Redder Days

by Sue Rainsford

Twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune in a volatile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They meet at dawn and dusk. Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignant control over their daily rituals. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question. Dazzling, unsettling and incredibly moving, Redder Days is a stunning exploration of the consequences of corrupted power, the emotional impact of abandonment, and the endurance of humanity in the most desperate of situations, from the author of Follow Me to Ground.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Magical Realism

Kindle Edition

First published March 11, 2021

About the author

Sue Rainsford is a fiction and arts writer based in Dublin. A graduate of Trinity College, she completed her MFA in writing and literature at Bennington College, Vermont. She is a recipient of the VAI/DCC Critical Writing Award, the Arts Council Literature Bursary Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. When it was first published, Follow Me to Ground won the Kate O’Brien Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Award and the Republic of Consciousness Award.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

fulfilling my 2022 goal to read one book each month that was not published in my country that i wanted badly enough to have a copy shipped to me from abroad and then...never read.

Almost anything is tolerable, provided it's not for ever.

hey, that's how i felt about reading this book!

okay, that was just a cheap laff but real talk—this book went way over my head. i read it in february and now it's may and i have zero memory of it, but honestly—if you'd asked me what it was about back in february, i would probably still have been unable to answer you.

and it's such a shame because i adored Follow Me to Ground enough to import this one into my country and when it arrived, i gasped at how beautiful the cover was—can you see the glittery sprinkles?



i can't seem to capture it, but seriously, it's like this:



and it's gorgeous.

and everything i loved about that one is in this book, too—the lovely poetic prose and dark ambiguous tone, but with Follow Me to Ground, while i didn't understand everything that was going on, i understood enough. with this one, i had to stop a couple of times to read the flap synopsis just to remember what this was supposed to be about.

it's a cult and twins and one is diurnal and one is nocturnal because cultrules, and their mom abandoned them, leaving them behind with koan, the cult's leader, and there's a situation like a plague turning biological entities red and that's bad and shameful and people with the red need to be killed and i think someone gets killed who shouldn't have been and there's twincest and some of the plot occurs before the red and some after and the early stages are marked by people obsessively succumbing to pleasurable impulses, which are not necessarily sexual in nature but become so in the giving oneself over to them—a man begins to purr because he likes the way it feels and this is...bad?

I know what I know
The mouth is an orifice that should not weep red.
Old men should not purr.

it didn't really come together for me, plotwise, but the prose is so sharp and striking and beautiful:

Feeling of being a bowl of broth someone wants to eat before licking clean the spoon they ate you with. Thinking If I'm to be eaten best make sure I'm scalding hot, best make sure their tongues are blistering.

but it wasn't ultimately enough—i need a story. Follow Me to Ground was a weird-ass story, but i could follow it, this one i just could not and it makes me feel bad about myself.

i can handle a slowburning book where you don't know what's going on...until you do, but here i never got that moment of clarity that lit up the surroundings. this seems like obfuscation for obfuscation's sake and that doesn't work for me—for a long time i felt like i was just turning pages instead of reading and nothing really got absorbed because nothing was solid enough to hold on to, it was just one slippery scene after another.

trying to review this book is breaking my brain so i'm going to abandon ship and let her drive.

Slow sun today, taking its time in rising and setting and so my knees feel torn with the drawn-out devotion. Down to where the grass turns crisp with the sea and then further to where the wolves sometimes do their savaging, the soil there reddy with little cubs' bleeding. The wolves will die out if they're not careful, killing off their young. But then all they're doing is all any of us can do, which is the thing that makes sense at the time.

*****************

This is how we grew up: living inside a mistake until someone told you otherwise, and then living inside the shadow the mistake had made.

*****************

People overcomplicate Nature because they think her driven by something crude and fallible, something akin to human logic, and so they detect false errors and instances of cruelty.

The simplest answer, the route most direct: that's what we must look to.

What we know: when an interior, biological shift occurs within a species it is in response to an alteration in that species' environment.

What else we know: this new environment is proving more hostile to some of us than others.

Not an extinction, then, but a purge.

come to my blog!

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

All credit to Sue Rainsford: she does not spoon feed her readers. Rather, she drops you into her world and leaves you to work out what is going on by piecing together the clues that emerge from the action and from the dialogue. There’s enough there to make this a perfectly manageable task, but don’t expect to be given all the answers. In fact, it’s not just the context that is left to the reader’s imagination: if you are the kind of person who likes books to tie up loose ends and draw stories to a close, this probably isn’t the book for you. This is the kind of book that you may well finish with more questions than answers.

Rainsford’s first novel (Follow Me To Ground) was one of the spookiest books I have read and this second novel has some similarities to that one. It is a kind of horror story and it is written in an illusive style that works by feeding the reader’s imagination rather than explaining everything. But it wasn’t that previous novel to which my mind kept turning as I read this one. I found myself rather thinking about the COVID pandemic and about the novels of Emily St John Mandel.

