Customer Reviews

The Weird of Deadly Hollow (Valancourt Classics)

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Bertram Mitford is a fin de siècle colonial writer somewhat neglected today. Most of Mitford's novels take place in South Africa, where he worked as a stock farmer and later as a civil servant. The Weird of Deadly Hollow was an early book, published in 1891, set in the frontier of the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

For three years a young Englishman, Herbert Custance, has been successfully engaged in sheep and ostrich farming on a property that whites and natives alike consider cursed. It was the scene of multiple murders by a previous owner. Since then an inexplicable something has driven out every new owner, except for Custance. The Dutch name of this sinister homestead means Murderer's Hollow, or Deadly Hollow.

Custance relishes the isolation of the place and shuns all society - until one day he encounters his lovely neighbor, Ida Rendlesham. She is gorgeous, lively, courageous, intelligent, good-hearted and a lover of the beauties of nature. Perfect, in short! Poor Custance feels his defenses crumble. But why exactly is the young man so defensive, why so determined to hide himself away?

And can he, or anyone else, achieve happiness in the unhallowed air of Deadly Hollow?

Mitford's style is melodramatic, ironic and atmospheric by turns. He captures with ease the lilt of native speech, the little cruelties of drawing room banter and the rough talk of white game hunters in the grip of "gun fever." He makes us feel an eerie dread of Deadly Hollow without ever quite admitting the presence of supernatural influences. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not to believe in the ghost of the murderous Boer.

The Weird of Deadly Hollow is a passionate love story, a psychological thriller, a complex morality tale - and a revealing picture of life in colonial South Africa in the late nineteenth century. It also gives us a taste of the popular fiction of the era. I found it both disturbing and fascinating.

The Valancourt edition is very well presented. I really enjoyed the introduction by professor Gerald Monsman, but I'd suggest reading it after the novel. It offers a thoughtful analysis of the plot and Mitford's themes.