63 pages • 2 hours read
The Midnight Feast
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Background
Literary Context: The Whodunit Mystery Genre
The Midnight Feast is a classic example of a whodunit—a subgenre of mystery story in which the reader is progressively given clues to figure out who committed a crime, hence the name: whodunit or “who done it.” In the case of The Midnight Feast, the reader learns by page 31 that there is a dead body. Throughout the rest of the story, Lucy Foley presents the reader with different suspects, each of whom has a motive for the murder. Structurally, Foley employs a classic feature of a whodunit plot: the double narrative. One timeline of the narrative follows the events as they happen openly and chronologically. The second timeline includes the narrative of events from the past that inform the present-day investigation of the crime. A double narrative can be revealed through flashbacks, dialogue, or retellings, and, as in the case of The Midnight Feast, personal journal entries. The novella Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934) and the film Knives Out (2019) written and directed by Rian Johnson represent classic examples of whodunit narratives.
The whodunit mystery genre relies on several tropes and clichés, many of which are found in The Midnight Feast. For instance, in the character of Detective Inspector Walker, Foley incorporates the trope of the moody, solitary police investigator, unrelenting in their attempts to solve the mystery. Foley also includes a “red herring” or a piece of information that points to one solution to the crime that turns out to be a feint or misdirection on the part of the author. For example, in The Midnight Feast, Foley initially suggests that Bella left the dead cockerel on Francesca’s door, but later reveals it to have been one of the Birds.
Cultural Context: English Folk Magic
The Midnight Feast takes place in the fictional town of Tome in the real county of Dorset on the southern coast of England, known for its dramatic limestone cliffs and beaches as described in Foley’s novel. Dorset is a county in transition from a mainly agricultural economy to one dependent on tourism. Foley portrays this transition in the book through the tension between the local farmers and the hotel guests and owners. In The Midnight Feast, Foley exacerbates this tension by highlighting the folkloric beliefs of Tome locals who see the woods as a sacred, public site that should be respected and feared whereas the Meadows seek to own, privatize, and commodify it, pointing to the novel’s thematic interest in Class Tensions in a Small Town.
The Midnight Feast references an early modern occult group working together to mete out Vigilante Justice in a Local Community. The present-day iteration of this group in the world of the novel, The Birds, relies heavily on imagery related to English folk magic that invokes the power of the natural world through group rituals and rune-like symbols. Folk magic refers to a set of local supernatural occult traditions that vary from place to place, but often involve animism, the supernatural, and protective spells. Researchers note that in early modern English folk traditions, practitioners of magic “would often dress in elaborate costumes,” like the crow outfits worn by The Birds (Faye Honeybell, “Cunning Folk and Wizards in Early Modern England,” University of Warwick master’s thesis, 2010, p. 25). In The Midnight Feast, The Birds celebrate traditional Celtic pagan holidays of the solstice, Samhain (similar to Halloween), and Beltane (May Day) through rituals that include animal sacrifice. In another explicit connection to English folk magic depicted in the book, the Birds create a large wicker statue of a crow that they light on fire during the solstice ceremony. Such imagery and practice recalls pagan rituals like those seen in the classic British folk horror film The Wicker Man (1973).
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By Lucy Foley