Imagine a world where something strange and new starts to affect the lives of all the people around you and even kills many of them. It’s something that means you have to learn to live in a different way and you have to ensure you always keep your distance from others until you know it is safe (there’s even a paragraph that explains the social distancing rules). Like me, you probably find that world far easier to imagine in November 2020 than you did in November 2019. This is the world of Redder Days, although I am not going to go into details about exactly what is happening because putting it all together (as much of it as Rainsford sees fit to tell us) and then imagining some more is key to the reader’s enjoyment. In truth, it’s nothing like COVID, but there are a lot of things that happen and observations that are made that seem spookily relevant.

I mentioned Emily St John Mandel. What she does remarkably well in her novels is straddle a major event giving us both before and after (perhaps Station Eleven is her best and most well known example of this) jumping from one to the other in a way that allows each part of the narrative to feed the other. Here, Rainsford does a similar thing. Part of what we read is in the form of documents written by one character when everything was just kicking off. Another strand of the narrative tells us about what is happening to them in the book’s “now”. This second strand also includes a number of flashbacks which fill in details.

I enjoyed reading this book. But I think that’s because I like books that leave loose ends and that leave a lot to the reader’s imagination. I can see that the style might frustrate readers with different tastes. This novel is not as spooky as the author’s first, but it does leave the reader with a lot of unanswered questions about exactly what was going on and how some of the things that are mentioned but don’t happen might play out. You might even decide that some things do play out to completion in the novel but just in ways that are not what you were expecting. I’m not sure that happens, but it’s a possible interpretation (I think).

Motherhood, abandonment, power in the wrong hands. These are all key themes set in a world where something strange is happening to the population. It’s a heady mixture.

My thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.

3.5 stars rounded up for atmosphere and for stirring the imagination.

PS You might find this article interesting after reading the book: https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_featur.... The article includes discussion of the work of Ana Mendieta whose art was, I understand, an inspiration for this book.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published today 11-3-21

The water turned a mouth that will swallow, uncomplaining, anything you can think to put inside it. Indiscriminate, salty and pure. The whales and their roaring flesh, a swarm with strands of lightning caught inside, a sister and her brother who have been waiting on red wind, red rain, red hurricane and I see it now, the red come through rushed with crimson rinsed carmine blushing ruby and puce rich with hum not wind and not rain and not the earth shaking only a woman singing since she was a girl only a boy still waiting to grow and the red on us, the red – I see it now, the wide red ocean leaving its red stain across the shore that’s where we’ll go

Sue Rainsford is a Dublin based writer and researcher concerned with “hybrid, lyric and embodied texts, explicit fusions of critical and corporeal enquiry, as well as with experiences that alter our understanding of flesh”

Her first novel – "Follow Me To Ground" – was first published in 2018 by the small Irish press New Island – and longlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize, before being republished in the UK in 2019 by Doubleday/Transworld.

It was a memorable and latently haunting book – one inspired by the author’s research interests and her interest in art (in that case - the installation art of Jenny Keane and her lick drawings) – effectively taking artistic, written and metaphorical ideas around women’s bodies and imagining a world in which those idea serve as a reality for the novel’s protagonists.

And the same concept implies here.

Here the artwork is Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series where she left imprints of her body in nature using a variety of substances including blood to mark the silhouette, and the author’s wider research has also researched stains which (in an essay) she describes as “an unintended mark that, once made, resists removal. Inadvertent remnant and by-product, it is something made while we were looking elsewhere; evidence that our attention faltered, or that some vessel failed to function”.

And that leads us to the world of the book – one where the world appears to have been struck by various manifestations of some form of blooming corporeal redness (of various shades), associated in nature as well as humanity with a kind of ecstatic self-absorption leading to a breakdown in both natural processes and society.

Koan – some form of researcher seems to spot the signs before many others and as disaster begins to strike a group of his colleagues and their friends follow him to set up a form of sanctuary on top of a disused but still burning mine. Given Koan’s seeming ability to predict what had happened (although in a rather nice analogy to both climate change and catastrophic pandemics, he admits in his journal that “Of course, of course, of course it was coming. It was inevitable. It had always been inevitable, but it had never seemed that “inevitable” would pertain to our lifetime”), the others initially acquiesce to a cult-lie religion he establishes involving elements such as the ruthless eradication of red (including exposing infants – most of whom are born exhibiting it), salt cleansing, the believe in an apocalyptical Storm and devotional worship to it.

But at the time of the book – almost all his followers have left (dissillusioned when the Storm did not come and then starting to see signs – via jellyfish – of nature starting to right itself) except for two twins – Anna and Adam. Anna and Adam were born in the commune - to one of his most independent followers who openly challenges his leadership as sexist and controlling. As twins (like it seems litters in animals) they are not born with redness and so allowed to live – but Koan siezes his chance to indoctrinate them (particularly Adam) in his worldview. Now Koan is sick and his ex-followers are feeling guilty about having left the twins with him.

