This reads like the opening scene in a western: It wasn’t just during winters the ghost bags came in, rolling over across the dawn-hard fields from distant miles, tumbling for so long on themselves, inside out or inflated, bloated, as when Murdo in The Albannach found the ballooned-up dog, buried just beneath the sand, or in Gillespie: a living eel emerged from the drowned fisherman’s mouth, from its coiled home in his swollen stomach.
The book is modelled on Stevenson's 'Kidnapped', which obviously shares much of the atmosphere of westerns. Warner is also an admirer of McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' (who isn't?), which may be another influence here.
This reads like the opening scene in a western: It wasn’t just during winters the ghost bags came in, rolling over across the dawn-hard fields from distant miles, tumbling for so long on themselves, inside out or inflated, bloated, as when Murdo in The Albannach found the ballooned-up dog, buried just beneath the sand, or in Gillespie: a living eel emerged from the drowned fisherman’s mouth, from its coiled home in his swollen stomach.
The book is modelled on Stevenson's 'Kidnapped', which obviously shares much of the atmosphere of westerns. Warner is also an admirer of McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' (who isn't?), which may be another influence here.