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Concrete Grove #2
Silent Voices
Twenty years ago three young boys staggered out of an old building, tired and dirty yet otherwise unharmed. Missing for a weekend, the boys had no idea of where they’d been. But they all shared the same vague memory of a shadowed woodland grove…and they swore they’d been gone for only an hour.
When Simon returns to the Concrete Grove to see his old friends and unearth painful memories from his childhood, things once buried begin to claw their way back to the surface.
The hummingbirds are flying again, bringing a warning of something terrible. Bad dreams take on physical form and walk the streets of the estate. A dark, hideously patient entity is calling once again from the shadows, reaching out towards three terrified boys who have now grown into emotionally damaged men. And the past is about to catch up with them all, staining their lives with a darkness they could never truly escape. Welcome back to the Concrete Grove. The place you can never really leave…
When Simon returns to the Concrete Grove to see his old friends and unearth painful memories from his childhood, things once buried begin to claw their way back to the surface.
The hummingbirds are flying again, bringing a warning of something terrible. Bad dreams take on physical form and walk the streets of the estate. A dark, hideously patient entity is calling once again from the shadows, reaching out towards three terrified boys who have now grown into emotionally damaged men. And the past is about to catch up with them all, staining their lives with a darkness they could never truly escape. Welcome back to the Concrete Grove. The place you can never really leave…
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 27, 2012
1 person is currently reading
142 people want to read
About the author
Gary McMahon
179 books108 followersGary McMahon lives, works and writes in West Yorkshire but posseses a New York state of mind. He shares his life with a wife, a son, and the nagging stories that won’t give him any peace until he writes them.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 19, 2014
At the heart of Gary McMahon's second outing to The Grove is the stinking underbelly of working class citizens etching out a living in the harsh and unforgiving landscape commonly known as The Concrete Grove. We meet again Simon Ridley, Brendan Cole and Marty Rivers who have never been able to escape an incident that occurred some 20 years ago and in this forced reunion they hope to do the business and rectify that which has gone before. What the author achieves here is creating a picture of the harsh realities and life style of those who have nothing and have no hope of ever having anything, and the premise that we are moulded by our childhood we can never escape from that and it makes us the person we have become today. Our 3 heroes have battled to achieve some meaning in their lives with limited success and as we learn they share a common bond of brutal upbringings....
"But it was too late for Marty to do anything but continue his assault. He kept punching, his fists aching, his fingers crunching, and could do nothing but wait until his terrible rage was spent. Anger drove him on, fueling his body and inuring it to the pain in his hands. He was once again the child whose father had beaten him for no other reason that to toughen him up, who grew into a teenager who burnt and lacerated his own body so that nobody would ever cause him pain or beat him in a stand-up fight."....and later "It's not so much that his father hits him, but more about the way the bastard treats Marty's mother. He knows that his father beats her at least once every two weeks - sometimes more often, if he's been drinking a lot. He rarely leaves marks, but there was that time last summer when they had to tell everyone that his mother had fallen down the stairs. She had two black eyes and her top lip was split and swollen. The skin around her jaw was red and tender to the touch."
"A hundred yards along Grove Crescent was the Arcade. The row of shops had always been here, ever since Simon could remember. The retail outlets renting the premises had changed, of course, but these were minor adaptions to the demands of the economy rather than any kind of improvement in consumer choice. The people round here did not want quality goods they wanted cheap and cheerful products that would do for the time being. These days, the shops were tenanted by a DVD rental outlet, a pizza and kebab takeaway service, Grove Grub (which was the only constant factor in the Arcade, having been there since Simon was a boy), a flower shop, a betting shop, a butchers-and-grocers, a small hardware store, a hairdressers with a solarium place in the flat above, and a grimy newsagent with faded advertisement for chocolate bars and comics in the chicken-wire-covered windows. More local kids in sports apparel hung around on the steps outside, mums stood smoking and chatting over prams, shady-looking men ducked in and out of the betting shop doorway, clutching or dropping onto the pavement creased slips of paper."
These are very powerful descriptive passages that add substance to "Silent Voices" and blend beautifully with the drabness and living hell of life in The Grove itself and the horror contained therein. The story leads us effortlessly through the present lives of Simon, Brendon, and Marty as they prepare to meet their nemesis for a final and frightening confrontation at the centre of The Grove.....The Needle..."The boys cross the road, walk along Grove Street and step into the Roundpath, the narrow walk-around circling the Needle. The large building hovers above them, as if cast adrift from its concrete foundations. It seems to totter and sway and as they approach the place they feel a sense of dislocation, as if they have ruptured something, broken through an invisible wall....."