The novel is told through various voices – Anna and Adam (who have a complex relationship) in the present day, Matthew (one of the ex-followers now returning), Matthew’s wife (who lost a child), the twins mother and in the journals of Koan.

As with Rainsford’s other book – the world in which the protagonist lives is their reality – and although it is one whose origins and underlying truths and patriarchal assumptions Ada (in “Follow Me To The Ground”) and Anne here explore – it is not one where either the narrator or characters provide detailed and artificial expositionary explanation – rather Rainsford relies on her readers imagination - something I much prefer.

Overall I found this another memorable and latently haunting book. It is already clear to me that the author is carving out a distinctive niche for herself in literature.

My thanks to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for an ARC via NetGalley.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Redder Days is the sophomore offering from Rainsford and is an equally unsettling story of human endurance, corrupted power and the powerful influence both people and words can have over our thoughts and actions. Set within an abandoned commune that twenty-one-year-old twins Anna and Adam were born into, the siblings prepare for a prophesied world-ending event, until a previous inhabitant returns and forces them to question everything they were taught to believe by their enigmatic messiah Koan. The fall of civilization begins with a man purring like a cat before dropping stone dead in front of his wife. And this isn’t an isolated case. Soon an epidemic of “redness” is spreading across the world, changing people and animals in fatal, horrifying ways. The twins live in a strange, volatile landscape surrounded by derelict cottages and dense woodland where they perform devotions to the event they believe is imminent. Once members of a functioning commune, based on top of a disused mine, which has now been abandoned, they must now protect themselves from the condition by implementing extreme social distancing measures, practising good hygiene and preparing for the fatal, world-enveloping event they believe is coming—an event which they call The Storm. While vulnerable Adam sleeps all night and tends to domestic tasks during the day, the more independent Anna sleeps all day and keeps watch over the woods and coastline at night. They are so indoctrinated that even when the rest of the group, including their mother, became disillusioned and left two years ago when the predicted day of The Storm passed without incident, they carried on following scientist Koan’s ”guidance”.

Anna also visits with doctor Koan, their frail former leader who is rapidly deteriorating, and whose old journals she reads for glimpses of the truth he worked to keep hidden. The pattern of their life together is largely unbroken, until departed members of the commune start returning and the twins are forced re-evaluate all they assumed to be true. This is scintillating, refreshingly original and profoundly disturbing literary sci-fi horror with a tension that is palpable throughout and sumptuously rich imagery. It's an unnerving read with a creeping sense of dread, and a sinister tale with earthy prose and eviscerating detail that questions our preconceptions of predator and prey and the consequences of unchecked desire. Told across shifting timelines and perspectives, Redder Days explores the aftermath of abandonment, how any relationship can turn toxic, and what might cause a group of people to long for the end of the world. It explores some very dark topics such as cults, incest, manipulation, control, mental illness, delusion, misogyny, brainwashing, indoctrination and identity. The nightmarish post-apocalyptic world feeds into an exploration of the devastating damage that can be done when power falls into the wrong hands, and I loved the juxtaposition between the lush, poetic prose and the disturbing happenings which worked exceptionally well and added a rich contrast to the narrative. This is a strange, evocative and visceral tale that drops you right in at the deep end and there are lots of aspects you must unravel for yourself; Rainsford leaves lots of the story open to interpretation and subjectivity which will not be for everyone but I thought it was ingenious. Highly recommended.

[Louise Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twins Anna and Adam live in an abamdoned commune in a volitile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. hey meetat dawn and dusk. Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignat control over their daily rituals. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam knew to be true was thrown into question.


Anna and Adam are preparing for the world to end. They live in an abandoned commune. Set in a dystopian world where a diease called the reddness is contaminating nature and people. Koan makes his community believe everything he tells them. This is quite a disturbing and shockingly weird quick read. It covers: child death, incest, physical and mental abuse.

I would like to thank #NetGalley, #RandomHouseUK #TransworldPublishers and the author #SueRainsford for my ARC #RedderDays in exchange for an honest review.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follow Me to Ground, Sue Rainsford’s debut novel, published in 2018 by the small, independent press New Ireland, was a striking inclusion on the longlist of the Republic of Consciousness Prize. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Redder Days is her second novel, and will be published in March 2021.
It is set in an area where a disease of “redness” has struck nature including people, or at least as believed by a commune under the leadership of Koan:

A glimmer of puce in a woman’s eyes, a child’s back with its fuzz of copper fur. Biological ripples that spoke to an interior horror, to a particular kind of damage – that signalled we were now vessels for a very particular kind of rupture.

