The Town

by B.P. Gregory

Kate knows what she saw on the satellite the burnt out remains of a town. But she was drunk, the evidence vanishes and nobody believes her.
Determined to prove it at any cost and fascinated to know who would want to live hidden in the middle of nowhere she takes co-worker Lin and sets out into remote bushland and farms, exposing them both to a slew of horrible urban legends, sinister locals, and the mystery of too many people who vanished over the years with nowhere to go.
Kate gradually unearths a myth, a local legend of a town, a place where you can escape ... or become trapped. Somewhere only the truly desperate would seek. And her journey exposes a trove of people who are being crushed by their lives, who might very realistically risk such an escape. If only she can avoid rousing those dark forces who work to prevent them.

Genres: Horror

208 pages, Hardcover

Published June 21, 2023

About the author

BP Gregory has been an archaeology student and a dilettante of biology, psychology, and apocalypse prepping. She is the author of five novels including the recently released Flora & Jim, about a father who’ll do anything to keep his daughter alive in a frozen wasteland.

BP Gregory lives in Melbourne with her husband and is currently working on The Newru Trail, a murder-mystery set in a world where houses eat your memories. For stories, reviews and recommendations as she ploughs through her to-read pile visit bpgregory.com.

Reviews

[G. Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a breathless quality to B.P. Gregory's writing in The Town that will soon have your heart racing and your hair standing on end. Perfect for the eerie atmosphere in this unique horror/mystery novel.

[S.E. Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale of outback horror following the unreliable and flawed Kate into a purgatory of a smouldering Australian wasteland littered with urban legends, broken characters, and excrement filled totems. Reality unravels at a breakneck pace, however, as the characters struggle to reconcile it all, it unravels even more. And that is the point.
Gregory's writing is filled with dark humor and is always cynical- a selfish, sinister motive behind every action and line of dialogue.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to a backlog of ‘to reads’, my progress through the book was interrupted over a period of about four weeks and, on reflection, it would have been easier to appreciate Ms. Gregory’s writing style with either a more concentrated sitting or at least a regular daily read. ‘The Town’ is a style of writing that rewards a conscious reader. It’s not a tale that plunges you in at breakneck speed, but rather it draws itself around you like a cowl of creeping dread, leaving you with a sense of gravity regarding the words you have consumed.
Plot-wise the main characters are Kate – an alcoholic local government/office worker charged with monitoring the impact of a recent bushfire. Her friend Lin accompanies her on a fact-finding mission into the outback after she finds evidence of a township that shouldn’t actually exist, right in the path of said conflagration. Their investigations lead them to discover a long abandoned government complex called the Karrik Institute where local indigents are exploited as subjects in sinister research. After encountering three rather dubious members of the local fire-service on the fringes of this forsaken landscape they wander through the Karrick Institute and meet up with a man of Aboriginal descent named Eric. He is the (self-appointed) caretaker of the building and hides a traumatic past, common to many locals, who have had one or more of their family go missing. The trail leads to the Karrick Institute but evidence is lacking.
The companions, whose relationship is a complex mix of cynicism, responsible morality and sense of the fatalistic, make enquiries with various other members of the local population. As they do so, the intrigue and suspense and, yes, sheer horror mounts. The ending is fairly cataclysmic, but for those who like all loose ends to be tied up and the meanings, whys and wherefores all neatly explained, then you may be disappointed. The author’s style is ambiguous, it’s fair to say; and this tale is like an extended short story, relying on the impact of the narrative and the spectacle of the horror, known as the ‘Town.’
Criticisms? I had to re-read certain sections to get a grasp of whose point of view or dialogue attribution I was currently engaged with, and I think I could have done with a bit more grounding at times as to the motivations of the characters and the stakes that made them act the way they did.
Strengths? It has to be the prose-poetry of BP Gregory’s narrative. By describing the scenes using a mix of dark humour, vivid imagery and bizarro-type scripting, the reader is left with a sense of unspeakable horror that keeps churning over and over in your mind. Make no mistake, if you can push through the sometimes dense and confusing storyline you will definitely be impacted by this story. Of particular note is the use of tastes and smells – you might call them the olfactory senses. There is much reference to excrement, bodily fluids and something called ‘The Seep’. I have never read a horror story that infiltrated my defences in quite this way.
My conclusion? An author to watch for certain. I think with a few tweaks in terms of bias towards ‘telling’ as opposed to ‘show’ and metaphor, together with establishing more anchor points in the narrative, we’ll see this Australian wordsmith produce some truly memorable work.
For fans of Blake Butler, Philip K. Dick and Chuck Pahlanuik

[Johann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok...

Kate glimpses at her job a town that should not exist. This creates curiosity for her to go seek it out and tries to solve its mystery.
Here is the issues i had with this book:
1. The book is narrated entirely by Kate even her thoughts and its all slang... The entire book. This gets annoying because you are constantly having to interpret whats going on while reading as if translating a foreign language.
2. I felt that all the characters seem to have the same voice and no depth to any of them... So all them could die and i wouldn't feel a thing.
3. The ending was a mess to me and i did not feel any satisfaction with finishing the book.
This book left me with thinking to myself, "What did i just read?"

[Adam Hulse · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always striking how unique a voice B.P. Gregory has. The mix of humour and terribly unsettling events is often dizzying to the point of sickness, but it works time and time again. Characters are alive with realistic dialogue, personal problems, and sometimes even smells! The Town keeps you slightly out of the loop at times as you join its central characters to sift through the ash and debris. Pages are turned quickly as you search for answers only to be ambushed by something sinister. Although, for me, The Town doesn't quite reach the heights of Gregory's Flora and Jim (one of my favourite reads of the last few years) its still a great showcase of exceptional imagination and skill.

[Linah Shapran · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good story, but I guess it's not for every reader. I'd even say it need some kind of special readers who would understand and like this book.

I liked its idea. I liked Kate as a character and the author showed her story well.