately to fill his father's shoes. I loved each of this characters for different things, and I loved the way the author slowly wove in details of their childhood and of their lives.

While the book wasn't as weird as early reviews led me to believe it would be (and is certainly less weird than Chronister's last book, Desert Creatures) it was still a very compelling read. It's one of those books where not a whole lot happens action-wise, but so much is happening to the characters internally that they're reacting to, and over the course of the book you get to see them change in subtle ways. Family secrets are slowly revealed in a way that kept me wondering what was true. While definitely not a thriller, there were still several twists near the end of the book that shifted the story in ways I was not expecting.

In a lot of ways, this book reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson's writing, particularly We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Sundial. Even as I was wondering how the story would end, there were certain things that felt familiar and inevitable. Despite the notes of familiarity, the book still ended in a way I would not have anticipated fifty pages earlier, so it still felt fresh and new. The ending made me feel like crying, and that's all I feel I can say about it without giving any spoilers.

If you like books that are a little bit weird and a little bit gothic, and stories that have a very strong grasp of who the characters are, this is the book for you.