The old, quaint cottage of the title is the opposite of the Money Pit in that it actually repairs itself and heals small animals to boot. Having come far from the quick-paced fireworks of The Rats or The Fog, The Magic Cottage finds Herbert in a more eloquent but no less effective mode.
A couple, guitarist Mike and illustrator Midge, purchase the old Gramarye house out in the country after its previous owner, old Flora, kicks the bucket. The house is in a very bad condition but somehow very appealing to Midge, so money (lack of which is resolved, should we say, magically?) and keys exchange hands. The couple hires renovators to fix the myriad problems, only for the repairmen to discover there’s not much to repair. Small things begin to occur, an injured bird heals overnight, shadows lurk on the outskirts of the house and Mike has hallucinatory experienses in the round room, a large room that happens to be, you guessed it, round. Also, their next door neighbours reveal themselves to be affable cultists led by a nice-mannered American, but of course being cultists they are out for blood, or at least the land the house stands on. The battle for English real estate is on.
Herbert knocks it out of the park with the narrator, Mike. Mike’s voice is smart, but not too smart, his reactions to the events unfolding around him realistic and relatable. He’s not a manly hero, most of the time he’s stumbling around like any of us would, even when he nobly takes on a group of punks accosting some of the younger cultists early in the novel. The cultists aren’t badly drawn either, coming across as sensible folks, as cultists always do, I guess, before their masks fall off.
It’s the narration that keeps the novel going, even when the plot itself stumbles towards the end as it becomes wrapped in theories of what magic is (probably realising this, Herbert has the narrator laugh uncontrollably at some of the mumbojumbo spouted by the head cultist). The Magic Cottage isn’t a major horror novel, there’s barely any horror in it, not to mention Herbert’s trademark gore, but it’s a pleasant, well-written little novel in a wonderful setting that slowly unwraps its secrets and delivers where it counts.
**** (4/5)
Mika Reads Horror Fiction 