Help the Witch by Tom Cox

Help the Witch Reviews

• 
  Blair

  Tom Cox is best known for his humorous non-fiction, particularly the memoir
  21st-Century Yokel and several books about his social-media-famous cats. Help the Witch is something different: a collection of spooky short stories. The blurb sells it well, saying the tales within are 'inspired by our native landscapes, saturated by the shadows beneath trees and behind doors, listening to the run of water and half-heard voices... a series of evocative and unsettling trips into worlds previously visited by the likes of M.R. James and E.F. Benson'.
  
  The best stories in the book are indeed evocative and unsettling. The narrator of 'Help the Witch' moves to a remote rural area and finds conditions much harsher than he imagined. We read about his struggles via a series of diary entries; as time goes on, he talks more about his amusing and disturbing encounters with a monosyllabic ghost. 'The Pool' is a rather beautiful tale which uses the titular landmark to illustrate the transience of human lives and the relative immutability of landscape.
  
  My favourite by quite a margin was 'Just Good Friends', in which unlucky-in-love Helen forms a connection with taciturn Peter, whom she meets on a meditation course. Everything seems ordinary, if rather slow-moving, until one night Peter says some things Helen cannot comprehend. This is all set against an atmospheric background that takes in the vagaries of the weather, Helen's relationship with her mother, random encounters and overheard conversations. It's the most fully realised, richly detailed story in the book, and the only one in which I had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen.
  
  A few – 'Nine Tiny Stories About Houses', 'Folk Tales of the Twenty-Third Century' and arguably also 'Listings' – are actually small collections of flash fiction, fragments linked by a theme. 'An Oral History of Margaret and the Village by Matthew and Five Others' is written mostly in a style that attempts to mimic regional dialect, a device I always find troublesome; I've been left with an impression of how hard it was to follow rather than any memory of what the story was actually about.
  
  Some of the stories are really funny in parts. I laughed aloud at the explanation in 'Help the Witch' for why one of the narrator's cats is named 'A Good Size Cat'. Yet eventually the humour wears thin. Reading 'Folk Tales of the Twenty-Third Century', I found the first couple of tales entertaining enough, but by the last few, I was rather fed up (yes, I get the joke, now can we move on?)
  
  Help the Witch is a nice, diverting read, something to pass the time as the nights draw in. There are moments of dark brilliance, but overall it was rather lighter than I'd hoped. As such, existing fans of Cox's writing are likely to prefer it to those looking for a strong collection of ghost stories.
  
  
  TinyLetter |
  Twitter |
  Instagram |
  Tumblr
• 
  Paul

  October is the time of year for ghost stories and come the end of the month when the clocks go back then it feels like the right time to read them. This very latest book from Tom Cox is his first venture into fiction and there are ten short stories from him in here that venture from ghost stories to a modern take on stories that we have heard time and time again.
  
  Beginning with Help the Witch, a tale of a guy who has just moved into an old house in early December and is shortly snowed in. Not is all that it seems though, even though he has just split from his girlfriend, Chloe, he starts to hear voices around the house, voices that answer him back. Listings is an unusual take on a story, it is told through the small ads that you see in the local paper, and tell of a modern executive home with a cave underneath.
  
  For a surreal take on the world, then you might like his nine tiny stories about houses, or the ghostly sighting on a speed awareness course, where a guy meets his uncle who he hasn’t seen in ages. Or there is the Pool, a place where teenagers swim in the summer and when they have all left is revealed as the home of something ancient that emerges from the depths as winter breaks. There are more like this, stories that exist in the gloaming moments of the day and on the liminal fringes of our culture.
  