We knew it was entwined, somehow, with the abbreviated timeframe – perhaps, a kind of cleansing. The planet, thus distressed, had found a new way to purge. But we did not know why every body it moved through it moved through like a storm. Why it turned a person to rough hands and probing tongues, why it landed in the body as an unrelenting fever. But this is the cruelty of any storm; irrespective of its size and point of origin, it is without motivation or vendetta. No storm is subject to reason. If you are destroyed by a storm, it is simply because of where you were standing at the time.

In short, there was nothing to do but accept it. Let our fears and beliefs settle around it.

Red wind, red sun, red hurricane.
That’s when we start running.
But block your ears and stuff your mouth,
when you see the red man coming.

This last one of the simple rhyming couplets (seemingly having invented a whole religion out of red rhyming with dead) uttered by the rather misnamed Koan, as he certainly doesn’t use Kōans. Indeed as the backstory emerges Koan appears to be misogynistic, manipulative and possibly delusional.

The story centres on two twins, Anna and Adam, born in the community and now the only two left, with the now rather feeble, Koan, after the others left, including their mother, her only remaining trace a stain in their cabin:

Two years without our mother, with only the stain she left behind that Anna every so often rubs her foot over.
A stain made by our mother.
The stain Mother made.
Mother’s stain.

Sometimes I pretend it’s her mucus and blood, a mark she made while birthing. I picture her overcome by our birth and not making it to the farrow room, not even making it to her own bed.

Or: simply deciding she didn’t want the later trouble of cleaning the sheets in the stream and so lying down on the floor. Not even a pillow for her back, her head.

Our strong, strong mother. Mostly woman but also iron, also stone.

Rainsford has acknowledged (https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_featur...) the influence of Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Silueta Series) on the novel.



The novel’s world includes many seemingly key elements – the complex manifestations of redness, the 'Devotion' those in the community undertake (which for the twins seems to verge on the incestuous), the approaching Storm, personified as female but seemingly the end of the world, hawks, whales, jellyfish, and, particularly interesting for me as a twin, the importance of twins as perhaps the only ones able to fight off redness – but the novel gives no explanations or framework for any of this [which in a first-person narration can be a little off as presumably the characters have some idea of the world in which they live], and the reader ends the novel with even less understanding than they began.

But that is to set the book expectations it has no intention of meeting – this is poetic not dystopian fiction. A novel perhaps to revisit post publication when it is more widely read and discussed, including by the author, as I suspect, from her previous novel, there is much more symbolism here than Mendieta’s artwork.

For now 3 stars.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've tried to read reviews to see if I could find some kind of explanation of the point that I seem to have missed, but there's hardly anything. Redder Days is a book that I find hard to summarise. The dystopian elements remind me a little of Ness' Chaos Walking but, other than this, it's pretty much impossible to compare to anything else. What I can say about this book is that it is full of complex ideologies - devotions and the Storm, which I can only compare to the apocalypse - which are ultimately left open to interpretation with no real substantial conclusion to them.

I believe Redder Days is aa book that has two levels of understanding: the basic surface level of understanding and the deeper conscious level of understanding. I definitely belong to the former category, as I think there was a lot that went right over my head that I didn't grasp. I understood the general tone and concept of the book, but I think I'd have to read this multiple times in-depth and discuss it with other people to truly understand the underlying theme. In terms of characters, some of them blend together which makes it even more difficult to understand the plot. It's a book with many layers that have to be carefully peeled back but I don't think I was exactly the right reader for this book.

Content warnings: misogyny, incest, emotional manipulation.

Thank you to Doubleday Books and Sue Rainsford for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

[Max Lau • Maxxesbooktopia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Redder Days is a story following Anna and Adam (who are twins) as they wait for the world to end in an abandoned commune as the rest of the world slowly succumb to the virus that turns humans into all shades of red and changes their behaviour depending on which animal has passed the infection to them. Their former commune leader, Koan, hasn’t been in the right state of mind ever since the commune dispersed, but he still exerts virulent control over Anna and Adam’s daily rituals. When one of the previous inhabitants returns, Anna becomes sceptical of their surrounding while Adam remains oblivious.

This book has everything I enjoy reading in a story: unreliable narrators, cult ambience, a leader who abuses his power and status, bits of information thrown into every page for you to connect the dots to look at the grander picture, brainwashing the inhabitants of this commune, the mental and emotional state of children who are abandoned by their parents, and how humanity persevere in this dolorous situation. Yet, none of them hit the mark for me, except the last two points that I mentioned.

Ever since Anna and Adam’s mother – Eula – left them in the commune to fend for themselves, Anna hasn’t been able to forgive her mother. Whenever she thinks about her, she shuts it down forcefully to keep those thoughts from arising. As for Adam, he thinks about his mother frequently and he wishes to be with his mother, and he also misses her. After their mother’s abandonment, Anna takes on her mother’s role to care for the both of them. I thought the topics on the emotional and mental state of the children and the perseverance of humanity in the worst of times were really well executed because the author really emphasizes them instead of taking these topics on a whim.

