If someone ever said, hey, do you like Lovecraft, because, if so, you should read this, and then you read it, you would say that the aforementioned someone had a point. But only if you were a completist, because it draw a lot from Lovecraft’s more fantasy-like, dream tales.

The opening is a classic Edwardian trope of two well-to-do young men on an outdoorsy trip Ireland who camp and fish near an abandoned garden and find an old manuscript, which they read.

It’s the tale of man in late middle age (who, frankly, seems like he might not be a nice guy; he lives with his sister and I kept feeling sorry for her, without precisely being able to say why) who finds a put opening up near his house. He shoots a monstrous creature who are never explained but are usually explained as being ‘swine-things.’ Canny, they then lay siege to his house before mysteriously quitting the assault. Later, he investigates a tunnel, which seemed like surely the next step is to find an underground civilization, but no, the tunnel floods and he goes home. Where he has a dream (?) where he enters into a crazy cosmic phantasy, like someone decided to reenact Plato’s Timaeus after imbibing some kind of experimental pharmacopeia. And his dog crumbles to dust. And maybe the swine-whatevers come back? And did I mention they trap door to his cellar leading to… a supernatural river, maybe?

It actually was a little scary and, you know what, I’m going to recommend this book.