This seethingly assured Irish debut infuses magic realism with critical and feminist theory, but the generous dose of horror movie imagery brings a left-field project firmly into the literary mainstream. Like all the best horror, it’s an impressive balancing act between judicious withholding and unnerving reveals: you don’t want to go into it knowing too much ...Perhaps the book Follow Me to Ground is most kin to is Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, another tale of transformation that is fascinated both by female flesh and by what it might mean to escape it. Bodies are everywhere in Rainsford’s novel: seeping, dribbling, twitching, staining the furniture and the ever-growing mounds of dirty linen ...There is much body horror here, as well as other staples of the genre: the fear of being buried alive and of the undead, the monstrosity of psychic possession ... But there is wonder and tenderness, too. One of the most striking effects of the book comes from the fact that, far from attacking the non-human others, the locals accommodate themselves to their impossible presence: their various voices, interspersed with Ada’s narrative, add pace and variety ... Follow Me to Ground is odd and muscular enough to resist easy interpretation. It can be read on many levels – as a fable about female yearning, or about containment and contagion; as an investigation into toxic relationships or a puzzle over the borders between human and non-human – but it is always singularly and entirely itself.
There’s something inherently uncanny about anything or anyone that is almost human but not quite. It’s this uncanniness that runs through Dublin-based author Sue Rainsford’s first novel Follow Me To Ground, a wildly imaginative exploration of desire, fear and what it means to be a person ... The concept of the Ground, with its uncanny guardians and the people who visit them, is a brilliantly original and unsettling one, illuminated by Rainsford’s sparsely lyrical prose ... Rainsford is particularly good at conveying a sense of unhuman personhood. Ada doesn’t think or feel like a human being, but does think and feel strongly, aware of her own difference and isolation ... Her determination to control her own destiny is both beautiful and terrifying, two words that also describe this promising literary debut.
Follow Me to Ground mixes elements of horror, fairytale and myth to deliver a compelling, odd beast of a book ... Rainsford is not concerned with plot – she deliberately obscures her narrative at key points, preferring instead to immerse the reader in Ada’s strange world of death and desire ... Ada may be non-human, but Rainsford’s lyrical, hypnotic prose allows us to relate to her with ease. There is a furtiveness in the book, both in story and style, with Rainsford artfully bringing the reader along even as Ada’s desires grow ever more dangerous ... Her novel recalls Alexandra Kleeman’s debut You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, another nightmarish, cerebral examination of the female body ... Readers looking for a conventional plot or hand-holding through a murky world will be disappointed. In her pursuit of her desires, Ada embarks on a kind of madcap eugenics scheme that weaves and wanders, and frequently deceives, but we keep reading, following after her, into the ground.
...[Rainsford's] first novel, Follow Me to Ground is hard to categorise ... Whatever it is, it is dark and disturbing with many strands, perhaps it is best to call it an adult fairy tale ... Rainsford writes beautifully with a lyrical, earthy prose which is evocative and eviscerating yet mesmerising. She gives Ada a unique voice which fills and haunts the narrative. One of the strangest books I've read in a long time, it is utterly compelling and will linger, uninvited, in your consciousness long after you've turned the last page.
Refreshingly, the novel disregards the predilections of contemporary literary fiction and instead veers toward allegory ... characters lack agency ... In so severely limiting her heroine’s humanity, Rainsford has set herself a difficult task, at which she only partially succeeds. Ada is a kind of golem, created by her father out of a tree branch, and her childlike voice tends toward quick, superficial narration. But when the book slips into horror at the end, it becomes legitimately frightening ... What’s best in the novel is its idiosyncratic vision of the meaning of girlhood and first love. Rainsford draws the coercions of men without contemporary political referents, the natural world without the fatalism of typical eco-horror. The book refers to itself only, and it is fertile ground for pairings ... But if a story is to be this fast-paced, it ought to be more explicit about its intentions; all the subconscious, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them allegories give the feel of a maddening puzzle. Those excellent late horror scenes, and the angst-ridden, semi-creaturely protagonist, deserved more time to develop.
You’ve never encountered a father-daughter story like Rainsford’s slim debut ... Rainsford possesses such a hypnotic command of her premise. Underworld elements keep creeping into this moody fairy tale, but a young woman’s liberation is the main, intriguing attraction ... B+.
...fresh and exciting ... a pleasure to read. Seeing the world from Ada’s perspective is intoxicating, and as she grows in her power, we feel lucky to be taken along for the ride. With language that’s visceral and jarringly beautiful, Rainsford has created a mysterious world that left me wanting to hear more tales.
The importance of subtlety is underrated in horror fiction ... Sue Rainsford understands this truth, and that’s one reason her first novel Follow Me to Ground leaves such a powerful impression. Never overexplaining the strange world in which she places her characters, she builds a growing sense of dread with chilling images, poetic language and an eerie, hypnotic rhythm ... The questions Rainsford raises are compelling, though the author doesn’t necessarily answer all of them. Instead, she drives you to your own conclusions.
... serenely haunting ... told in prose at once lyrical and unsettling ... Visceral in its descriptions and carried by a spellbinding first-person narrative intertwined with lore from fearful Cures, this unworldly story is a well-crafted and eerie exploration of desire.
In this exhilaratingly original work, lyrical prose gives voice to the strange and alluring Ada, whose spellbinding account alternates with the Cures’ testimonials. Seductive and finally horrific; highly recommended.
... haunting ... Rainsford fills her book with an artful, disconcerting prose that never quite allows the reader full access, bringing the surrealist, haunting dread to life and artfully mirroring the mixed feelings of the local Cures who both trust Ada and fear the legends about her. With an evocative novel bending fantasy into a universe of subtle horror and bodies cracking open to be healed, Rainsford pulls the reader into a frightening, tangible world of monstrosity, humanity, and healing.
Brimming with dark folklore and underworld energy, Rainsford’s stellar debut features a memorable heroine chafing against her monstrous isolation ... Rainsford excels in describing the grotesque beauty of this alternative medicine in which the humming healers feel their 'way to the pitch of [the patient’s] hurt' ... This is a subtle, unsettling novel in which desire is an ineradicable sickness that can be preferable to health.
Rainsford pursues these questions with deft lyricism, weaving Ada's story with observations from townsfolk who are, by turns, grateful and wary. Rainsford's fairy and folktale sensibility blends seamlessly with horror as Ada's powers begin to shift in unpredictable ways and take on a darkness all their own. While Rainsford rushes to the novel's ambiguous conclusions, this is nevertheless an astonishing debut heralding the career of an exciting new writer. Strange, lyrical, and arresting, this novel will draw readers into its extraordinary spell.