This novel contains an abundance of forgettable characters that will only be recalled if you try really hard to remember. Honestly, I couldn’t really remember any of them until I skimmed a few pages of this book to write this review. Anna and Adam are the unreliable narrators of this novel and I did not find them appealing at all. They don’t really have any definite personality and their actions confused the crap out of me. Sometimes I can understand why, but most of the time, I couldn’t. I thought their actions were very nonsensical, confounding, and unnecessary.

The writing style of this novel is not my cup of tea. It doesn’t feel cohesive to me and I felt oddly detached from the story while I was reading it if that makes any sense. The author also replaces quotation marks with dashes for the dialogues which is an incongruous choice. I, unfortunately, didn’t enjoy the direction and the outcome of the story. I thought the story went in outlandish directions and the bed crumbs and clues didn’t lead to anything that we didn’t already know as the author has already established all the facts at the beginning of the novel. The idea of the leader exploiting his power and using his status to indoctrinate the inhabitants didn’t bring anything new to the table; it felt like I was reading every other common dystopian novel in the dystopian genre while I was reading those scenes.

Before I comment on the scene that scared the living life out of me, I would like to give a bit of context on Adam’s mental illness. I liked the ambiguity of his illness; the author didn’t explain much about what Adam is dealing with, but she did leave a trail as to who aggravated his mental state. With his worsening condition, there comes a scene where Adam grabs Anna’s private part which he calls it the “moisture around her sex” and Anna swatting his hands off of her and I don’t understand why the author decided to leave that scene in the book because there isn’t any repercussion after that revolting scene. I was waiting for it to be addressed, but the author let me down by not addressing it and letting it run free with no consequence.

I am going to lay this out there and say I did not like the ending of this novel. I thought it was extremely unsatisfying and I had gotten more questions than answers when I got to the end of the book.

In conclusion, this novel is going to receive a score of 30% (E) from me. If you are looking for a better novel with an unreliable narrator and a disease contaminating everything that has succumbed to it, I would suggest reading Wilder Girls by Rory Power instead.

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[Gem (The Creepy Geek) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!

So weird! So wonderful! I love how you are dropped into the world and fed little morsels of the story to try and figure out what is happening, how everything came to be as it is, what the characters are doing and why etc.

The ending worked so well with the story too! I love that there was never any clear cut answers or solutions.

My absolute favourite thing about it all is Sue Rutherford's amazing writing. I am in love with her style and already cannot wait to see what she comes out with next!

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars (coming out March 11, 2021)

**ARC provided by NetGalley for an honest review.**
#RedderDays #NetGalley

Pros: Rainsford's uniquely weird word choices where everything feels a bit off (great for a dystopian setting), red plague/infection dystopian, cult vibes

Cons: too many POVs (5+), 80% talk/reminiscing with only 20% action/current plot, incest between the brother-sister twins (which was NOT needed at all), confusion due to vague/subtle writing style (which I usually love--as in her previous book, Follow Me to Ground--but it didn't work for me here at all), flatlining of almost all character arcs

TW: incest, murder, child death, parental abandonment, physical abuse, mental abuse

Similar vibes: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

Video link: Jan WU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRCG2...)

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad I discovered Sue Rainsford! I loved Follow Me to the Ground an her new book Redder Days is almost as good. Redder Days deals with the abuse of power in a very scary way and it can be read as a very topical book as well when you think of corona. Rainsford is a wonderfully imaginative writer. She creates a world that at first look resembles ours, but appears to be quite different, stranger. She also leaves you guessing what exactly is happening and leaves lots of loose ends, so as a reader you must be willing to invest a bit. Personally I like that in a novel, but I can imagine readers wanting an easier read. Recommended!
Thank you Random House UK and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps it’s because red is the colour of blood, the colour of infection, rashes and inflammations. Perhaps it’s because it represents danger. Or because it is so often a symbol for passions which some consider too risky, or too dirty, akin to a malady. The fact is that since Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, different authors have referenced the colour in the context of pandemic fiction – be it Jack London in The Scarlet Plague or Niccolo Ammaniti in the post-apocalyptic Anna.

Redder Days by Sue Rainsford taps into this tradition, even while it’s smashing it to smithereens. Yes, Redder Days is a post-apocalyptic, (post- ) pandemic novel with strong horror undertones, but it’s certainly not your typical run-of-the-mill scary bonanza. This is immediately clear from Rainsford’s narrative approach, which is purposely challenging to the reader. She does not provide us with a linear story but, rather, invites us to piece the plot together through short chapters told from different characters’ viewpoints, alternating with journal entries describing the advent of a mysterious pandemic which disrupts normal life. The journal entries, however, place us in medias res and are quite cryptic, with Rainsford avoiding the short-cut of simply using them to provide us with the context of her tale. The result is that we readers, much like the protagonists of the novel, are often unsure of what exactly is happening.

