The Magic Cottage

The Magic Cottage by James Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A book that started off in a fairly promising way, but seemed to lose the plot towards the end.

Mike Stringer, a musician, and his girlfriend Midge Gudgeon, a musician, buy a cottage in the New Forest in Hampshire. The cottage, called Gramarye, was part of a deceased estate, and they had to undergo some kind of test by the executors of the will.

Not far away is an old manor house that is home to a community of selfstyled Synergists, led by a man called Mycroft. Members of the community are initially friendly and welcoming, but when Mycroft promises to enable Midge to make contact with her dead parents, a nasty side appears. The local vicar warns them to have nothing to do with the Synergists, and appears to think they are evil Mike is sceptical, both of the Synergists' beliefs and the vicar's fears.

The cottage initially seems to have mysterious healing properties but when the Synergists visit the healing properties seem to be corrupted.

After an interesting build-up the story seemed to fall apart in the end, and seemed designed for a B-movie with spectacular special effects. There was a growing atmosphere of evil, but the bits that were supposed to be really scary at the end weren't scary at all, and were just boring. My mind kept wandering off, or I kept dropping off to sleep.

And one rather curious thing I noticed about it was that it has a surprising number of Americanisms for a book written by an Englishman, and published in England: flashlight where I would have expected torch; sneakers where I would have expected plimsolls or trainers; and braids where I would have expected plaits or pigtails. On the other hand, it had presently meaning shortly afterwards, which I don't think is the way an American would use the word. 

In a way, it had some echoes of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis: a couple whose relationship is deteriorating, and the Synergists had echoes of the N.I.C.E. but the characteristics of their group were largely New Age/Theosophist cliches. There wasn't a contrasting "good" community. It might have been That Hideous Strength as reimagined by Dennis Wheatley, except that I think Dennis Wheatley might have made a better job of it.