In 2007, Beck Randall moves with his wife and teenage daughters into a long-abandoned cabin deep in the woods, built a century before by his grandparents. Once there, daughters Tina and Lucy discover that their predecessors have left an imprint of suffering and violence the girls refer to as “ The Whistler,” an eerie presence infused in the nature that surrounds them. As the 1907 and 2007 storylines braid together, characters and events intrude upon each other, blurring the boundaries between eras and illustrating that people and lives are not forgotten; instead, they are woven into the fabric of the land itself. With gritty, lyrical storytelling, Let Gravity Seize the Dead is an intergenerational literary horror story featuring a blend of suspense, beauty, and terror.
Darrin Doyle is the author of the novella Let Gravity Seize the Dead (Regal House), the novels The Beast in Aisle 34 (Tortoise Books), The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (St. Martin’s Press), and Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story (LSU Press), and the short story collections The Big Baby Crime Spree and Other Delusions (Wolfson Press), The Dark Will End the Dark, and Scoundrels Among Us (Tortoise Books). He lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan and teaches at Central Michigan University.
Very excited to be working with Darrin on this title!! If you would like to review it, interview Darrin, or help us feature the book on your site, please reach out with a DM!
~ Thank you to Lori and Darrin Doyle for providing me with an advanced copy of the book to read and review. ~
In his seventh outing—and first novella—Michigan native Darrin Doyle’s great “Let Gravity Seize the Dead” is wrapped in as much ominous atmosphere as the unique title implies. Between the gothic title and the eye-catching cover design, this is sure to capture the curiosity of any reader browsing through their local bookstore. Doyle, an underrated master of contemporary horror that blends suburban mundanity, family, absurd creativity, the fantastical, gore, and sheer eeriness, fits alongside the same strides as Shirley Jackson, Stephen Graham Jones, a splash of Ania Ahlborn, and Stephen King. Let the Gravity Seize the Dead weaves a haunting tale of generational degradation that shows just how deep the roots of familial dysfunction can go. Dare to enter the grim and decaying woods of Wolfolk, where a baleful cabin lays amongst the broken branches, towering trees, smiling rabbits, headless birds, and sharpened axes in utter unrest. Family awaits to make more memories.
In a brisk yet detail-rich 130 pages, Let the Gravity Seize the Dead spans between two separate timelines, as Doyle introduces us to the Randall family. On one hand we have Beck Randall who displaces his family’s “normal” life to moves in to his father’s sinister cabin in the woods with his wife and two teenage daughters. In the second timeline, we get a non-linear glimpse into the Randall ancestors pre–WWI that consist of another father, mother, and two siblings dynamic. Struggling to settle in all on their lonesome, the children begin learning more about their family history and what it means in relation to the land they live off of and on. Cycles of trauma, teenage angst, familial roles, ancestral memories, and the foreboding whistling in the woods and in the darkness of room corners linger and permeate throughout the novella. Doyle fleshes out both of his families—1907 and 2007—to where you begin to feel like a fly on these creaking wooden walls. Equal parts trauma horror and supernatural suspense, Darrin Doyle continues to impress and rise as one of my favourite contemporary authors. Be sure to look for it in shelves and digitally, July 9th, 2024.
Fellow fans of indie film distributor giants A24 and NEON and their usual respective aesthetic vibe will feel very welcome within these lean yet persisting pages. The likes of It Comes at Night, A Ghost Story, and The Lodge, all came to mind within these somber pages. Doyle has a way of writing believable everyday characters trapped within fascinating yet nightmarish loops, eager to prove that they can break the austere molds restraining them from living. As little wise beyond her years Tina states a multitude of times here, “Every day we dream, every night we die.” Let the sounds of lively nature and deathly echoes of the past whistle a familiar tune in your ear as you walk through the aisles to secure your copy of Let the Gravity Seize the Dead.
In 1900, Loren and Betty take their two children to a plot of land deep in the Michigan woods, and over the course of seven years they build a house to live in. Three weeks after the house is finished, Loren is dead. The children hear something whistling in the woods.
One hundred years later, Loren and Betty's great-grandson, Beck, takes his wife and two children to a plot of land deep in the Michigan woods, to the house his kin dragged out of the earth. The children hear something whistling in the woods.
Dark and atmospheric, Let Gravity Seize the Dead is a wholly original take on generational trauma.
Let Gravity Seize the Dead was fun, fast-paced read. We are following the Randall family across different timelines, examining the past and present and the way we can't escape our history.
Our main character, Beck, moves into an old, abandoned cabin his grandparents built a century ago - where his daughters discover the violent past that involves the whistler and their family history.
The writing was poetic and beautiful. The past and the present seem to blend together in this short novella.
My dog seemingly thought 4 AM was 6 AM, so she insisted that we go out in the backyard. I took Let Gravity Seize the Dead with me, and I read it from beginning to end as the sun was getting closer and closer to rising. With the trees and early morning humming of the natural world, it was the perfect setting to read this atmospheric horror novel. The story looks closely at our relationship with the past, the land on which we live, and our home. It's moves quickly and has tension that builds and builds until the excellent ending.