I began to wonder could Gary McMahon maintain this frightening pace, this unputdownable read, until the end..... until the last page.....I need not have worried, in the hands of a professional author anything can happen and most surely will. All I will say is that the ending when it occurs is totally unexpected and clever in it's execution, leaving the way open nicely for the final installment of this wonderful trilogy. Highly Recommended.
"But it was too late for Marty to do anything but continue his assault. He kept punching, his fists aching, his fingers crunching, and could do nothing but wait until his terrible rage was spent. Anger drove him on, fueling his body and inuring it to the pain in his hands. He was once again the child whose father had beaten him for no other reason that to toughen him up, who grew into a teenager who burnt and lacerated his own body so that nobody would ever cause him pain or beat him in a stand-up fight."....and later "It's not so much that his father hits him, but more about the way the bastard treats Marty's mother. He knows that his father beats her at least once every two weeks - sometimes more often, if he's been drinking a lot. He rarely leaves marks, but there was that time last summer when they had to tell everyone that his mother had fallen down the stairs. She had two black eyes and her top lip was split and swollen. The skin around her jaw was red and tender to the touch."
"A hundred yards along Grove Crescent was the Arcade. The row of shops had always been here, ever since Simon could remember. The retail outlets renting the premises had changed, of course, but these were minor adaptions to the demands of the economy rather than any kind of improvement in consumer choice. The people round here did not want quality goods they wanted cheap and cheerful products that would do for the time being. These days, the shops were tenanted by a DVD rental outlet, a pizza and kebab takeaway service, Grove Grub (which was the only constant factor in the Arcade, having been there since Simon was a boy), a flower shop, a betting shop, a butchers-and-grocers, a small hardware store, a hairdressers with a solarium place in the flat above, and a grimy newsagent with faded advertisement for chocolate bars and comics in the chicken-wire-covered windows. More local kids in sports apparel hung around on the steps outside, mums stood smoking and chatting over prams, shady-looking men ducked in and out of the betting shop doorway, clutching or dropping onto the pavement creased slips of paper."
These are very powerful descriptive passages that add substance to "Silent Voices" and blend beautifully with the drabness and living hell of life in The Grove itself and the horror contained therein. The story leads us effortlessly through the present lives of Simon, Brendon, and Marty as they prepare to meet their nemesis for a final and frightening confrontation at the centre of The Grove.....The Needle..."The boys cross the road, walk along Grove Street and step into the Roundpath, the narrow walk-around circling the Needle. The large building hovers above them, as if cast adrift from its concrete foundations. It seems to totter and sway and as they approach the place they feel a sense of dislocation, as if they have ruptured something, broken through an invisible wall....."
I began to wonder could Gary McMahon maintain this frightening pace, this unputdownable read, until the end..... until the last page.....I need not have worried, in the hands of a professional author anything can happen and most surely will. All I will say is that the ending when it occurs is totally unexpected and clever in it's execution, leaving the way open nicely for the final installment of this wonderful trilogy. Highly Recommended.
January 23, 2013
4.5 stars
Another fantastic installment in the Concrete Grove trilogy.
More of the same unsettling, surreal nightmare qualities of the first book, this time with a trio of boyhood friends who reunite after twenty years to face the fears that have plagued them throughout adulthood.
Beautifully disorienting with just a smattering of body-horror, this should be on any horror fans to-read list.
(And I wasn't at all influenced by the hero of the piece sharing my surname, but maybe I like him a teeny bit more for it.)
Highly recommended.
Another fantastic installment in the Concrete Grove trilogy.
More of the same unsettling, surreal nightmare qualities of the first book, this time with a trio of boyhood friends who reunite after twenty years to face the fears that have plagued them throughout adulthood.
Beautifully disorienting with just a smattering of body-horror, this should be on any horror fans to-read list.
(And I wasn't at all influenced by the hero of the piece sharing my surname, but maybe I like him a teeny bit more for it.)
Highly recommended.
Read
July 31, 2012I am actually really hesitant to rate this one. Standalone, I'd probably peg it as a two-point-five (keeping in mind that the only things I rate a five are things that I think everyone should read, regardless of whether or not they would usually touch the genre in question). But it's very clearly the second book in a trilogy, and because it appears to rely so heavily on the first I am not comfortable pegging it with stars.
The imagery is beautiful; on the other hand, I find that the character development tells rather than shows. The story's interesting, but the secondary characters made me feel like I was coming in halfway through, and being talked over a bit.
