In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Catriona Silvey’s novel Vervain Hollow is a masterfully unnerving and engaging work of literary horror.
Library Journal wrote of the book:
“An otherworldly portrayal of fanaticism and evangelism with an expansive moral lesson about the dangers that lie in sacrificing one’s identity to fit in…Silvey’s exploration of what drives people into cults is sensitive yet poignant and speaks to the modern moment. This thoughtful and haunting novel is an excellent addition to the growing number of regional gothics.”
In her own words, here is Catriona Silvey’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Vervain Hollow:
Before Vervain Hollow was a book, it was a playlist.
Laura, the protagonist of the novel, used to be in a cult. Drawn in by charismatic leader Vervain and his promises of impossible power, she vied for his favor until a fire destroyed the cult, the sprawling house they lived in, and apparently, Vervain himself. Two years later, hearing Vervain might still be alive, Laura returns to the ruin in search of him.
From the moment I imagined the novel’s opening scene – Laura venturing back to the burnt-out shell of the cult’s former residence – songs started collecting around it. By the time I had a playlist I was happy with, I knew the broad beats of the plot. I knew Laura was still devoted to Vervain, more than two years after his apparent death. I knew that Vervain was no fraud: the power he had promised Laura was real, but his motives and his nature were very different from what she had imagined. I knew that Laura’s arc would function as an allegory of the ways in which real-world systems shape our behaviors, define what we see as real, and make us complicit in the harm done to those we love.
Apart from a couple of songs I substituted in during revisions, the playlist below is the same one that propelled me through the first draft. It’s a mix of songs I’ve loved for so long that they formed part of the subconscious material for the novel, and songs I discovered serendipitously along the way. If the playlist has a mood, it’s emotional, obsessive, and unsettling, much like the book itself.
‘Hey Jupiter (Dakota Version)’ by Tori Amos
Laura starts the novel in a place of heartbreak. The cult that gave her life meaning, the leader she adored, the power he promised her, are all ashes in her past. Until the moment she hears that Vervain might still be alive, she is hopelessly adrift in her grief.
As the title suggests, ‘Hey Jupiter’ is a breakup song turned cosmic, chronicling the end not only of a relationship but of a framework for understanding the world. The programmed drums and vibrating bass of the single version add a menacing edge, hinting that this longing isn’t leading anywhere good. The music video, featuring Amos sitting impassive while the room burns around her, also evokes the fire that destroyed the cult’s residence, and the part of Laura that never escaped the flames.
‘Before the Fire’ by Santigold
Santigold is a fixture on my book playlists: her songs are so specific, so unexpected, and so evocative that they always open up possibilities for me as a writer. They are also uniformly bangers, and ‘Before the Fire’ is no exception. Over a driving beat and haunted, repeating backing vocals, the lyrics tell a story of trauma, numbness, and help that comes too late. The refrain, “I was burned before the fire”, applies to Laura and to many of her fellow cultists, wounded in ways that make them ripe for Vervain’s manipulation.
‘Lion’s Share’ by Wild Beasts
I love and mourn Wild Beasts. Before disbanding in 2018, they perfected the expression of a uniquely slinky, sideways masculinity, like if Kate Bush happened to be four men from the northwest of England. Pairing throbbing bass with tinkling piano, ‘Lion’s Share’ is both seductive and subtly horrifying: “I love you all the more for every fault/They’re how I’d gotten in, they’re how I cracked the vault”. Predatory in the best way, it perfectly evokes both the attractive face Vervain presents to Laura and the menace lurking underneath.
‘De Selby (Part 2)’ by Hozier
While I was revising the book, I got obsessed with Hozier’s album Unreal Unearth, and with this song in particular. The title is a reference to Flann O’Brien’s surreal, horrifying novel The Third Policeman, and the lyrics are appropriately disturbing: “What you live in/Darling, it finds a way to live in you”. It makes me think of the relationship between Vervain, the house that embodies him, and Laura; more broadly, it echoes the novel’s wider themes of how the structures we’re raised with become a part of us.
‘Take Over’ by Tom Rosenthal
Honestly, I feel bad about including this one. In its original context on the album Fenn, ‘Take Over’ is a tender ode to seeing the world through the eyes of your child. In the context of Vervain Hollow, the invitation to “take me over” has a much darker connotation: Vervain’s ultimate goal is to possess and control Laura’s body. Still, I couldn’t resist keeping this sweet, gorgeous piano ballad on the playlist: the gap between the delicate beauty of the music and the horror of the lyrics (when read in a literal way) evokes the dissonance between Laura’s blissed-out fugue state and the reality of what she’s inviting.
