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Stephen Gregory
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The Woodwitch Hardcover – January 1, 1988

by Stephen Gregory (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 43 ratings
In a tale of scandal, scorn, and the obsession with revenge, soliciter's clerk Andrew Pinkney--exiled to the Welsh mountains--discovers an unusual fungus that leads him to perform a nightmarish experiment
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  1. Print length
    231 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    St Martins Pr
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1988
  5. ISBN-10
    0312026722
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0312026721
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gregory excels at fierce little novels about city men who move to the country, and discover, to their growing horror, how Nature can act as a mirror for a primitive unmanageable maleness they have never confronted before. This powerfully sensual tale is about a solicitor's clerk who tries to exile himself from his inner violence by fleeing to a tiny cottage in the woods of Welsh Snowdonia. He becomes obsessed with the woodwitch (a fungus shaped like a penis), then with various dead and/or disturbing animals that appear to him, and finally, with the depths of his own sexuality.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ St Martins Pr
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 1988
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st US Ed.
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 231 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312026722
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312026721
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Best Sellers Rank: #7,369,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 out of 5 stars 43 ratings

About the author

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Stephen Gregory

Stephen Gregory

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Stephen Gregory is the author of seven dark and disturbing novels. His first book, The Cormorant, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was made into a film by the BBC starring Ralph Fiennes, was set against the wintry mountains and beaches of Snowdonia. His most recent book, Plague of Gulls, is set within and around the 13th century town walls and castle of Caernarfon, north Wales. A few years ago he was summoned to Hollywood and spent an exhilarating eighteen months writing a screenplay with William Friedkin, the notorious director of The Exorcist. Meanwhile, he continues to earn a crust teaching French to teenage Malay/Chinese girls in Borneo, but hopes to retire soon with his wife Christine to their lovely old house in France.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
43 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

  • MATT SVEDVA
    5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy read from an undervalued author.
    Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2011
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    After reading 'the Cormorant', I decided to give this book a shot. In part, simply because I had to know how you write a horror book around erectile dysfunction.

    At any rate, Gregory is a quality writer and does well to suck the reader into fictional space. Gregory pulls off the events with compassion and precision.

    Fans of his earlier work will appreciate this book. The author has sharpened the skills that made 'The Cormorant' so memorable. I strongly recommend this to fans of gothic horror.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Josh Mauthe
    4.0 out of 5 stars An unblinking dive into an unpleasant mind - easier to appreciate than to enjoy
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2022
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    It’s genuinely hard to describe Stephen Gregory’s unnerving, disturbing, and deeply strange novel The Woodwitch, and trust me, I’ve been thinking on how to do it for a couple of weeks. A strange psychology study of a deeply unusual man, The Woodwitch is the story of Andrew Pinkney, who’s retreated to a Welsh cabin after an incident with his girlfriend in which Pinkney lashed out after being unable to perform and feeling emasculated. And really, that’s almost all of the story, plot-wise; what takes up the majority of The Woodwitch’s pages is a plunge into Andrew’s mind, which finds itself fixating on his impotence problems and funneling it into the growing of a deeply phallic mushroom that finds its homes in rot and damp.

    There’s very little “story” to The Woodwitch; what it reminds me of as much as anything is Stephen King’s “1408,” which found horror from the slow spiraling of a man’s internal monologue. But while “1408” worked thanks to its relative tightness and the unease of its setting, The Woodwitch struggles under its length, hitting the same points again and again until the book feels like it’s spinning wheels in the dense, damp Welsh mud. Gregory’s prose is hypnotic, and Pinkney’s mind is a queasily uncomfortable place to be (not full on psychopathic, but so casually misogynistic and obsessive as to be all too plausible), but that can’t help the book from just feeling ultimately like it’s a well crafted short story that got stretched into an overly long novel that doesn’t have enough new ideas to give it all a nice arc. As a portrait of obsession and even madness, it’s nicely effective, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t overstay its welcome by the end, leaving you just a bit glad it’s all over.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • connie azlin
    5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this book
    Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2013
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    I read this book about 25 years ago took me this long to find it very dark my kind of book
    One person found this helpful
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  • Sheena Forsberg
    4.0 out of 5 stars I’m still recovering from this read
    Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2022
    Format: Hardcover
    A deeply disturbing read that had me feeling uncomfortable throughout. I’ve never read anything quite like it and will never think of woodwitch/ stinkhorn in the same way again. Definitely a must for those with a taste for the weird within horror.
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  • K. A. Y.
    4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous tale highlighting one man's overbearing obsession...
    Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015
    Format: Kindle
    Andrew Pinkney, angered by his inability to consummate his relationship with his girlfriend, Jennifer, strikes out in a moment of anger. As a result of this, he is "encouraged" to take some time off, in a remote cottage in the Welsh countryside.

