Blair's Reviews > Devil's Day

Reread October 2021. First read September 2017 – original review.

This is my favourite of Hurley’s books. I love it for the rich texture of the language and description, its powerful ability to evoke both physical setting and the rhythms of a close-knit, closed-off community. I love the way the horror is so intimately woven into the fabric of the story that you barely notice it’s there.
I still don’t know what to make of the ending. So often throughout Devil’s Day you’re trapped within John’s perspective while being drawn to sympathise with another character: Kat when she’s mocked and passed over by the people of the Endlands, Adam when John wants him to jump and he’s clearly terrified. I’ve never been able to unpick John’s motives in this scene, his insistence that Adam swim in the river so uncomfortably mixed up with what happened to Lennie (fresh in our minds because of its proximity in the narrative), his determination bordering on cruelty. When I reread the final chapter this time, I initially wondered whether I’d misread the whole thing, and it’s supposed to be pure hope; but then a few minutes later I’d changed my mind entirely and started thinking that much more of it is supposed to be unreliable than I’d assumed, that there are implications I’d missed at first. But I also love that I don’t know the answer.