A review by gareth_alan
The Woodwitch by Stephen Gregory

5.0

This is a weird one. It's about a guy named Andrew who gets with one of his female workmates and he fails to get a boner. She laughs at him so he punches her out. His boss sends him away to a cottage in the Welsh countryside to get his act together. There, he discovers a stinkhorn mushroom that looks like a willy, which he becomes obsessed with.

There's some heavy stuff to get through in this book. Animal mistreatment, vivid detail of animal decomposition, sexual moments with a potential minor, sheep poo, dog diarrhoea... Jesus, that slimy dog diarrhoea was disgusting. I could almost smell it!

Speaking of almost being able to smell it, Stephen Gregory's descriptions made me feel dirty. Like I was actually in Andrew's damp cottage, surrounded by mould and erect penis mushrooms and smelly decomposing beasts. The copy of my book is also an old, second hand copy and it feels a bit manky and smelly, which only added to the putrid atmosphere of the story.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was proper weird, dark and original. You'll probably need a strong stomach to be able to appreciate it. I tell you what, it's made me scared of getting a flop on in the future in front of a woman. I don't want to have to go shaking maggots out of dead animals in order to grow stinkhorn mushrooms!

I think I've discovered a great author here, I shall check out more of his work in the near future.