    Alone with only his dog, Phoebe, the failure of his manhood in that singular moment with Jennifer becomes an obsession with him. He discovers the stinkhorn--a fungi that physically resembles an erect phallus--the irony being that Andrew's own impotence was the cause of his temporary banishment from society. He begins to think of nothing with the exception of the erect stinkhorn, and of impressing Jennifer after their disastrous evening.

    As Andrew's obsession with the fungi grows, we are privy to the deterioration of his mental faculties as he proceeds with his single-minded purpose. Gregory's elegant writing style is full of vivid, grotesque descriptions of Andrew's "project" that will stay in your mind long after reading the passages. Combined with the vibrant, atmospheric looks at the Welsh countryside, the result is a beautiful example of both the majestic and decaying elements of nature. The decay can also be taken a step further as we analyze the changes in Andrew, himself.

    Another impressive read from an author who has yet to disappoint.

    Recommended!
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Nicole M. Persson
    2.0 out of 5 stars i get it already
    Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2009
    i usually like most books i read but i just can't get on board with this one. I get the fact that the mushroom is supposed to be phallic but can we go two sentences without referring to it as a pulsing erection? find another adjective, jeez. the motivation of the main character doesn't make much sense to me either. his whole purpose is to grow the stinkhorn by collecting dead animals and harvesting flies so he can show it to some woman he punched in the face and make her like him again? that's what the whole book is about. it's pretty stupid. also a little nauseating. I can't sympathize with andrew at all; he's violent with his dog, he tries to screw a teenager, and he thinks that by showing jennifer some stinky fungus she's already shown blatant distaste for, he'll somehow be forgiven for hitting her. um? really? i think there should be some capacity for empathy for the main character but i really just hate him and i don't think that was the intention of the author. i don't mind graphic imagery as a general rule but the prose in this book is pretty disgusting and not in a good way.
    13 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Zaroff
    2.0 out of 5 stars Repugnance
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2015
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    A dark, wilfully unpleasant descent into an obsessive mind, set amidst heavily saturated welsh landscapes. Locals can easily be looked down upon from the lone, ramshackle excuse of a cottage, one can plunge squelchily into sorrowful woodlands, boredom & dank thinking can be accessed freely at any point in the narrative... but beware the hounds, be mindful of the littering of many dead carcases of animals here and at the coast. Of course the state of mental decay of a frustrated middle aged middle class non-entity will be exacerbated much to his detriment, by residing in this mean spirited metaphor laden novel. Fungi, stenches, excrement, rotting, maggots, violence to women, dubious sexual liaisons, perpetual animal suffering, detailed torturous attention to animal harm. All of these feature strongly amongst the background of delineated natural history examinations.

    Having read a great deal of Thomas Bernhard, for example, i can appreciate the obsessive mindset as being interesting & saddening at one and the same time. However, for all the quality of lyrical potential Gregory the author has, he wallows in descriptive details worthy of a pulp scribbling, stench happy coprophage. The treatment of every character, especially of course the main petty tyrannical passive-aggressive lead character, is unpleasant in the extreme, no single person herein is amenable nor engaging on an empathic level. The welsh are portrayed with a disdain that suits the characters mind, but comes across as stereotypical and sordid. This is not subtext either, very much broad and general brushstrokes of unpalatable primitive ghastliness.

    However, the author has deft control of his writing and is capable of solid work, his earlier book The Cormorant was eerie. Yet with this title the animal suffering, particularly of the dog and the subsequent harm, was extremely repellent and revolting. Revulsion then was the underlying response, and if that was the sole intent of the whole then the author has succeeded. As it is i will not be reading more of him. The attention to pain and suffering on animal life ruined an otherwise well wrought tale of obsessive delusion. A warning to those who are sickened would be all too easy, yet all i can now muster is the unsatisfying sensation of having read such a thoroughly unpleasant book.
    One person found this helpful
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