There were also plenty of rabbits waking up in my yard, which added to the impact of the story...
“The forest wears perfume. You’ve smelled it: sun-baked pine, heady as fresh bread. Forest dresses stout in summer, all kinds of layers. Then she strips naked in winter—the opposite of people. Forest sings and sighs, moans and hums. Voices legion, connected millions: leaves in windblown tremble; gray-brown trunks hushed as soldiers, some kissed by sun, some drowned in shadow; rain whisper and thunderbowl” (32).
It is evident that Darrin Doyle, author of the book Let Gravity Seize the Dead has a deep appreciation for nature. He describes the outdoors with such detail and respect you feel that you are deep in the thick of it. He speaks of it with human-like qualities, as if it were a living, breathing person with a past and feelings. And while these aspects give the book life and beauty, Doyle’s novel also evokes a sense of eeriness that leaves the reader with a chill that is hard to shake even after the words on the page end. This chill gets even more sinister as past and present intertwine and weave a story that transcends beyond time, leaving us encased in these vivid descriptions of nature with the question: “why?” The story takes place at the Randall cabin four-miles distant from Wolfolk, Michigan, the nearest small town. The cabin, encased by evergreens and isolated from the outside world, was passed down from generations, but had stood empty for decades. “Trees stood close-woven, even when hardwoods lost their leaves. Lean pines, black and jack, formed dark mazes, needle beds soft in their perpetual shade. Armies of that pine flanked the plot that Beck Randall’s great-grandparents had cleared in 1900” (1). The cabin was first owned by Loren and Betty Randall centuries before new entities took ownership and served as an escape from their tumultuous pastas a fresh start (or so they thought). They had two children there, Bernie and Lucille, who also suffered from their own fair share of anguish. After Lucille, the last remaining relative, passed away the cabin was then passed onto her son, father of Beck Randall. While Lucille’s son wanted nothing to do with the cabin, Beck Randall, her great-grandson, was eager to buy it from his father, despite his father’s warnings of what had happened there. Without ever really knowing why, Beck “forces” his wife Mallory, and their two daughters Lucy and Tina to drop their lives in the city during the middle of the school year, to move to a cabin deep in the woods of rural Michigan. Despite Beck’s urgency to move into his great-grandmother's cabin, he can’t pinpoint a rational reason as to why he should.
Doyle writes, “He didn’t understand, didn’t feel called to understand, the reasons behind his compulsion to spend their savings on the remote cabin and acreage. Didn’t understand why he was willing to quit a stable career designing, installing, and updating lighting systems in retirement homes, community centers, hospitals. Didn’t understand why his resolve invigorated when Lucy begged him to let her finish high school before they moved” (22).
The book flips between telling the story of the first generation of Randall’s who lived there, and this present-day generation, and as the story progresses, striking resemblances emerge between the two timelines. The readers start to understand the reason for certain absurdities and how trauma can be passed from one generation to another. One particular catalyst for the trauma carried by the Randall family, is the woods surrounding the cabin and a certain entity that resides within called “the whistler” that sounds a sad and tuneful melody that signifies when death is upon them. It is a melody similar to a bird’s, if only it didn’t solely sound at night. The “whistler” symbolizes inherited trauma or epigenetics, the study of how the environment can alter genes, as it inhabited the very same place for generations, unwaveringly. Now that history has repeated itself, the trauma that lingers within the Randall family will continue on, until it is broken.
Overall the sense of place, the woods surrounding the cabin, is the only thing that is constant between the two timelines, and the way it is personified and talked about is the thing that saves this particular book from being put back on the shelf. The story surrounding the book, although unique, is not what makes it great. What really defines this book is the interconnectedness between place and trauma and how Doyle relates the two so poetically, pointing out not only the beauty of nature but of its humanity. He reminds us that, most often, the answers to all questions can be found in the past or by looking at the “roots.”
“We’re same as trees, Lucille. Want to know a tree, check underground. Want to know a person, look under the soil. That’s where the story is. Roots. That’s what says how high, how strong, how rotten” (pp. 41).
This novella casts a spell from its first pages, drawing you ever deeper into its mind-bending world, right up to its shattering, revelatory ending.
A central character in the novella is Beck Randall, who has moved his family from the city to a cabin in the Michigan woods, seeking to make a new life. Beck’s ill-fated great-grandfather helped build the cabin, and died soon after the construction was completed. This is just part of the homestead’s dark past, which has become the subject of rumors in the nearest town. But this past remains shrouded in mystery for Beck, his wife, and their two daughters, Lucy and Tina.
The novella’s woodland setting isn’t the least bit peaceful. The earth and trees seem to hum with malevolent truths. Then there’s an unsettling whistling that certain characters hear now and then, a whistling tied to troubling family lore and ill portents. It turns out that the younger daughter, Tina, is especially attuned to these signs and signals, which evolve into a force of their own over the course of the novella, bending and shaping reality and bringing dark truths about her family’s past to light.