(Note that I'm making this observation while complaining about how people pause a TV show to ask for explanations when they could get 80% of the meaning from context and trust to the show to toss up anything else relevant. I don't require explanations for everything, I just felt shut out by the way it was handled in this book.)
I'll probably pick up the first book at some point, and will come back and star this when I do. Until then, definitely worth checking out if you are interested in urban fantasy-horror, but be prepared for a somewhat choppy read.
The imagery is beautiful; on the other hand, I find that the character development tells rather than shows. The story's interesting, but the secondary characters made me feel like I was coming in halfway through, and being talked over a bit.
(Note that I'm making this observation while complaining about how people pause a TV show to ask for explanations when they could get 80% of the meaning from context and trust to the show to toss up anything else relevant. I don't require explanations for everything, I just felt shut out by the way it was handled in this book.)
I'll probably pick up the first book at some point, and will come back and star this when I do. Until then, definitely worth checking out if you are interested in urban fantasy-horror, but be prepared for a somewhat choppy read.
March 1, 2012
Twenty years ago, three ten-year-old boys - The Three Amigos - went missing in The Needle, in Concrete Grove. When they were found, nobody knew what had happened to them, the boys included, but it tainted their lives and their friendship. Now, Simon is a successful property developer in London, Marty is a hard man and Brendan is a lost soul, the only one with family but ground down by life. Simon is haunted by the past and, spurred on by mysterious letters and emails, he decides to head back to the Grove - and his old friends - and see if he can uncover the truth.
Welcome back to The Concrete Grove, the second in McMahon’s trilogy about that eponymous hell-hole of an estate. Moving on from the events in book one (Hailey and Bingo re-appear, the former with seemingly more to do with the Grove than we’d originally thought), this spends a lot of time getting to know the three leads, how their lives are and how they’ve changed since their childhood (we get some flashbacks to them as ten-year-olds) and the book works fantastically well because of that. We are shown their pain, we are shown how it affects - and sometimes runs - their lives, we are made to empathise with their existence. Simon is a millionaire, with a Russian lingerie model girlfriend, who feels that something is missing from his life. Brendan has a wife and children that he loves - and who love him dearly (Jane, his wife, is wonderfully developed and rounded, even though a lot more of her story is hinted at than shown) - but he’s one of life’s losers. The same can’t be said for Marty who was psychologically and physically scarred by his father and continues to push his body and his hard-man existence to extremes. An occasional doorman, he lost his boxing licence after an accident that killed the only girl he ever truly loved and now he takes part in illegal bare-knuckle fights. The moments of horror all focus on the main characters - Brendan and his acne, his son and a small bird (a scene that is very disturbing) and Marty’s fight with an untrained Polish opponent is as brutal as anything I’ve read in a long time.
The construction of the novel is pitch-perfect, doling out just enough information to keep the plot moving forward, allowing the reader to piece it all together - who is Captain Clickety, what are the hummingbirds doing, why is Bingo in The Needle, why is Marty obsessed with Humpty Dumpty? We see more of what’s powering the grove, more of what’s inside The Needle and the confrontation between good and evil that doesn’t end here.
Gary McMahon is one of those writers who constantly ups his game, delivering more power and emotion with every new work. I thought “The Concrete Grove” was an astonishing achievement, moving away from straight horror into something that was much more of a horror/urban fantasy hybrid, but this novel tops that, pushing both sub-genres further. He barely puts a foot wrong, immersing the reader completely into the world, writing with strength and passion about friendship, family history, urban history, location and sins of the past and it’s genuinely brilliant stuff. I’ve been lucky enough to read “The End” (awaiting publication) and since I did, I’ve considered it my favourite McMahon novel - this runs it very close and has perhaps his bleakest climax so far.
With “Silent Voices”, Gary McMahon writes about childhood and friendship and how adults can perhaps reclaim the past and he does it superbly, with as much love and tenderness and bleakness and brutality as we've come to expect from him. I can’t wait to find out what the third Concrete Grove has to offer us.