‘Rorschach Baby’ by Ryn Weaver
I first heard of Ryn Weaver when a reader included her song ‘New Constellations’ on a playlist for my book Meet Me in Another Life. It felt like serendipity, then, when her new single ‘Rorschach Baby’ came up on my recommendations as I was revising Vervain Hollow and I discovered it was spookily perfect for the book. Carried along by electronic urgency and an anxious, schizophrenic rhythm, the lyrics read like a synopsis of Laura’s journey. In short: try and tell me this song is about anything other than psychological warfare with a trickster faux-god and I will refuse to believe you.
‘Cannibal’s Hymn’ by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
There’s a chapter late in Vervain Hollow where Laura sees past events from Vervain’s perspective and finally comes to understand his predatory, consuming nature. That chapter was a lot of fun to write, much as I imagine this song was. The crunchy drums, insistent up-and-down bass riff, and Cave’s purring baritone combine to create a song that’s sexy and disturbing in equal measure. When Cave croons, “If you’re gonna dine with them cannibals/Sooner or later, darling, you’re gonna get eaten”, it’s hard to resist the urge to sing along. (As long as the neighbors aren’t listening.)
‘Deeper Devastation’ by Jesca Hoop
Once Laura understands Vervain’s true nature, she recognizes her complicity in his crimes. ‘Deeper Devastation’ is a song about a reckoning with the self, and with the flaw at the heart of us all: “You cannot trust a human being/To do the right thing”.
Like Santigold, Jesca Hoop writes songs that wrestle with hard-to-define but resonant emotions. Musically, she doesn’t sound like anyone else: here, her rich voice floats in a mournful soundscape of Twin Peaks-esque guitar and backing vocals like ritual chants. In the novel, this song corresponds to the lowest point of Laura’s arc, when she can’t see a way past her own frailty.
‘Dear Wormwood’ by The Oh Hellos
In C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood is a demon tasked with tempting a human to sin. This song is a defiant reply from human to demon, acknowledging its dark influence and refusing to succumb.
Most of Vervain Hollow is written in first person direct address, with Laura referring to Vervain as “you”. It’s a marker of devotion, of longing for his recognition, that signals how bound up in him she’s become. This song corresponds to the moment when she stops. Recognizing Vervain for what he is, she sends him back to the third person: “I know who you are now/And I name you my enemy”.
‘Trellick Tower’ by Emmy The Great
Emmy The Great excels at telling a profound and complete story in under five minutes: something I can only envy, as I’m incapable of even attempting that in fewer than eighty thousand words. Here, it’s a breakup story about an ex-lover who left because he found God. The song weaves together the titular London tower block and the story of Rapunzel, placing the lost love impossibly out of reach: “Can I spend my life trying to climb you?”
For me, this song stands for Laura’s reluctance to turn her back on Vervain, even after all she’s learned. Letting him go means letting go of the power he granted her, conditional and toxic as it was, and of the idea of herself as chosen. ‘Trellick Tower’ contains one of the foundational lines for Laura’s character, and one of the most beautiful lyrics I’ve ever heard: “And I think relics ache for when the saint had breath/They miss the thing that changed them”.
‘Vesuvius’ by Sufjan Stevens
At the climax of Laura’s internal battle, she must burn away any part of Vervain that remains and reclaim what’s left of herself. ‘Vesuvius’ describes such a spiritual showdown, a scouring of fire that must be undergone, no matter the pain: “I’d rather be burned than be living in debt”.
Starting with a simple muted piano, the song builds gradually, adding discordant electronics, glitchy beats, and layered vocals that reflect the opposition between “ghost” and “host” that runs through the lyrics. When I listen to it, I think of Laura wandering her own tangled mental landscape, collecting the fragments of herself back into a whole.
‘Horizon’ by Aldous Harding
The horizon is a recurring motif in Vervain Hollow. At the beginning of the novel, it stands for the infinite possibilities that paralyze Laura, pushing her toward the strictures and control of the cult. By the end, the horizon has changed in her perception, becoming a symbol of freedom.
Another off-kilter breakup song, ‘Horizon’ features cryptic lyrics that suggest rather than explain. The chorus, “Here is your princess/And here is the horizon”, gives me shivers: there’s so much in there about refusing others’ definitions, choosing instead something that is open and scary and yet to be known. It expresses the end of Laura’s journey, in a way that carried through to the pages of the book. This song was always the last song on the playlist, and the last word of the novel is “horizon”.
Catriona Silvey is the author of the international bestseller Meet Me in Another Life and Love and Other Paradoxes. She was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Edinburgh, she settled in Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and children.