So what are the bare bones of the story? A new malady afflicts both the human and animal world, with symptoms which are shocking and fatal. A group of survivors decide to set up a remote commune where they can be safe from the pandemic. They appoint as their leader Koan – a doctor who manages to keep a cool head when everything is falling apart. Koan “knows things”, he seems to understand the illness better than the others, and he is therefore the natural choice to head the fledgling community. But Koan is also manipulative and, in the declared interest of protecting his clan, starts to imbue this physical illness with “moral” and “spiritual” implications, essentially changing the community of survivors into a misogynistic cult. And then, the real horror begins.

Revealing any further details of the plot would undermine the whole point of the novel, which invites the readers to reach their own understanding about the strange events portrayed. A word of warning though. Redder Days raises more questions than it answers and is not a book for those who expect the final chapter to tie up all the loose ends. There are also several details in the novel which appear to have a symbolic rather than literal meaning, making the narrative dense but lyrical and poetic. This is certainly an unusual and thought-provoking read.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[Amy Imogene Reads]

I was so impressed by Rainsford’s debut, Follow Me to Ground. Really looking forward to this one. Bring on the horrific speculative!

[Pikobooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Houlalala... je ne sais pas si je peux recommander cet ouvrage sans avertissement. Alors, concrètement moi, j'ai adoré puissance mille. Mais alors c'est quand même bien barré !

[TW : allusion incestueuse]

[Emmett · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tale of apocalyptic menstruation, but with jellyfish and a shotgun.

[Ann (Inky Labyrinth) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carmine, ruby, garnet, puce -- when you see it you start running.

Salt your hands and wash out your eyes when you see the red man coming.

Adam and Anna are young adult twins living with an old man named Koan in a cluster of dilapidated cottages by the isolated Irish seaside. Their home is the remnants of a cult-ish commune, now mostly abandoned after everyone has either been banished or has left. To make things even creepier, there is an old mine underneath of their home that has been on fire for decades and sometimes the fire and smoke bursts forth from the earth.

Since Koan, once the leader of the group, is now old and "headsick", the twins must do everything from hunting rabbits and cooking stew, to collecting salt from the beach to use for their various strange rituals, to, most importantly, keeping watch for any intruders who may be suffering from a mysterious affliction known as the red. Adam, who is slowly losing his eyesight, keeps watch during the day, and Anna, like her mother before she left, keeps watch at night with her shotgun by her side.

The writing is incredibly sharp and visceral. Rainsford takes all the things that the color red typically evokes (death, life, birth, sex, lust, sacrifice, gore, etc.) and pushes it to the extreme. There is a constant sense of heavy mystery but it was always enough to propel me forward and not drag me down. This was the fastest I've read a novel maybe ever--and I would have read it even faster if I wasn't too afraid when the sun went down.

This is very much a story that you should know as little as possible before diving in. This is also definitely not a book everyone who loves dystopian/horror/weird fiction will be into, either, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is hungry for something totally different, kind of disgusting, and deeply thought provoking.

Thanks very much to my local librarian who searched for and bought this hard to find book from the UK at my request. ♥️

[Zach]

A remarkable work of art by a writer who knew exactly what she wanted to say, even if the reader isn't actually clear what that was. Whether or not I enjoyed it almost seems beside the point.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no idea what I just read.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rainsford's writing is really beautiful, but opaque; so I was fascinated by this book, but I didn't always really understand what was happening. I adored her debut, Follow Me to Ground, and this wasn't quite as effective for me; too many points of view, maybe? They were all almost equally confusing, which distracted me from really caring much about any of the characters. I kept hoping that it would all pull together at the end but I didn't feel as though it did.

[Laura (Stars and Vellum) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was this book a victim of my reading slump? Maybe. Do I care about it enough to try again? No.

Redder Days, judging by the blurb and plot should be a book that was right up my street. But I felt nothing but let down.

Twins Adam and Anna wait for the end of the world that they were promised would come at their cult commune. This story follows the two along the endless wait for the world to collapse with the dreaded "Red". The commune, over the years has become somewhat dispersed and their former leader Koan is just not the same so Anna and Adam have to navigate it all by themselves.

This was my first introduction to Sue Rainsford and unfortunately I don't think her style of writing was for me. The entries were very cryptic and even though this is a short enough book, it took me a while to get through and required a lot of concentration and going back over entries I'd previously read to make sure I was understanding everything. The constant back and forth between timelines was very daunting and took me about 50% of the book to get used to.

Writing style aside, the characters were in no way relatable, engaging or interesting. I felt so disengaged and detached from the characters that I couldn't fully immerse myself. There was SO MUCH that could have been done surrounding Adam's mental illness which would have made him a much more interesting and 3D character - but it wasn't and his character fell flat for me.