  Just Good Friends was probably my favourite of all of the short stories in this book, it manages to be both normal and very unnerving at the same time. Folk horror can be properly scary, probably because it is deeply rooted in our own psyche, but most of the stories in here I didn’t find that frightening. Rather the stories were eerie and often unnerving and even had proper goose-bumps moments too. Cox is a quality writer, prepared to explore different things in different ways and seeking unconventional ways around subjects. I loved his 21st Century Yokel and this is great stuff too. The cover of this is quite distinctive too, the figure that is tree-like is quite chilling and the gold foil makes it a striking book.
• 
  Jason

  A collection of ghost stories written by a nature writer and I have to admit it wasn't quite what I was expecting.  It wasn't scary at all but it was certainly eerie, the stories play with the reader's imagination, you think it is going one way and it gets twisted right around on you, this happens particularly well in easily the best story in the collection, "Just Good Friends",  it was very clever how that story unfolded.
  
  A lot of these "ghosts" aren't ghosts in the traditional sense, these are more like memories attached to a place or a location.  Tom's love of nature comes though big time, quite often a character will get distracted by a little critter or piece of lichen and I think it also shows in the first story "Help The Witch" where instead of being haunted by the ghost he learns to live and bond with the ghost.
  
  There is plenty of humour included, a few times I could be heard out in the garden laughing out loud, the neighbours must be used to that by now.  I  enjoyed some of Tom's more inventive stories,  telling the history of houses via estate agent listings and 9 mini stories about different types of houses were good reads, I like how you are given a taster of the house's story and are left to come up with your owns conclusions.
  
  A clever little book that is a quick read and contains some lovely little illustrations.
  
  Blog review:
  https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
• 
  Brandon Baker

  Perfect read for fall time. Spooky in the lightest sense, but very atmospheric and sometimes kinda funny in a weird way.
• 
  I'mogén

  This one I mearly picked up for the name. I like things about witches and I have been reading a lot of books based on that of late. I skimmed the synopsis and didn't really get it (only that it's a collection of short stories, but I got a bit more information from Goodreads, which didn't over share this time around. I like the emphasis on wildlife and you could guess without hearing of his non-fiction animal books ( which I hadn''t) that he has an interest in these things.
  
  -Help the witch | 1 star - The story the whole collection is named after is a ghost story and follows our protagonist, through diary entries, who has recently moved out into the remote countryside, seemingly starting a fresh, from what seems to be a relationship break up. There's a lot of monologue about the surrounding history, which may have bored me if we didn't jump around in his thoughts. This is a little disconcerting, but it breaks up the continuous drone of thoughts a bit.
  Took me a moment to realised Nibbler is also a cat. This didn't go anywhere, there was nothing really interesting about it and set me up to be worried about the rest of the collection.
  
  -Listings | 1 star - The only thing I liked about this was the brief mentions on wildlife. Other than that I didn't get what this was supposed to be about at all... some house or area that keeps having supernatural missing people/animals or tradegies... ? I don't know.
  
  -Speed awareness | 1 star - This isn't going well. I didn't like this one either. It was about people having to go to.. you guess it... a speed awareness class. I didn't get if the person from earlier was supposed to be a spooky warning or something.
  
  -Nine tiny stories about houses | 1 star - I feel this should have been the second in the collection because then there would have been nine left and that thought makes me chuckle. That's all that made me chuckle because once again I was left feeling a shroud of irritated confusion. This is when I really feel this is just a string of random words strung together that aims to baffle and make me wonder if I'm not being smart enough.
  
  -The pool | 2 stars - I liked this one a little better. It felt more like a reminiscing of different people as the years went by, about their adventures, fun, relaxiation and odd sights in and around the local pool.
  
  -The robot | 1 star - This probably had some deep meaning, but it went right over my head. Frustrating because I want to understand.
  
  -Just good friends | 2 stars - I wanted to like this one more, but it just went somewhere I didn't care for, which to me, felt like no where.
  
  -Folk tales of the twenty-third centuary | 3 stars - I particularly liked the little goth twat, it was like rumplestiltskin and I feel like the comedian was supposed to be Russel Brand? Ones I realised the short story chapter, I got the humour even more. This was like a set of short stories within a collection of short stories and it had me chuckling a little bit.
  