With lyrical and haunting prose, Doyle conveys how a landscape can absorb and even embody malevolence, laying traps for the unsuspecting or curious. He has crafted a novella as spellbinding as it’s terrifying, one that I highly recommend.
“The forest wears perfume. You’ve smelled it: sunbaked pine, heady as fresh bread. Forest dresses stout in summer, all kinds of layers. Then she strips naked in winter—the opposite of people. Forest sings and sighs, moans and hums. Voices legion, connected millions: leaves in windblown tremble; gray-brown trunks hushed as soldiers, some kissed by sun, some drowned in shadow; rainwhisper and thunderbowl. The death under our feet is not death. The oak that falls in riot, compelling birds heavenward, will soften. Her trunk unstiffens and hollows. Mushrooms rise like teeth on her skin. Grubs and snakes will congregate and propagate. Descendants of descendants. No wasted. No tragic. No sadness nor tears.”
Let Gravity Seize the Dead by Darrin Doyle
This story grabbed hold of my attention with the beautiful descriptions of familiar Michigan woodland. I returned its grasp while colliding with the unfolding of fascinating and sometimes startling events.
Be forewarned, some content is not designed for the faint of heart, but if you’re feeling adventurous and eager to be swept away by the most beautiful prose and setting, I encourage you to step into this story with an open mind and a tissue or two.
Many thanks to Lori for bringing this book to my attention. She forever hits the nail on the head. 🖤
A dark and despairing tale of a cabin in the woods and a family with 100 years of secrets and trauma.
Beck and Mallory leave the city life behind and move deep in the woods with their two teenage daughters, Lucy and Tina. The cabin was also the home of his great grandparents and their two children Lucille and Bernie.
The two timelines, 1907 and 2007, unfold like fever dreams, of violence and alcohol, depravity and mental illness.
Beautifully written, with paragraphs that cause chills and tension, Darrin Doyle tells the tale of four generations of flawed and misunderstood Randalls making terrible choices.
Haunting and desperate. With a shockingly abrupt ending.
This book has a really interesting formatting and story, and I really like the switching perspectives from Beck, to Lucille, to Lucy, to Tina, and what I assume was “The Whistler”. The lack of chapters was both annoying because of how a typical book reads, but I later found that it helped the story to blend together.
The overall story was really confusing and twisty, and some parts really made my jaw drop. The end definitely left me feeling confused and uncomfortable, but in the way that a book should. Great read!
“But sometimes death isn’t death, and life isn’t life. The two get mixed and turned.”
What the fuck did I just read….. this story is like a miniature version of The Shining. At least the cover looked interesting. The story kinda blends together between this fucked up family. The beginning felt like this was gonna be a paranormal fun time…..no just no.
It’s like a history repeats itself, and the whistler is an omen and a warning from nature to the humans.
Since the book doesn’t come with warnings
TW⚠️ Alcoholism, Incest, Rape, Child SA , Descriptive gore.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Buena premisa. Muy atmosférico. Personajes bien descritos y con profundidad que se sienten como personas reales. Ilustra bastante bien cómo la violencia y el trauma dejan huellas a través del tiempo y se esparcen. El último 10% se sintió algo apurado, pero al ser una novela corta no dificulta la lectura.
3.5*** read this is one sitting and it was such an interesting read. Took me a minute to get used to the writing and switching of timelines and I’m still not entirely sure I knew who’s perspective we were in at times but once I got the hang of it it was good. Extremely disturbing and upsetting but that is what I wanted and I did love the way it was written. Perf short and spooky read
The way this had me in a chokehold. It’s written so beautifully and poetically, yet is not style over substance. The trip into insanity is so gripping. So good. Tina is so creepy. This might be a top 5 reads from this year.
Very lyrically written. Took me awhile to get into but by halfway through I was really enjoying it! Until it seemingly abandoned the folky horror plot in favor of rape and incest being the plot... Disappointing.
This is a gorgeous, chilling novel. I absolutely couldn't put this book down. The writing is stunning and beautiful, and the story is utterly haunting. Terrific read!
Like a lyrical novella version of The Shining. The ending was wildly unexpected! For such a short book, it definitely creates characters we care about and packs a major punch in both timelines.
Incredible read, I struggled to put it down. The way the author writes hooks into your mind and drags you down into this dark world with the characters.
This book would probably be enjoyed by someone who likes the horror genre - it was my first foray into it and it’s not for me! Definitely interesting, definitely unpleasant.
One of the most striking novellas I've read. The perspective and appreciation of the land and the memory imprinted on it will leave a lasting impression.
I definetly think that this book is worth the read if your like in a reading slump but honestly it left me wanting more and I felt really disatisfied by it not enough answers or really any answers
Quick read. Story is a bit all over the place but if you push through to the end it all falls into place. The writing keeps you waiting for what’s coming