Follow Me to Ground

 I have not heard of this book at all until I have seen two of my best friends read ‘Follow Me to Ground’ and love it on Goodreads. As I trust their judgment, I decided to give this one a go. I have not had a very good reading month in September, so I was very excited to announce I have adored everything about this novel and found it incredibly eerie, haunting and magnificent all in one. The book is very ambiguous, but I believe it gives the reader just enough clues to follow the narrative and understand the horrifying things happening in the novel. It is one of the best uses of magical realism I have read in a long time and I truly hope that Sue Rainsford’s other work (that I will definitely be reading) is just as successful as ‘Follow Me to Ground’

The novel follows Ada and her father, who are not entirely human, but creatures who have the ability to heal humans, or ‘Cures’ as they call them of most illnesses, either by breaking them apart or burying them in the ground and allowing them to sleep it off. Their life is disrupted when Ada meets and starts a sexual relationship with Samson, of the ‘Cures’, much to her father’s disapproval. This is not an action packed book and is actually quite short, but oh my, it does pack a massive punch. Rainsford is exhibiting impressive control of her writing and the magical realism is on the perfect edge of the suspension of disbelief, without over explaining where these people come from and why, the rules of their existence are more implied, but are clear. The world she creates is not massive, quite the opposite in fact, but the claustrophobic nature of the unnamed small town they live in adds to the weirdness and the overall atmosphere of the story.

If I had to use one word to describe this book it would be ‘weird’. The characters are not entirely fleshed out, but in this kind of story, I didn’t need them to be, they serve the purpose perfectly well and are intriguing enough the way they are. At times, while I was reading, I wanted to know more about Ada and her father who were not born of humans, but of Ground.  Perhaps the only point was that I would have liked the use of this symbolism of ground more, but that is a personal preference and this way a lot is left open for interpretation for the readers, which is always something I appreciate. Ada’s character is fascinating and the more the author allowed us into her mind, the more I wanted to know about her. Her fears and desires made perfect sense to me, and although her actions  were not always entirely clear to me, I still enjoyed having her as the narrator in this unsettling story. The fact that these things were every day to her added to the magical realism and pulled me into the story even more. Although a short book, by the end of it, I felt connected to her and wanted to know more about her and her life.

The images in the novel are unsettling and verge on horror, and I do believe that the implications rather than outright explaining everything in detail added to the mystery. The descriptions of human bodies, especially Ada’s, who may look like a regular woman, but is not really, remain haunting to me. As she is literally ripping people apart and looking into them, Ada is preoccupied with people’s bodies both inside and out and we do get a fair amount of brutal observations by her. She is familiar with human life from its inception to death, as he had seen it all. There is no sugar coating from Ada’s narration, and although she is not cruel to her ‘Cures’ she sees, she is also not entirely gentle either. The image of her ripping their skin and bones in order to heal them is still stuck in my mind and I was so immersed in the pages that I could almost hear the sounds that Ada is describing.

The main story in the book, that of Samson and his pregnant sister Olivia, is beautifully written, although incredibly disturbing. Much like the rest of the novel, the author leaves breadcrumbs to understanding of her work, while respecting her readers to figure it out. I am not sure if I figured it all out by the end, but I can say that the way I understood this story shook me to my core. It has been a while since a book has had this much of an emotional effect on me. Whatever truly happened between the siblings and Ada and her father is not entirely clear, but even without all the details it is still effective and it stayed with me for days after finishing this novel.

‘Follow me to Ground’ is not an easy book to read or to recommend. Sue Rainsford is a master of weaving magical realism to the point I was fully immersed in the story, at times even forgetting that what I was reading was not entirely real or possible. However, it is also touching on the darker side of humanity, full of sicknesses, named and unnamed, threatening to take over. The novel does not flinch from anything cruel or ugly, in fact it relishes in it. I did not want to spoil the main plot of the book too much, but if you are into weird and atmospheric novels, then this is definitely the book for you.

5/5