  -Seance | 1 star - The humour went over my head.
  
  -An oral history of Margaret and the village by Matthew and five others | 2 stars - Matthew thinks deeply about the tandomost stuff like I do. That was interesting, but sadly, that was all.
  
  
  Overall, I'm not sure if this is supposed to be like bizzare fiction or something in the more obsure genre, but whatever it was, I didn't get it. The errors stuck out all the more because I wasn't enjoying the content.
  
  Pick it up, give it a go and enjoy! >(^_^)<
  Gén
• 
  Rebecca

  I knew Tom Cox for his witty books about his many cats, including
  The Good, the Bad and the Furry. His first foray into fiction was published by Unbound earlier this month; I pre-ordered it on a Kindle deal for £1. The settings are dilapidated cottages, moorland and villages, mostly in the North of England. Even in the spookier stories, there’s always a welcome touch of humor. “Seance” raises the ghost of a cyclist who was killed on his bike and now is destined to cycle evermore. He doesn’t, at first, realize that he’s dead. “‘Morning!’ he called to a middle-aged couple with a labradoodle, cheerfully, as he cycled past Whiddon Scrubs. They ignored him. ‘Shitbags,’ he said under his breath.”
  
  The three sets of flash fictions, “Listings,” “Nine Tiny Stories about Houses,” and “Folk Tales of the Twenty-third Century,” particularly made me laugh, though each perhaps overstays its welcome a bit. My two favorites were proper ghost stories: “Speed Awareness,” about a peculiar mix-up with the course teacher, and “Just Good Friends,” in which a woman’s Internet dating experiences turn strange when she meets someone with inside knowledge about her past. I could see the latter being anthologized. These are enjoyable enough stories to flip through around Halloween.
  
  Originally published on my blog,
  Bookish Beck.
• 
  Kristina

  Tom Cox’s book Help the Witch is a great example of how an unusual title and a well-designed book cover can pull in readers. I was browsing at a Dubray book shop in Dublin’s Grafton street shopping district and this book caught my eye. The title made me curious (who helps witches? And when do witches need help?) and the artwork is weird and freaky—perfectly echoing the weird and freaky short stories the book contains. I enjoyed Help the Witch very much.
  
  There are ten stories in this book. I’m not sure if I’d say they have plots, necessarily. They express more of a feeling or emotion and have a certain creepy, weird, unsettling atmosphere. All of the stories, even the more straightforward ones, have a tinge of the supernatural. There’s a certain amount of humor in the stories; some being much more outright comedic than others. The first story is Help the Witch. It’s told via journal entries written by a man who moves with his two cats (Nibbler and A Good Size Cat) to a remote village in the Peak District (Derbyshire, England) after a break-up with his girlfriend. On the surface, the story isn’t very complicated, just the man recording his daily activities and trying to get over Chloe, the ex-girlfriend. However, it’s compulsive reading because of the remoteness of the setting and the man’s isolation. This is the narrator describing the area:

  I moved here because of the wildness of the place, but I also underrated that wildness, perhaps because it is not an edge place. It is not at the edge of anywhere…But it is wild. Behind my back garden, sloping down to the valley, are 300 acres of natural woodland: an undisturbed place, somehow simultaneously overgrown and barren, which I could probably walk for the next month and still not fully know. The skeletons of giant hogweed stand proud, despite the snow, beside a ruined pump house. So much vegetation here smacks of death effigy. Beyond is a horizon where nothing grows. I am starting to feel ringed by something here, something more than snow, something ice hot, but I don’t know what it is. I see it in my mind when I think about where I can go, what I can do, when the snow goes. It is a barrier, bigger than the snow itself, which stops me getting into the car and reaching the road (14).

  I really liked this story because it’s so atmospheric with a hint of horror and the narrator is interesting in a very strange way. But really, this whole book is strange and appealing in its strangeness.
  
