Following the release of Holly Childs’s No Limit, Elisabeth Murray’s The Loud Earth is the second book from Hologram, a special publishing project by Express Media. Hologram was designed to promote long-form writing by writers under 30, providing a stepping-stone between being published in journals and producing a full-length manuscript. Hologram editor Johannes Jakob describes novellas as being an attractive option for readers, as well as writers: ‘we thought it was a pretty good proposition … to have something that you could read in an afternoon, and only costs $15.’

Well, reading Murray’s The Loud Earth makes for a deliciously tense afternoon. The novella is set in a lakeside tourist town, the unnamed protagonist is a recluse, accused of brutally murdering her parents. Acquitted by the legal system, she remains guilty in the eyes of the town. When a young woman, Hannah, arrives at her door, a romance blossoms between the two, but it soon becomes clear that the terrors from the past won’t stay buried for long.

Murray has written a dark, gothic meditation on loneliness and anxiety. The Loud Earth is full of poetic, unsettling imagery; the descriptions of the landscape, and the horrors it holds, are stunning. This is a book you can read in one sitting, but the intimate secrets revealed will linger long after you’ve turned the final page.

Stella Charls