Dirtpickers Author: Edie May HandISBN-13: 978-1786586254Publisher: Manilla PressGuideline Price: £16.99Dirtpickers, Edie May Hand’s astonishing debut novel, initially demands some work from its reader. Although its characters appear to be a family, their relationships to each other are unclear, even among themselves. “James,” says the girl to the man, “That what we’re calling you now?” to which the woman replies, “You’re not calling him anything but ‘Da.’” What has brought them to this motel, washing blood off their hands, is a mystery that unfolds with deliberation. Denny, Opal, 11-year old Maude, five-year old Billy, and Baby (“a name adopted out of sheer laziness”) are headed to Canada, the only survivors of a small mining community – called “the Valley” – in Indiana. The mining metaphor is evident, as the narrative taps away to reveal what has happened before, occasionally interrupted by an earth-shattering blast. Just as the Valley miners use cyanide to dissolve the silver ore, the story, too, will become poisonous. As one character muses, “It would be easy to laugh … were their friends not dead.” The writing is blazingly vivid. When Opal, the central woman figure, meets the Valley’s leader, Baron, the author observes “he was crisp in a way that had been lacking for Opal since she left Chicago. The colours became richer, the shadows deeper.” With its windswept landscapes and taciturn, rifle-shouldering characters, there are echoes of a classic western. But Dirtpickers is also a horror story, its awfulness amplified by language that is relentless in its lushness, such as when it describes an amputation: “Cut away segments of dead flesh until what remained was little more than slim white thigh covered sparsely by hairs and smudgy, violet bruising.” But the book also sidesteps the obvious, lurid expectations we might have of a rural, cult-like community. It’s not so much violence that chills us, as its threat: “Her bare toes curled and her feet kicked out, and the world was silent of all but the chortling of her father’s cohort.”What is impressive about the novel is its discipline. Perhaps it’s unnecessary to mention that the author of this tale, set in a North America of 50 years ago, is in her twenties and from Meath. But given that she’s so remarkably gifted, it’s worth noting how little she shows off. What she opts instead is to delicately maintain an atmosphere of tension in a world that is richly but tautly constructed. All we can do is bury ourselves in its fury and wait for its simmering to snap. Mei Chin is a writer from New York City living in Dublin.