Epeolatry Book Review: Last Night of Freedom by Dan Howarth

Howarth’s dedication ‘For all the lads out there …grow up’ is the premise of this story. In fact when I received the copy, Howarth was almost apologetic about the laddish culture I was about to experience. However, much of my earlier working life was in male-dominated industries, and in recent years I was supporting some of the most challenging teens. And of course I grew up in a pub! So, laddish behaviour is something I am familiar with – I was going in with my eyes open.

Here we have a quartet of ‘lads’, though their age has – in theory – put them beyond that category. They are on a stag weekend in a remote part of the Lake District. What happens? The usual – they get drunk, wind up the locals, and then the not so usual, they become the subject of a hunt across the countryside and only one can survive.

But it is not the hunt that fascinates me. Howarth has turned this weekend into an exploration of male friendship: how deep do those bonds really go? Are they as close as they think?

Having made friends at university, the four remained in touch. But it is clear that even at that earlier stage, they were not true friends, accepting each other more because of that need to belong. How many ‘friendships’ are created because there is no one else around to talk to, because you feel excluded from other circles. Nobody wants to be ‘Billy No-Mates’, standing on the sidelines watching everyone else have a good time. In some instances, these relationships are simply people using each other.

Ethan, privileged, selfish, full of ego, falls into the latter category. And he is responsible for a particularly horrific outcome during the hunt. He is his own number one. Jay comes with this terrible inner violence he can barely keep in check; Connor with his own agenda; Luke, the stag, still playing the field. You soon see there is no real honesty between them.

As they struggle to survive, each chapter told from one of the four’s perspective, this veneer of friendship is slowly peeled away. You get the feeling that much of what they experienced together in those early, ‘close’ days was simply show, trying to outdo each other in the time-honoured tradition of being ‘one of the lads.’ Yet you do find yourself rooting for the group (barring Ethan!) as aspects of vulnerability float to the surface, and you begin to empathise – though this does not stop the occasional urge to knock sense into them!

The pace of the story is excellent, the tension on the pages palpable, not just because of the hunt, but because of the exposure to the inner thoughts of each of the quartet. Conflict comes at them from all sides: from the hunters, from each other and from themselves. Very firmly set in the tradition of folk horror with its familiar trope of curious tradition, unwary strangers and isolated location it still brings something new, with its focus not just on survival, but on the friendship concept.

And to me, the saddest thing of all is that even when the men realise they no longer ‘know’ each other, in truth, they never really did back when they were ‘lads’.

/5

Available from Amazon.