Last Night of Freedom by Dan Howarth – Book Review

Last Night of Freedom by Dan Howarth – Book Review

Debut novels always make for interesting reads, not least because you half-expect the author to throw down a glove with an almost “Follow that!” attitude which shall make them feared and beloved by readers. Or if not that, you expect to in retrospect see themes which might recur in that author’s future fiction. With Stephen King, his predilection for spine-chilling children – also known simply as ‘just children’ – and psychic horrors are on full display. In Ramsey Campbell’s debut novel, we see the supernatural eeriness and tragedy only manifest once weaved around a very real, very human tragedy, a hallmark of a vast amount of his literature.

It’s intriguing to think then what Dan Howarth is potentially setting up here for the archetypes of his future novels.

Since ‘Last Night of Freedom’ is more than willing to shove itself down your throat and yet it has the decency to let you digest it slowly. And if this is Howarth throwing down that glove, he’s asking for what follows to be unpleasant and knuckledusted. For the better, it seems to try and dive under the radar, striking with wanton disregard for your feelings, brimming with moments where the ordinary is made to seem obnoxious and guilty. 

The premise is somewhat simple – future-groom Luke, his best man Connor, and their two friends Jay and Ethan have decided to spend a few days in the Lakes before the former’s big day, displaying their laddish sensibilities in the opening few chapters that a gang of locals also on a stag do soon take offence to – by proposing a Battle-Royale-style scenario, but with less of the Bruce Springsteen-esque optimism of Koushun Takami’s bloodthirsty novel, and more of the drizzle and despondency that drives the bleaker end of the pastoral horror spectrum. Or as Cumbrians know it, a standard Tuesday. The groomsmen quickly find themselves being scavenged over the Lake District landscapes, turning on each other and revealing secrets – because only one of them is permitted to survive the ordeal. 

As far as pace is concerned, it goes at a rate of knots.

In its 260-odd pages, it not only has an identity, it also has a willingness to barnstorm through the more bizarre elements that many writers would develop and instead make sure its message is firmly lodged in your throat. The impression the novel gives, of an inhospitable wilderness, is about as far from picturesque as it’s possible to go, and as a brochure for the Lake District the only positive it capitulates to showing is that you won’t have to endure it for long before someone blows your brains out.

Where it could very easily go down the WITHNAIL AND I route, with a grimy handful of descriptions which you’re expecting to be followed up by someone glugging lighter fluid as if it’s God’s own medicine, it’s staunch in doing otherwise. For all the evocative edginess he gives his world, the resolute focus remains on a bunch of characters whom you aren’t inclined to follow except to feel sorry for, and despite that slight gambit comes up with four interesting protagonists. What’s clear is Howarth has no time for laddish behaviour, in a way has no time for his own characters except to introduce them to one of Dante’s circles of hell, and he’s as innately nasty to them as they are to one another.

To that end, Dan Howarth’s prose makes for interesting reading.

Not so blunt as to hinder itself, but with a refusal to be hyperbolic. He ladens the novel with similes and metaphors, but never with the intention of shocking or deceiving and making something seem creepy and nebulous – much the opposite. He wants to keep you crashing down into the real world, and the references to various alcohols, the realistic insults, the doom and gloom all adding to what he sums up as “a deadlier version of a Tough Mudder we did years ago”. 

Really, the only drawback to Last Night of Freedom is the decision to give each chapter to a new narrator. The first person narratives suit the story well, and if you don’t have bile in your throat, you’re not reading the book correctly. Yet amongst that, especially in the early stages where each of the four protagonists get chapters that intersect in a random order, you do spend a little too long remembering who’s who.

Thankfully, it is a gripe quickly alleviated as the number of characters dwindle and as more secrets emerge.

The small insights we get into the four groomsmen’s hunters add a nice shade too. On the hunters’ side, we learn about how the village’s tradition dictates that their stag must perform the kills otherwise his own impending marriage is doomed. And as such it makes everything seem a little more human and a little more depraved as a result.

Last Night of Freedom is pageturner before anything else, weaving in characters you dislike and love to hate in like the dispassionate blasts of a shotgun novel. And while it bears similarities to many works before it. There’s a voice in there eventually wrestling its way to the fore that’s merciless. It doesn’t need blood and guts or psychological experiments to feel biting and unrestrained. Simply give it your attention and you’ll feel the chalky, wet splatter of mud on your tongue in a way that puts you both off your dinner and off celebrating marriage in any form.

My thanks to Dan Howarth for sorting me out with a review copy.

Last Night of Freedom by Dan Howarth

On a stag party in a remote part of the Lake District, four old university friends are dragged into a bizarre local ritual. Immersed in a fight for their lives – only one of them is guaranteed to make it home…

Fifteen years after graduation, four old university friends get together to celebrate Luke’s stag party. Tucked away in a remote village in the Lake District, they expect a weekend of real ale, log fires and gentle hikes. But a stag party of locals have other ideas.

Unwillingly drawn into one-upmanship and animosity. The four friends find themselves being hunted across unfamiliar ground in a game of deadly consequences. With only one of them guaranteed to survive, old wounds and resentments threaten to tear them apart as much as their pursuers.

Can the four friends unite to fight back, or will they fall, divided and broken?

Praise for Last Night of Freedom

“Imagine the worst thing that could happen on a stag, then multiply that by a factor of several thousand. Last Night of Freedom preys on the rivalries, bravado, and toxicities on display as unchecked, booze-fuelled egos spiral out of control. Last Night of Freedom is a novel that takes place at a furious pace across a nightmare weekend, and I loved every desperate second of it.” David Moody, author of the Hater series and Shadowlocked

“Last Night of Freedom is Dan Howarth’s grimy, dread-laden portrait of toxic masculinity and the English countryside. An unflinching depiction of a fetid, primal face of human nature, where barbarism hides behind the rotting mask of tradition. I couldn’t put it down.” Kev Harrison, author of Shadow of the Hidden and The Balance.

“Deliverance meets Dead Man’s Shoes… Does for stag parties what Jaws did for swimming.”W.A. Kelly – author of Safe Hands.