{"id":7890,"date":"2022-06-19T11:38:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T11:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=7890"},"modified":"2022-06-19T11:38:36","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T11:38:36","slug":"the-long-weekend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=7890","title":{"rendered":"The Long Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gilly Macmillan,\u00a0<\/strong>The Long Weekend<\/strong><\/em> (2022)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by\u00a0Lee Horsley<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gilly Macmillan\u2019s\u00a0The Long Weekend<\/em>\u00a0 is a riveting novel – complex, dark and disturbing. Close friends have planned an idyllic weekend away in a remote, beautiful Northumbrian retreat. But their long weekend, it turns out, is also a \u2018lost\u2019 weekend. The landscape itself becomes impenetrably dark and dangerous as a storm approaches: \u201cthe clouds have dipped so low it\u2019s as if Dark Fell Barn is being squeezed between land and sky. The valley is veiled with rain. The place still feels like a fairy tale and definitely not one with a happy ending.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Characters venture out vainly searching for a phone signal that will enable them to connect with the people who are expected to arrive the following day. Lost or non-functioning mobiles themselves become an image of desperate and fruitless efforts to \u2018connect\u2019 with the others and make sense of what\u2019s happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the characters wander in a threatening terrain, their normal selves break down under pressure and they discover that what were familiar relationships are in truth unreliable. They lose all sense of their own and other people\u2019s assumed identities \u2013 identities that disintegrate as the weekend descends into fear and suspicion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe feels as if she\u2019s stepped into an alternative version of her life, as if she has only the slightest of connections with reality. Reason deserts her. A sense of danger pulses. Emily. Ruth. Who are they, really? Anyone can be a danger to others.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just as the characters are confused about where they\u2019re walking as the storm worsens, we as readers often feel unsure about whose headspace we\u2019re occupying. Inner terrains are treacherous, and we experience our own form of disorientation. Drunkenness, deceit, mental instability and hysteria mount, challenging us to make our way through an unreliable, sometimes sinister human and natural landscape, in which everyone loses hold of familiar landmarks of place or identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Long Weekend<\/em>\u00a0 is a novel that makes us as readers watch our footing, looking carefully at our preconceptions about how we\u2019re orienting ourselves as we navigate the tricky, often deceptive human relationships. On the surface,\u00a0The Long Weekend<\/em>\u00a0 tells us the story of a familiar outing of old friends, but underneath, as darkness descends, what we witness is an encounter with all that\u2019s hidden in the normal social round of the characters\u2019 lives. It\u2019s a haunting and compelling journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gilly Macmillan,\u00a0The Long Weekend (2022) Reviewed by\u00a0Lee Horsley Gilly Macmillan\u2019s\u00a0The Long Weekend\u00a0 is a riveting novel – complex, dark and<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Long Weekend<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7891,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7890\/revisions\/7891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}