Book Review: ‘Freakslaw’ by Jane Flett (queer funfair horror)
Yep, queer funfair horror. Set in the 90s in a small Scottish town.
Add in the bold, eye-catching cover and I truly didn’t need any more encouragement on that at all, especially considering my recent kick with literary horror (which I wrote about right here).
A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong?
It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.
Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape.
But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge.
And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed…
Novels that feature characters with disabilities or physical differences and the presence of a funfair, carnival or freakshow is a worry and a cause for trepidation as it’s not always sensitively approached, but I think it was done really well in ‘Freakslow’. I am not disabled myself so my reading of it could very well be coming from a point of complete privilege and I’m intrigued to see the reception from the disabled community when the book comes out.
All of the members of the Freakslaw revel in their differences and the freedom that they find in their lifestyle and existing outside of the constraints of society, either by circumstance or by choice. It’s not just disabled people, it’s also those with supernatural abilities: Nancy is a witch and Gloria can tell the future and speaks with the ancestors, but everyone in the Freakslaw family feel apart from society. The way that they are all pitted against the town of Pitlaw is very clearly at the fault of the violence, ignorance, anger and misogyny of the town’s residents, and even in the acts of violence that are carried out against Pitlaw, it feels valid and like a necessary revenge.
Every character bursts off the page, even the most hateful ones, and their stories are fleshed out and vivid in Flett’s extraordinary writing. You know those books where you’re reading and come across a sentence that makes you stop and have a physical or audible reaction? ‘Freakslaw’ is brimming with them. This is a debut novel and the calibre of Flett’s writing has me incredibly excited for what has to be a long writing career ahead of her, because I want more of her writing and her stories.
Through the novel, Flett casts a really vivid portrait of the small, working-class, abandoned Northern towns abandoned in this period by the government and the changing social and political landscape. The feeling of being stuck and the boiling frustration of the residents is palpable; it echoes in the way they spend their time, the options available to them, and the rigid ideas of what’s okay and what’s acceptable - it feels like it’s stuck a time warp.
It’s only with the arrival of the Freakslaw that characters such as Ruth and Derek have the opportunity to experience life outside of Pitlaw, in a very extreme way, and way could lay in wait for their futures, though there is a few hints of the lifelong impact of both growing up in Pitlaw and experiencing the thrills and horrors of the carnival. This is especially true for the Ruth, as if usually is for the women in all situations and stories, so her ending is a little bittersweet.
‘Freakslaw’ is a visceral, delicious, and extraordinary debut about freedom and the victory of the disenfranchised over those who have made them suffer in the past. A truly wonderful literary horror novel.
Thank you to NetGalley and Transworld for the review copy.
Written by Sophie