  The story “The Pool” discusses the passage of time by introducing friends in their twenties, all healthy and strong, meeting up for an afternoon of goofing off and swimming in a pond. They lose their camera (pre-digital) in the water and never retrieve it. Year after year, different people come to the pool, and the pool—still holding captive the film camera—stays the same. “Speed Awareness” is a traffic class for speed violators…possibly being taught by a ghost. “Robot” is a particularly odd little gem. A man out hiking meets a robot from the future. They strike up a conversation and the robot asks the man if he wants to see the future. The man says sure and weirdness results. That’s all I can say. “Just Good Friends” is a longer story about a woman and her mother and a friend she makes. It’s about nostalgia for a certain time and place and, of course, there’s a certain spookiness to it.
  
  The funniest story, “Folk Tales of the Twenty-Third Century” is actually a collection of smaller stories: Old King Idiot and His Goose, Big Lev and the Origin of ‘Unlucky Thirteen’, The Minstrel and the Magic Show, Old Mother Kilderkin, Little Goth Twat and Steve Who Was Just a Tomato. Old King Idiot and His Goose teaches readers that wisdom can be found in the most unexpected places: “His [Old King Idiot] outward asininity was just a façade to enable him to avoid all the royal duties he would have hated, such as posing for media photo shoots and opening malls. While his brothers and sisters and cousins did bullshit stuff like that, he had time to read books and hang around with his transgender goose, who was also brighter than any of the king’s relatives” (182). Big Lev is crazy funny because it gently mocks tourists, selfies, and idiots who think they know best. I won’t reveal what happens to these people, but here’s the last line: “Their expressions have been said to sum up ‘the exact moment where smugness turns into excruciating agony’” (188).
  
  I highly recommend Help the Witch if you enjoy spooky, weird stories with a hint (well, sometimes outright giggles) of comedy. Cox is an excellent writer and these stories explore various aspects of the human condition (and unhuman condition) with wit and humor. This was a great impulse buy and I’ll read more of his writing. I must add that this is the first book I’ve ever read that was published via a crowdfunding publisher: Unbound. There is a long list of people who pledged support for this book and I thank them! (unbound.com if you are curious)
  
• 
  LittleGreenHare

  A book of anecdotes rather than developed stories which I liked, but it feels constantly like each needed a little more work. The first story is interesting though falls away to nothing. Subsequent stories again fail to follow any real narrative and meander as observations and mild shockers. Language is pleasantly descriptive but fails occasionally and isn’t particularly striking enough to give this a reread.
  Disappointing but in a hopeful way - I’d be interested to see what Tom Cox writes next. A beginners work with potential. Illustrations are lovely.
• 
  Caroline Mann

  Like Tom Cox has said, this isn’t really a ghost book, which means that it isn’t really all that scary once you get beyond the creaky house stuff in Help the Witch. The best story was Just Good Friends, with The Pool as a second. You can tell that he’s very much a nature/folklore writer in those selections, which is what I like him for anyway. His female narrators are particularly impressive. Enjoyed this but am still looking forward to his return to nonfiction in his next book.
• 
  Daniel Myatt

  An odd bunch of short stories! And as I've said before short stories always have their amazing ones and their dull ones, this collection had some seriously WTF ones and how is that an ending one's!
  
  I feel the book started off well but fizzled out! I'm not sure I'd look out for more Tom Cox fiction to be honest.
• 
  Nick Swarbrick

  Dithering about four stars; maybe I’m just mean with the five. Give it five: this is a very clever book indeed, combining disorienting tales of the afterlife such as Séance, reminiscent of The Third Policeman (or is it just the bicycles that make me think that?) with a slow menace in The Pool. Ah yes, The Pool: the story that would put anyone off wild swimming… and Listings: the slowest of slow burn stories grippingly told - and entirely from Estate Agents’ blurbs.
  
