The Cave

By Megan Thomas

When I saw this novella nestled away on my boyfriend’s mum’s bookshelf (it’s a treasure trove), I was drawn to it for three reasons…

One, Kate Mosse is the co-founder of @womensprize, a literary prize which populates the majority of my own bookshelf. Two, I’d been working on the wonderful team at @lockdownlitfest, and Kate was one of our guests – I loved her interview, and thought her insights into both fiction and life were delightful and energetic. Three, I’ve been outrageously slow with reading at the moment: I’m reading Milkman by Anna Burns and it’s of course brilliant but it has really been taking it out of me. So a little ghost-story escapism was heartily welcomed.

The Cave is what Kate Mosse wrote for the 2009 World Book Day Quick Reads initiative, and was the basis off of which she wrote the novel The Winter Ghosts, which I’m keen to read now. Anyone read that? It is set in post-Great-War south west France, in a bizarre French village which seems curiously dated. It is a simple but charming tale. And a great little interlude to my Milkman stint. Also, in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes: it did take me almost as long to balance this in the tree in the garden as it did to read.

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