I don't even want to talk about the ending. I ended up with more questions than answers and it just felt so... Abrupt? It's like the story was just getting started, we'd figured out the back story, gotten to grips with the characters and why they are the way they are and then... Done. I really disliked the ending.

I appreciate that the problem could be with me, which is the only reason this is 2 stars instead of 1 for me. I don't think this author is for me.

[Rosie Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Redder Days is a dystopian tale set in a semi-abandoned commune; teenage twins Anna and Adam remain with ex-commune leader Koan. The commune is in an unknown setting but it is close to the shore and a forest, while much of the ground bubbles with volcanic disturbance.

Anna and Adam prepare for STORM; an end of the world prediction. Each day at dawn and dusk they kneel for devotion and prayer. Then Anna keeps watch through the night and Adam has the day shift. What they fear most is a red disease; something which turns humans and animals into monsters.

The commune was created by a group who wanted to escape this red disease. During the heyday of the commune, Koan’s leadership was strict; women giving birth did so in a farrowing room with only Koan in attendance. He alone controlled the fate of each babe, with those who survived being ‘educated’ by Koan; we learn about this via accounts from the twins.

The chapters go back and forth between Anna and Adam, with some chapters from Koan’s diaries and a sprinkling of others from a former commune inhabitant, Matthew. This is quite a slow gruesome story, with little let up of the pacing, even at the end. It deals with indoctrination, survival and incest. The subject matter is disturbing and the style of the narration added to the overall atmosphere with no light relief, which I found made it hard to read.

The author has also chosen to use an experimental style of prose and it did feel awkward to read. particularly the over-use of subordinate clauses as well as dialogue with no speech marks. I can understand wanting to make your work different, but it had me re-reading some lines believing I was missing something, which became a distraction from the main narrative. I know there will be a market for this type of writing, but it isn’t for me at this time; experimental styles need a lot of skill to carry off.

[Jthbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing, much like Sues plotting, is so clever. The story at times is so brutal and harsh, but Sue’s writing is so engaging and lyrical that it just keeps you turning the page. It’s such harsh topic but the writing is so lyrical and at times ethereal. The setting feels sparse and empty. Sue captures the atmosphere of this book perfectly. It feels desolate and isolated. This book was like nothing I’ve read before. Sue writes brilliant characters, they were brilliant in Follow Me To Ground and they are just as brilliant in redder days. They are engaging, twisted, damaged and you can’t help but feel for them. But there was also something about the twins, Anna and Adam, that you can’t connect with and it makes them so intriguing. It shows the effects of two children left behind to grow up in a strange, scary situation. And they are so well crafted that and the story is engrossing that every decision they make, makes sense, even if you didn’t want them to make the decision. It’s just brilliant.I can’t recommend redder days enough, as I’m sure you can tell I loved it. There’s no one out there writing these unique stories like Sue Rainsford. Redder days is unique and unforgettable. I’m looking forward to reading this again and getting lost in the world and the glorious writing.Thank you so much to Tabitha at Doubleday Uk for gifting me with a copy of this book in return for an honest, unbiased review. It’s out March 11th

[Marles Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a strange and unsettling time, a mysterious illness is wiping out the population (yep, another dystopian story for me). We do not know where this world is, or when it is either. There is no idea how to stop the illness, how to stop the “red” bloom on the skin. We watch twins Anna and Adam take turns guarding a commune led by Koan, making sure no-one comes close with the redness. Koan was once a scientist, who with Matthew noticed and witnessed the redness as it began to spread. He initially provided sound advice and counsel; yet when we meet him, Koan is very much subdued and malingering. With the desertion of Matthew and his wife, and Eula (mother of the twins), we observe the rwins and Koan waiting for the Storm, the end of all things. There are themes of rebirth through nature, of misogyny and sexism, along a timeline that does not stay in one place. There is protection through Anna's hawk, who soars above her, flaunting its independence. There are interruptions in the present with flashbacks, journal entries accounting for what had happened as well noting what wasn't done as well. We see Anna and Adam, dealing with who were becoming after being left by their mother. We see the red everywhere: not only as a disease but through the life of a woman, the love of siblings, fear and death. We feel the roughness and coarseness of life, and the salt that grinds away the impurities of the unknown. The writing speaks like poetry. Disjointed prose, almost with a deliberate intention to throw you off the scent of what could be happening, and whether there could be hope, or a future to save anyone.

'Carmine, ruby, garnet, puce - when you see it you start running. Salt your hands and wash out your eyes when you see the red man coming.'

Book 102-2021 #redderdays #suerainsford #penguinbooksaus #bookstagram #bookreview #bookblog #instabook #booksofinstagram #suspense #dystopianfiction #aussiereaders #irishauthors #sciencefiction #horrorfiction

[Vivienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

My thanks to Random House U.K. Transworld Publishers for the invitation to read an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Redder Days’ by Sue Rainsford in exchange for an honest review.