  It’s hard to review and avoid spoilers because it’s the twists that make these stories engaging: Just Good Friends needs a second read just to see if you’ve caught every hint, every nuance; the gentle rural horror of the title story (is it really that gentle?) needs savouring; the comedy of “Nine Tiny Stories About Houses” belies a real unease. Each of these nine stories is different in tone and form; the final story of Margaret is, for example, creepy enough to bring a shudder as the story comes to a conclusion, and a wry smile at the narrator’s own coarse world-view.
• 
  Diana Rogers

  An eclectic collection of ghost stories from the idiosyncratic mind of Tom Cox. Reading this was a bit like watching my favorite anthology horror film, Dead of Night: Some tales are slight and anecdotal, others have a little more meat on their bones. Some are very funny and some are achingly romantic and melancholy. The end result is something that's not entirely cohesive when taken as a whole, but that's actually part of the appeal. I enjoy Cox's writing and the way he sees the world. Though I know he's written many books this is the first I've read, and my only prior knowledge of him was through social media. I appreciate his perspective and his insights, and I feel they translate nicely to his fictional works. Standout stories for me were "Help the Witch" and "Just Good Friends." I love that Cox's mother, Jo, has contributed artwork to the book. Her prints are the perfect visual accompaniment to her son's writing.
• 
  littlemiss_emmxx

  This book is short stories.
  I've got to admit I've never been much of a fan of short story collections. But this was brilliant.
  
  It's random dark nature seemed to make me just want to keep reading.
  
  I would definitely recommend this book.
• 
  Alicia

  3 1/2. I like Tom Cox's writing, and a lot of these stories seemed very him, but there were also quite a few that felt underdeveloped.
• 
  Emily Barker

  An eclectic collection of ghost stories, ranging from classically structured tales (solitary man moves into an old house; strange things happen) to more playful, experimental pieces. Some stories were spookier and more successful than others. "Speed Awareness" is a clever, modern twist on an old conceit, and "Just Good Friends" is likely to haunt me for the rest of my life. Cox's dry, very English wit and knack for quick, deft characterization make these stories a pleasure to read. Readers of Neil Gaiman would enjoy.
• 
  Jeanette Greaves

  It's worth a 4 just for 'Little Goth Twat' alone.
  
  Truly a tale for our times.
• 
  Anne

  To manage your expectations, it would be remiss of me not to mention the quirkiness of this collection – I’ve never read anything quite like it before, and will confess that the jury’s still out on how I felt about some of the rather weirder very short stories included as grouped stories within the whole. But there was so much about the writing that I really loved, and I’ll focus on the stories that I enjoyed the most.
  
  In the first story – also called Help the Witch – the descriptions of unforgiving nature and isolation in the depths of winter are quite exceptional: you’ll feel the chill in your bones, and that’s only intensified by the ghostly tale that unfolds. I just loved the gentle humour, the historical elements, the curmudgeonly landlord, the conversations with the “near neighbour” – and those other conversations too. And the reliance on crisps and Monster Munch – I did mention the humour, didn’t I? And I really loved the writing – is there any cat person who can’t find “wibbling” a wonderful word to describe the noise that first wakes him in the night?
  
  The second story, Listings, is entirely different, and so cleverly done – a sequence of estate agent and other adverts with newspaper articles, telling a really unsettling story. I really liked Speed Awareness too, set in the world of the familiar, with such wonderful characters (some types too, all sadly too recognisable), and a really disturbing edge. I also enjoyed Seance – the distinctive voice of the narrator, the humour, and the ideas behind it.
  
  I was a little dismissive earlier of some of the “shorts” – just a little too off the wall for me – but I did very much like King Idiot and his Goose and, rather surprisingly, Little Goth Twat and Steve Who Was Just A Tomato. See if you have a favourite! And I’ll also be interested in the views of others on the last story, An Oral History of Margaret and the Village – Matthew’s voice is very cleverly done, and wonderfully sustained, with intermissions for other voices. I admired it – but sadly just couldn’t love it.
  
