Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright and David Leslie Johnson

Red Riding Hood
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright and David Leslie Johnson

Like most small communities, the village of Daggorhorn is not without its secrets. An impoverished community in the heart of the woods, it is one that has seen more than its fair share of loss, and an undercurrent of fear pervades its every aspect–particularly when the sun sets and the full moon rises. Daggorhorn is at the mercy of the Wolf, a fearsome half-human, half-wolf beast kept at bay only by the village’s long-time habit of providing sacrifices and staying as far as possible out of its way.

But this full moon, things are different. A blood moon hangs above the forest, and the villagers know that despite their best efforts, the outcome will be nothing less than horrific. As the small, close-knit community becomes victim to the brutality of the wolf, tensions rise, and so do suspicions–and finger-pointing and condemnation abound. Valerie, whose sister is one of the victims, finds herself at the centre of the villagers’ accusations about the true identity of the wolf. But Valerie has her own suspicions about the wolf’s identity…

A hotly anticipated 2011 release, Red Riding Hood has been written to tie in with the film of the same name, and unfortunately it shows. Adapted from the film’s script, it’s the barest bones of a story–and by bare, I mean thoroughly picked clean of any last morsel of meat. It runs at just over three hundred pages, but the length is misleading, given that over sixty of these are taken up by chapter headings, and that the final chapter will be belatedly released online to coincide with the film’s release. Yes, you did read that correctly–the final chapter (admittedly touted as a “bonus” chapter, but really rather essential to the reading experience given the extreme ambiguity of the novel thus far) has been embargoed until mid March, a fact that has raised the ire of readers who have shelled out the big bucks for what is effectively an extended theatrical trailer. And rightfully so, because it is a marketing gimmick that does leave rather a bad taste in one’s mouth.

The utter lack of an ending, however, is only one of Red Riding Hood’s myriad problems. The book is plagued by all manner of narrative and stylistic issues to the point that it would give me RSI were I to painstakingly sit down and document them all. It’s a shame, because fractured fairytales and retellings of famous cautionary works can make for rather interesting authorial fodder, and from afar this one seems to tick all of the requisite boxes. But after even a few pages one can see that the book is listless, slapdash, and uneven. The village setting should intrigue, but is so reminiscent of M Night Shyamalan’s The Village that it feels derivative–and painfully so. But where The Village manages to inure its creepy little setting with moral ambiguity and paranoia, Red Riding Hood suffers from a distinct lack of atmosphere. There’s a sense of poverty, isolation, and alienation, but it’s never explored: rather, we’re given a few jolting anecdotes and a mass of blow-by-blow character descriptions that never slip deeper than the superficial, and the setting as a result feels like a Potemkin village rather than anything that might truly exist.

The plot, too, is slim, and its various turning points difficult to fathom. We’re led to believe that the villagers live in fear of an awesomely powerful and horrifically slavering wolf, but yet there has been no effort made to prepare a vaguely functional contingency plan in case things go wrong. The fact, too, that the village seems to run by the lunar calendar, and harvests accordingly, yet is utterly unaware of the possibility of a harvest moon seems, well, slightly problematic. Furthermore, the fact that it takes perhaps half of the book to lead up to this point is problematic, particularly given the leisurely pace of the book beforehand, and the subsequent hasty scramble of the narrative afterwards. The villagers run amok, accusing various individuals of lycanthropy in a manner that feels unmotivated and unplotted, and the way the narrative reaches its climax feels truly messy. Our protagonist is accused by one of her friends of being a werewolf, but mere moments later is exonerated by the same girl in a sudden change of heart that follows no rhyme or reason. Similarly, the author alludes to several characters as possibly being the werewolf, but does so by throwing in so many red herrings that the book as a result smells revoltingly fishy. If this were a better novel, I’d say that this is ostensibly to highlight the sort of inherent paranoia that comes of inward-looking societies subjected to an external threat. But given the overall quality of this book, I’m rather more inclined to say that there’s a distinct unfamiliarity with both the mystery and horror genres going on here.

I wish I could say that the prose and characterisation were the standouts here, as I’m notoriously lenient on plot provided that these two things are done well. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The prose is bizarrely uneven, aiming for a lyrical quality in some parts to the degree that one could play a game of bingo with all of the similes and metaphors on offer, but then falling back. on. staccato. sentences. in others. The use of an omniscient point of view makes for problematic reading, as well–omniscient is a notoriously challenging viewpoint to write well, and I think that the choice to use it here is largely due to the fact that this book is truly at its heart a script rather than a novel. It’s fine to flash between characters in a movie, but in a novel it can be a cheap device if done poorly–particularly if it’s used to obscure information from the reader. Worse, the prose is peppered with painful explication, with the scenes with the bad guy priest perhaps the most evident exemplars of these. Readers are perfectly able to make their own judgements about characters’ motivations and to read at a level beyond the literal without being told what’s going on, and to explain to reader such things as the fact that the villagers have become animals themselves in their determination to cast blame, or that they have allowed both a literal and spiritual evil into their home is just a touch patronising.

Perhaps the weakest element of this book, and thus the major cause of its downfall, is its characterisation. While we’re given more than enough in terms of physical descriptions, we’re never truly let inside the various characters’ heads, and in those few cases that we are, the characters suddenly insist on acting entirely out of character, thus invalidating our readings anyway. Why does independent, tomboyish Valerie suddenly fall for cruel and bitter Peter at first sight (and after a grand total of one line of dialogue, or monologue to be exact])? How are we supposed to believe that Lucie is in love with Henry when he scarcely even appears at all? Why does Valerie’s friend suddenly do an about face after accusing her friend (with reasonably good reason) of being in cahoots with the wolf? And must the literary folk of the world endure yet another evil priest character? Truly, the only character with whom I felt some sort of vague empathy was Valerie’s mother, but her role is unfortunately vanishingly small.

While Red Riding Hood has been much hyped in both the blogosphere and in the cinemas, it’s unfortunately not a book that I can recommend. While it draws on the strong foundations of the classic fairytale, the elements where it succeeds in doing so are few indeed. In addition to the weak plot, the book suffers from poor characterisation and awkward writing, and the cheap gimmick regarding the final chapter will no doubt raise some eyebrows–if you must, buy the updated edition further down the track.