Alma Katsu – The Hunger

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Alma Katsu, Book Review, The Donner Party, The Hunger

Literary Western-Horror splice

There is historical background to Alma Katsu’s novel, The Hunger, which is based on ‘The Donner Party’ – or, more properly, ‘The Donner-Reed Party’,  a large group of pioneers, led by, at different times George Donner and James F. Reed, who set out, in May 1846, from Springfield Illinois, to travel to California. Initially there were 500 wagons, many families taking several wagons, filled with household possessions as well as supplies and cattle for food,  as they were effectively moving home to a new State. The pioneers were mostly families, but with some single men, and most of the pioneers had a range of reasons for making this challenging journey. Some, inevitably were escaping past mistakes, crimes and misdemeanours, some looking for the prospect of creating a better life for their young families.

The journey was one which had been successfully done before, by others, and initially the Donner Party were doing fine.. A fatal mistake was made, however, to pursue a shortcut, the Hastings Cutoff, from Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Unfortunately Lansford Hastings, the promoter of this supposed short cut, had been – economical – with its suitability.

Great Salt Lake Desert Crossing

The party encountered severe problems with weather and terrain, firstly when the Hastings Cutoff proved not to be a short cut, landing the group in a parching desert crossing of the Great Salt Lake Desert, meaning that they joined the Oregon trail, making a push over the Sierra Nevada mountains, late in the season at the end of October, becoming trapped by heavy snowfall blocking the pass. Stuck  in the high mountains, by the time rescue came less than half of the group of just under 90 who had set out on that final push were still alive. Others had not chosen to follow the route, or had left the wagon train earlier, There were also several rescue attempts which had resulted in some of the rescuers perishing. Food supplies ran out, and the survivors, or some of them, had resorted to cannibalism, eating the bodies of their dead companions

Sierra Nevada Mountains

Katsu, who writes well, really well, has taken the names of the real pioneers, but has created her own story around this, with an imaginative, horror explanation of what happened. Although for me the horror aspects are the least interesting parts of the book, having recently read Algernon Blackwood’s truly chilling short story The Wendigo, based on the beliefs of certain Native American tribes, I was more willing to be rattled by the fears of ‘this is a bad place’ energy being expressed by some in Katsu’s story who are sensitive to the energy of place.

Stumps of trees cut at the Alder Creek site by members of the Donner Party, photograph taken in 1866. The height of the stumps indicates the depth of snow. Wiki Commons

I always have certain problems with inventing stories (particularly bad ones) for real characters who once lived, and must confess to a certain unease here too, particularly when dodgy pasts and shady motivations and characterisations of one kind or another, are assigned to real people, though it certainly seems that some of those who are most harshly dealt with in her book were, indeed, those with stains laid against them by survivors

Reading the long Wiki entry, and a couple of other sources, on what is a gripping tale, with well drawn characters – particularly some of the women, really given flesh, integrity and stories – she has researched well, and the imaginative twist she inserts is one which even could have a scientific basis, given knowledge of Kuru and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases, associated not just with cannibalism, but where one species eats another which is not its ‘normal’ diet – BSE, Creutzfeld Jacob, etc a better known example of this.

I recommend this strongly. It is a very well told, well paced tale, with strong characterisation, moving and horrific. Just don’t read it (or part of it) late at night or close to meal times.

I received this  as a review copy via  Amazon Vine UK

The Hunger Amazon UK
The Hunger Amazon USA

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Algernon Blackwood – The Wendigo

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Algernon Blackwood, Book Review, Ghost story, The Wendigo

“Savage and formidable Potencies…..instinctively hostile to humanity”

I was steered towards Algernon Blackwood’s The Wendigo by someone who read my admiring review of The Willows, another creepy, wonderfully written novella or long short story by Blackwood.