  And after that rather mixed – and personal – “review”, would I recommend the book to others? Oh my goodness, I most certainly would – this was some of the most clever, original, intriguing, funny and imaginative writing I’ve read in a long time.
• 
  Stephen

  This was a strange one - being a collection of short stories, you'd expect hits and misses. But some of the misses were, frankly, irritating. If the book had consisted solely of the story made up of a series of connected public notices, I'd have given it five stars.
• 
  Sean Kennedy

  (3.5 / 5)
  
  As with any anthology there are some hits and misses depending on the reader's personal tastes, but there are genuinely creepy and morbidly poignant stories in this book that will have you hoping for a second volume.
• 
  Marcel Krueger

  While these are not classical ghost stories, they are weird and wonderful, and I read the book in one hungover day in front of the fire while Irish December wind and rain howled around the house, and it was perfect.
• 
  Mairead Ryan

  A total departure from his previous funny cat books. Help the Witch is a wonderful collection of short stories. Witty, clever and occasionally kind of spooky. I really enjoyed it and would recommend for any other lovers of witchy folksy tales.
• 
  doowruc

  Am I missing something?
  
  I just did not get this at all. The stories don’t go anywhere. They’re not really interesting. Not spooky or scary in any way. Only finished it out of sheer bloody mindedness
• 
  Jo

  Collection of short stories inspired by British folklore and the landscape of the island. I wanted to like this so much but there was something lacking that I can't put my finger on.
• 
  Lakota

  He’s a good writer, no doubt, but a lot of these were sketches rather than finished tales, which made it somewhat unsatisfying.
• 
  Jodie Matthews

  Help The Witch is a strange book, best enjoyed on a wintery Sunday with a brew and a suspension of disbelief.
  A selection of short stories and fragmented pieces of prose, Tom Cox has written modern folklore and ghost stories with a comical twist. From the ghost who hisses ‘Yusss’ to the seance of a fox who has been reincarnated over and over as another, similar fox, the stories take you away from yourself and settle you into an eerie moorland that still feels homely. Perhaps it felt homely to me because the majority of the book was set in two places I know as home - Cornwall and the Peak District. These settings were a welcome surprise as I knew little about the book before picking it up, having been pulled in by the cover and winning a copy on twitter from Tom himself.
  
• 
  Sue Summers

  This is my second Tom Cox book, having only just been recommended him, but I like his style so much that I have a third winging it's way to me as I type and have joined the crowdfunding for his full fiction novel which is still in progress.
  He has a unique style (or even several unique styles) which this book of short but engaging fictions roll out like a cleverly crafted amuse-bouche.
  If you are looking for something a little off the beaten track then I'd thoroughly recommend this.
  *Update
  I currently have 3 books winging their way to me~
  Ring the hill- from Wordery
  Educating Peter & Bring me the head of Sergio Garcia-From AbeBooks (sorry Tom that these two are second hand...but needs must when the bank balance drives).
• 
  Yvonne Aburrow

  A very enjoyable collection of short stories, drawing on folklore and ghosts. They're written in a very original style, and in authentic voices of the various characters who narrate the stories. My favourite stories were “Help the Witch”, “Folk Tales of the Twenty-third Century”, and “An Oral History of Margaret and the Village by Matthew and Five Others”. A couple of stories were a bit weaker than the rest, but that's inevitable in a collection. I think this is an excellent book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes folklore and/or slightly creepy stories.

• 
  Lee Noodle

  I thought this was a book of horror or at least spooky stories. It isn't really; it's more a collection of short fictions, most with a supernatural flair. I enjoyed two of the longer ones, the titular "Help the Witch," and the wistful "Just Good Friends." I enjoyed his humor and the particular wordy sort of British snarkiness, so I will look into his other essay collections about cats and the countryside.