An Alternative History of Balesley Green | Vincent Holland-Keen

An Alterntive History of Balesley Green
by Vincent Holland-Keen.
unpublished

Chronologically, Balesley was written before Lost and Found and I read it a few months before, but it's getting reviewed second for no particular reason. I should also point out that this manuscript is the reason Vince ended up being nagged, bullied, stalked and harassed into becoming part of the Un:Bound team in the first place (after being nagged, bullied, stalked and harassed into sending it through). It's brilliant, and Lost and Found is a little more brilliant and I can't wait to see what he does next. In the mean time of course there will be more Wednesday fun to keep us all amused.

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After spending one childhood summer in Balesley Green, Sam returns 20 years as executor of a will to find himself assailed by memories. While he tries to separate facts from the fiction, current events become increasingly odd.

Sam is a sympathetic lead and an easy narrator, easy to like and understand. A good guide through Balesley past and present. His childhood friend Montgomery Badger is more charismatic and deeply unusual, adding a streak of mischief to Sam's life. Then there's Alice, the girl Sam has always been in love with, who is wonderfully entertaining and buries her private melancholy under silliness and joy. The village is otherwise populated by a range of petty, bizarre and generally suspicious characters, pretty much like any proper English village.

There are a series of minor mysteries in the book: what is in the crypt under the church, who really wrote the Alternative History and just how sharp are the teeth of the local sheep? The overwhelming questions though are what happened in the school and who is Monty Badger?

The book convincingly conjures the cozy and dubious charm of an English village, where you know all your neighbours (and think you know all their secrets) while at the same time breeding strange prejudices and stranger characters. This is village life at its darkest and most brutal, nobody asking the right questions at the right time, ignoring the evil and unnatural goings on with a grim determination to maintain the appearance of a pleasant and proper existence.

Vincent's stories are always an easy, fun read with characters no one could quite call heroes, semi-apocalyptic events, twisted humour and vivid, evocative world-building (once again our world, but slightly madder). A genuine affection for his leads carries to the reader and he resists the temptation of the expected ending to fit a few last twists into the final pages.