Day 3 of home renovations and a very full work week means this will likely be a short and waffly post – apologies in advance for a higher than usual level of incoherence!

I’ve really gone off-piste with this choice. I never read horror; the nearest I get is domestic Gothic with Shirley Jackson. But I picked up Bodies of Water by VH Leslie (2016) because it was published by the always interesting Salt Publishing, and because from the blurb on the back I didn’t actually realise it was a supernatural horror story 😀

The setting is Wakewater House, a huge Victorian pile on the banks of the Thames, but outside of the city. In the present day, Kirsten has bought one of the converted apartments off-plan:

“It was hard to believe that this same water ran all the way to the centre of the city, to those dense, overcrowded pockets where life swarmed. It was a relief being at a distance from it all though her commute would be longer, here, the river was entirely hers.”

And in 1871 Evelyn has been admitted as a patient for the water cure “hydropathy”. It’s a clinic for privileged middle class women:

“‘Doctor Porter likes to think of those he helps us guests, not patients.’

‘In case he doesn’t cure us?’”

And they know they are being patronised at best, victimised at worst by medical misogyny, having been admitted for a variety of ‘women’s problems’ including the ever-popular hysteria:

“Mrs Goddard gave her a knowing glance. ‘Of course we’re mad, dear, we’re women.’

The chapters alternate between Kirsten and Evelyn, united across time by their place of residence and the fact that they both see a soaked and bedraggled woman with long black hair, sometimes in the river.

Kirsten’s only neighbour Manon is undertaking some sort of research around historical female suicides by drowning:

“Among the bracken she was hardly noticeable, a diminutive figure hunched over at the water’s edge like one of the many bunches of wild flowers that dipped their heads towards the surface. In her hand was a large stick, which she seemed to be using to prod the water, and Kirsten was reminded of a witch stirring a cauldron.”

Evelyn also knows of women in the river, but more folkloric:

“‘Of course, there are rusalkas and nixies, sirens, undines.’

‘No men?’

‘Oh no, the water is a female domain.’”

Moving back and forth across time, Wakewater House becomes increasingly eerie, potentially haunted by women who were abused and neglected. The repeated motif of water, its sudden appearance, power and destructive potential is used to build an insidiously unstable environment for Evelyn and Kirsten.

Bodies of Water is not gory; had it been, I would have quickly tossed it aside. Instead it is creepily Gothic, supernatural while grounding the tale in its strong feminist themes.

I love being in and near water, but I might think twice about river swimming now…