I had enjoyed Sue Rainsford’s debut novel ‘Follow Me to Ground’ and so was excited to read this second work of literary horror with its dystopian overtones. I was also intrigued by the opening quote by Ana Mendieta, an artist whose work in nature I adore.

In respect to its plot: twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune awaiting an imminent world-ending event. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They are constantly on the lookout for people or animals infected with the ‘redness’. Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader who still exerts a malignant control over their lives. However, when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question.

Rainsford moves between a number of first person narrative voices in a lyrical style. Stream-of-consciousness is always a bit hit and miss with me and here I just floundered and was left feeling confused.

I can see that I am definitely in the minority with respect to ‘Redder Days’ but I concluded that sometimes weird and experimental works for me and sometimes it just doesn’t.

[Sinead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was stunned while reading this entire book, underlining whole paragraphs to pick apart later. Sue Rainsford returns to the viscera in this compelling and uncomfortable piece of magic realism, using language so primitive and raw that I couldn't take my eyes away.

Twins Adam and Anna are living in a derelict commune, a commune they had been born into. They are alone there except for the commune's former leader, Koan. They live there waiting for Storm, what they presume to be the apocalypse. They are taught to fear 'redness,' an infection where the body's animalistic desires seem to manifest itself outwardly. At least, that's what I think redness is - Rainsford doesn't spoon feed but instead she places a lot of trust in the reader, dropping you in to her world with precision and care.

This book is easy to speed through, but I had to take my time because of the absolute poetry of it. This read was disturbing, shocking and beyond heartbreaking. The characters were all brilliantly portrayed and Rainsford paints images so instinctually

I adored this read and was so honoured to be given this advance copy by Netgalley and Penguin Books Ireland. Out on March 4th and I can't recommend it enough!

[Erika Lynn (shelf.inspiration) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars

See more on my Bookstagram: Shelf.Inspiration Instagram

🌪️”You’ll feel better by the time the wave has reached the shore, there’ll have been a change inside you.” - Redder Days.🌪️


Twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune in a volatile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They meet at dawn and dusk. Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignant control over their daily rituals. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question.

I was so eager to read this book because the author’s previous title “Follow Me to Ground” is one of my favorite books. Although the premise of this one was great, the book was a bit so-so for me. I loved the concept for it and the characters were so interesting, but I got a little lost in the content. The ending was ambiguous, which doesn’t bother me, but it went a little over my head. That being said, I really enjoy these authors books and I am looking forward to whatever she decides to write next!

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like her debut 'Follow Me To Ground', this novel has a deeply unsettling atmosphere that seethes with the unknown. Rainsford has a powerful gift with her style of writing and her manner of presenting a narrative. This story can likely be read on multiple levels, many of which other readers have spoken of in their reviews. I tend to follow my gut when reading and so I just allowed myself to deal with what was provided and not overanalyze anything. Symbolism and metaphor can be intriguing, but they can also be rabbit holes that lead to nowhere or drastically confuse a book. I loved how almost no information is given about what has happened, where we are, and if any part of this is dream or reality. There is a folk-horror/body-horror feel that never lets up. There is also a rather claustrophobic tenor to things that makes every scenario take on extra weight and meaning, even in the most simple of actions and conversations. I won't say I understood everything in this book, but I was unable to stop reading until I finished it, the writing is that amazing. Weird and unnerving, visceral and erotic, dreamy and frightful, I was left speechless when I turned the last page.

[Bertie (LuminosityLibrary)]

dnf - 35%

I could tell this book wasn't for me within the first few pages. Despite the beautiful writing, and the excellent atmosphere of Redder Days I found myself struggling to discern the point. Perhaps books where reality is shrouded in mystery, where you can't tell what's actually happening, aren't for me. The plot and characters slipped through my fingers and I felt no connection to either. The strength of Redder Days lies within its themes, but without anything to drive the story forward, I was left feeling unsatisfied. I'd recommend this to people who love dark literary books that aim to create confusion and atmosphere to drive its themes.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn’t the usual style of book that I would read, which at times made it a challenge to understand what I was reading.

The author drops you straight into the story. There is no scene setting, or character building. Each chapter is told from the perspective of each of the various characters. However, each one is an unreliable narrator, so we are left to piece together the story from what each one does and doesn’t tell us.

Once I’d settled into the rhythm and style of the writing I enjoyed it. But the ending was predictable and the inevitable conclusion.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Not for you if you need answers at the end of a book but didn’t matter to me on this occasion as the writing made up for it. Addictive and intriguing- can’t wait to read this author’s other book.
Descriptions are vivid and characters are developed very well. If you fancy something different this is a good shout.