The Loney / Andrew Michael Hurley, 295 pp.

A man leading a strange and isolated London life reminisces about one Easter season from his adolescence.  He and his family, which includes younger brother Hanny, who has an unspecified deficit of some sort - perhaps autism or mutism - make an annual pilgrimage with others from their intense Catholic parish.  They travel to the Loney, a frankly dreadful-sounding place on the coast in Lancashire, where a holy well can be found.

Something truly horrible happens here, involving a mysterious local family as well as several menacing pub regulars.  Rituals are performed, both dark and light, although Hurley forces us to puzzle over whether the latter is much better than the former.  And our narrator's memory is called into question to strong effect.

I can't say I fully understood this story, but I turned every page never sure what was going to happen next, which I consider a reader's gift.  I hope someone else reads it to enlighten me.