Welcome back to The Concrete Grove, the second in McMahon’s trilogy about that eponymous hell-hole of an estate. Moving on from the events in book one (Hailey and Bingo re-appear, the former with seemingly more to do with the Grove than we’d originally thought), this spends a lot of time getting to know the three leads, how their lives are and how they’ve changed since their childhood (we get some flashbacks to them as ten-year-olds) and the book works fantastically well because of that. We are shown their pain, we are shown how it affects - and sometimes runs - their lives, we are made to empathise with their existence. Simon is a millionaire, with a Russian lingerie model girlfriend, who feels that something is missing from his life. Brendan has a wife and children that he loves - and who love him dearly (Jane, his wife, is wonderfully developed and rounded, even though a lot more of her story is hinted at than shown) - but he’s one of life’s losers. The same can’t be said for Marty who was psychologically and physically scarred by his father and continues to push his body and his hard-man existence to extremes. An occasional doorman, he lost his boxing licence after an accident that killed the only girl he ever truly loved and now he takes part in illegal bare-knuckle fights. The moments of horror all focus on the main characters - Brendan and his acne, his son and a small bird (a scene that is very disturbing) and Marty’s fight with an untrained Polish opponent is as brutal as anything I’ve read in a long time.
The construction of the novel is pitch-perfect, doling out just enough information to keep the plot moving forward, allowing the reader to piece it all together - who is Captain Clickety, what are the hummingbirds doing, why is Bingo in The Needle, why is Marty obsessed with Humpty Dumpty? We see more of what’s powering the grove, more of what’s inside The Needle and the confrontation between good and evil that doesn’t end here.
Gary McMahon is one of those writers who constantly ups his game, delivering more power and emotion with every new work. I thought “The Concrete Grove” was an astonishing achievement, moving away from straight horror into something that was much more of a horror/urban fantasy hybrid, but this novel tops that, pushing both sub-genres further. He barely puts a foot wrong, immersing the reader completely into the world, writing with strength and passion about friendship, family history, urban history, location and sins of the past and it’s genuinely brilliant stuff. I’ve been lucky enough to read “The End” (awaiting publication) and since I did, I’ve considered it my favourite McMahon novel - this runs it very close and has perhaps his bleakest climax so far.
With “Silent Voices”, Gary McMahon writes about childhood and friendship and how adults can perhaps reclaim the past and he does it superbly, with as much love and tenderness and bleakness and brutality as we've come to expect from him. I can’t wait to find out what the third Concrete Grove has to offer us.
January 26, 2018
Silent Voices is the second book in the Concrete Grove trilogy, and centers on three men who--as boys--were involved in an incident where they disappeared for a weekend. THough they were gone for three days, they had the feeling that only an hour of their time was missing. The memory gap, and the controversy surrounding their disappearance stuck with them all their lives. The story begins with Simon, the most successful of the three men. He managed to escape the Grove--a slum surrounding the abandoned building known as the Needle. It was in the Needle where the incident took place.
Simon returns to the Grove, in an attempt to put the past behind him, and maybe solve the mystery of their disappearance for good, tracking down his friends to enlist their help in his endeavor.
The second man in the equation is Brendon. He is the middle child of the group. He took up the life that Simon left behind, even marrying the girl Simon gave up when he moved away.
The third guy is my favorite character in the book. Marty is a bruiser, a street fighter who takes zero shit from his manager, or anyone else. If had one complaint about the book it was that we didn't explore Marty, and his life, in enough detail. The characters in Silent Voices were more interesting and engaging than those found in the first book. Book 2 of the trilogy was an improvement over the story in book 1. On to the final book in the trilogy, and looking forward to reading it.
Simon returns to the Grove, in an attempt to put the past behind him, and maybe solve the mystery of their disappearance for good, tracking down his friends to enlist their help in his endeavor.
The second man in the equation is Brendon. He is the middle child of the group. He took up the life that Simon left behind, even marrying the girl Simon gave up when he moved away.
The third guy is my favorite character in the book. Marty is a bruiser, a street fighter who takes zero shit from his manager, or anyone else. If had one complaint about the book it was that we didn't explore Marty, and his life, in enough detail. The characters in Silent Voices were more interesting and engaging than those found in the first book. Book 2 of the trilogy was an improvement over the story in book 1. On to the final book in the trilogy, and looking forward to reading it.
June 21, 2012
This is a wonderful dark fantasy novel. It's very much in the tradition of Mythago Woods by Robert Holdstock but with a horror edge. Defintely worth reading!
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March 7, 2013
A very good creepfest of a horror novel. the 2nd in a trilogy set in a run down british housing estate that seems to be a nexus for wierd otherworldy creatures. McMahon has a real talent for writing believable extremely damaged characters. Good Fun. Looking forward to book 3.
September 29, 2014
My problem with this book is it's sleep inducing and I really can't see why - it seems to have all the right ingredients, it's well written, it's dark and sad and all together a decent book, just terribly, unbearably boring and it shouldn't be.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews