Fiddleback: A Novel

by J.M. Morris

When Ruth Gemmills younger brother Alex fails to return her calls, she sets off to check up on him. Unable to find him in Greenwell, the town where he has been living and teaching, she begins her tentative enquiries. She soon discovers the locals to be frustratingly unhelpful, whilst the eerie town holds more questions than clues. Why are the police so uncooperative? And who is the grey man the schoolchildren saw Alex with not long before he went missing?As Ruth becomes concerned that something terrible has happened to her brother, events escalate mysteriously, dangerously out of control. Then in one fearful moment she is sure she glimpses the abusive ex-boyfriend she left behind in London, the man who caused her years of torturous pain. Too late, Ruth realizes that she is at the centre of a far darker nightmare than she could ever have imagined. how do you describe that moment when the lights go out in someones eyes and the darkness takes over? They become something you cant reason with, something whose conscience you cant appeal to They look human, but theyre not They have no moral code. They become less than humaninadequate, incomplete. And that incompleteness can make them dangerous, even deadly.

Genres: Horror, Suspense

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2002

Reviews

[Melissa Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite novels ever! Atmospheric, tense and creepy from the offset-I couldn't put it down. I first read it in 2005 and have read it once more since. Morris has a natural talent for creating the ultimate chills and thrills that any good horror should possess in order to succeed in the genre. There are several chapters where I found myself feeling genuinely terrified....and for me, that's pretty hard to do.
Oh, and you won't see the ending coming. :)

[Juanita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to separate fact from fiction at times, and the ending didn't really help.

[Nola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sort of guessed where this was going pretty early on. My issue with the ending is when Ruth is talking about if the guy Keith is gay in real life and remembers them having sex in her dream alternate reality... is this not like alluding to Keith possibly sexually abusing vulnerable patients? In the alternate reality, it turned out Ruth had imagined Keith and it was really Liz. What if Ruth was having sex in reality and that's why she was all confused about what she did and with whom, and was having to scramble her alternate reality narrative to match what she was aware was actually happening in reality. I just thought it was a bit weird.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book turned out to be different from what I thought it would be. Morris writes like a author of the 60s when sentence and paragraph structure had rules. The style, for me, was reminiscent of Phyllis A. Whitney. Because of that I enjoyed reading it. This was a mind bending work....and that's all I will say. You're just going to have to read it yourself!!

[Maria White · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the kind of book I usually read: it's a sort of horror story set in a creepy town where nothing is normal. Reading it whilst having covid was quite fitting as you're not sure if things are real or not. It is pretty well done and readable and I found the central abusive relationship convincing. But it doesn't exactly take you to a happy place!

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: abuse
A journey through the mind and life of someone who blames herself for not being able to "fix" her abuser, even after she learns he was abused as a child and this tendency was threaded in his blood long before she ever met him. Character arc is on-target; 4 stars since the main plot is a bit scattered.

[Booksmylove · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final realization did manage to make me cry. All because she fell for the wrong person😭. But, there were a lot of scense I needed explanation for, a lot I didn't undersrand, and an ending the made me frown, not in a good way. Over all, I cried, but it was not enough for me to recommend this to my friends.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent weeks slowly making my to the halfway point in the book, and I ended up reading the last half in just one day. (Perhaps, because it was due back to the library or maybe because I finally got involved at that point.)

The book had a lot of promise, and I liked and felt for most of the characters. I loved the dark mysteriousness of the atmosphere and the twists and turns of the plot. That being said, I hated the ending. I had a hard time giving this review 3 stars just because of that.

[Margaret Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halfway through this book, I told my friend, "when I finish this book I am either going to love this author or want to kill them for sucking me in and then screwing me over with a crappy cop-out of an ending."

Luckily it was the former. This atmospheric mind-screw of a book is in capable hands, and the final reveal is brilliant.

[Santika Garnita · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a long old book I've got and haven't had a chance to read.
i have read it and well some I couldn't get especially when how Ruth suddenlyy woke up at Alex's house in London while she were still in Greenwell.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have been better. Less threads, more development on the good ones, and a more concrete conclusion. Plus, I found the main character very weak and passive, which after learning she'd been abused I wanted to see her overcome that role--but she never did.

[Heather 🥀 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know where this book came from?? It was just on my book shelf my husband doesn't read so I must have picked it up from somewhere and I have no Idea where but with a name like lonely places a ghost story I was intrigued. It sucked me in I read it in two days. Very good.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed by the ending. Maybe it was too literary for me ;) The book has kinda been growing on me in retrospect though.

[Raquel · Rating 1 out of 5]

don't waste your time.

[Jayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd probably give this book 3.5 stars, but I was a bit confused at the end, and after reading all that horrific stuff, it ended rather abruptly.