A Letter From Liam Higginson about the Origins of The Hill in the Dark Grove

Dear Reader,

At the height of the first covid lockdown, in a friend’s empty cottage in an empty Llandudno, I started thinking about a story that would eventually become The Hill in the Dark Grove. It was initially just something to pass the time between the one permitted daily walk and the evening’s ritual clapping; something to keep my wife and I from going a bit weird in those months of seclusion (the jury’s still out on its effectiveness). The concept grew out of a conversation we had on the blustery but breathtaking West Shore beach. As we picked our way across the pebbles, we brainstormed ideas for a short story about an old man finding strange objects washed up by the surf, growing ever more convinced that each was part of some vast, eldritch message from the deep that only he could read. For reasons I would love to tell you about in tedious detail, that old man would become Carwyn, the sea would become the nearby mountains of Eryri, and the short story would become a novel I would work on for the next five years and counting.

At the time, it was a story that I wrote with just the two of us in mind as readers. Partly because it felt then like a private, vulnerable thing. A story I had poured a lot more of my honest self into than I might have if I’d written with a view to being published. It was also full of family lore, and references I thought nobody else would get, and characters amalgamated out of people only we would know. North Wales didn’t seem to me like the kind of place where books are typically set. Even when I finally decided to submit the manuscript to agents, I worried that I might be the literary equivalent of those poor souls who go on shows like The X Factor, convinced by their well-intentioned mum that they’re a once-in-a-generation musical talent.

You can imagine what a lovely surprise it’s come as, then, to find that some people seem to like the book, and I hope very much that you will as well. I still can’t quite convince myself all this is really happening. It’s so surreal to think of it on people’s bookshelves, or on someone’s commute to work, or on their bedside table. While I was writing, I used to dream of one day walking into a bookshop and asking if they had a copy of The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson. “Oh, you don’t want to read that,” the helpful staff member in my imagination would reply. “It’s crap.”

In all seriousness though, I think that reading is always to some degree an act of trust. It’s a bit like allowing a stranger into your home – even more than that, into your thoughts. And that relationship, I guess, goes in both directions. For me, the best books are the ones that stay with you. Where the characters feel like people you’ll miss when the story ends; where you put the book down and it takes a moment to remember that you’re in the real world; where you join the protagonist in their innermost emotions. They’re the ones that you spend hours, days, weeks in. So I really appreciate the trust you’re putting in me in letting me take you on this journey.

I hope Dark Grove will mean something to you – that you’ll feel for a moment, wherever you are, that you’re there in those mountains with Rhian and Carwyn and Eira (and the sheep). But whether you love it or hate it or give it three stars and a lukewarm review on Goodreads and then donate it to a charity shop, I’m grateful that you’re here. Thank you.   

With very best wishes,

Liam
Llandudno, 2025