And I must say that I found The Wendigo an even more unsettling read, though also showing Blackwood’s particular interest and strength – the wild, wild, natural world, far from civilisation, and how that ancient world might be at best, indifferent to the puny biped who so often despoils and abuses it, but, sometimes, unleashes a power which might be felt as malevolent towards us

I suspect one reason that The Wendigo worked even more powerfully on me, especially as a long, chilly dark nights winter read, is its own dark, chilly, Northern wintry setting

A small group of moose hunters set forth in Northern Canada. There are a couple of friends, rational men, one a doctor, one a younger Scottish man, more imaginative perhaps, a divinity student. They are accompanied by two guides, also friends of each other, one of whom, a French Canadian, is prone to an occasional dark melancholy. They also have a cook, probably Algonquian, North American/Canadian Indian

Algoquian folklore recounts the presence of a much feared, malevolent spirit, The Wendigo, which inhabits the dark forests.

Rituals of the Sleepless Dead – Dark Art by Dehn Sora

Blackwood’s story explores this. There is, of course, that tension between those who dwell in cities, more or less free from daily exposure to the great wild, and those who are more used to, and both more respectful, and perhaps more fearful, of its power.

Like The Willows, the trajectory of the story begins with a love and an appreciation of the wild, a delight in being far from cities, healthfully experiencing the majesty and awe of nature. And begins, bit by bit, to sow seeds of doubt and terror in the minds, in the imaginings of the characters in the story. Not to mention in the minds and imaginings of the reader.

The forest pressed around them with its encircling wall; the nearer tree stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that-blackness, and so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single visible effect. Other life pulsed about them-and was gone.

It may be a while before I walk in forests again, unless the sun is brightly, brightly shining

The Wendigo Amazon UK
The Wendigo Amazon USA

Algernon Blackwood – The Willows

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Algernon Blackwood, Book Review, Ghost story, The Willows

Two Men In A Boat

Well to be pedantic, a canoe. It may start out jolly, but for sure it’s far from light-hearted

I read a whole slew of books around the witching end of October, but never got round to reviewing. As the nights are still long and dark, this chilling, genuinely creepy long short story or short novella by Algernon Blackwood should still make a reader shiver, starting nervously as winter winds rustle the branches against the windows

This story opens cheerfully enough. A couple of friends, boating enthusiasts, embark on a canoe trip down the Danube, and all in blissful, balmy weather

Starting out, hugely appreciative of their friendship, the delight in healthy exercise in the open air, the two friends absolutely appreciate the solitude and connection with the natural world which takes so many of us out into walking, running, swimming, or climbing ‘in nature’ What happy endorphins we feel, rushing through us :

Racing along at twelve kilometres an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters – sure sign of flood – sent us aground on many a shingle bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool…and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed…We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat not fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human civilisation within sight

Who has NOT delighted in feeling they are alone, or perhaps with a similarly adventurous companion, out in ‘the natural world’, feeling alive and unconstrained by cities, rules, regulations, civilisations?

And who has not, perhaps, had a sense that a world without (seemingly) other humans, might not be an alien one, perhaps, if not indifferent to us, then having a darker intent

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind, and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress. But the willows especially; forever they went on chattering and talking amongst themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing- but what it was they made so much to do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves

Algernon Blackwood is utterly brilliant at the inch by inch turning up of terror and horror. There is nothing overdone here, nor is too much debunked by explanation. Instead, he taps into something quite animal and primeval. We might be able to laugh off ancient fear and awe of the wild, safe within crowded cities, but it lurks, oh how it lurks, for anyone with a modicum of imagination.

 Wiki Commons – Is There Anybody There…There..There?

And I must confess, for some days after reading this magnificent tale I felt a little uneasy, even walking beneath the tame trees in my local park. Might they, just, be plotting…….

And….I was alerted to this excellent ghost, ghouls and things that go bump in the night – even on a summer’s day, gem, by Fiction Fan, and read it as All Hallow’s Eve harrowed. Here is the link to her enticing review

The Willows Amazon UK
The Willows Amazon USA

Shirley Jackson – Dark Tales

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American Gothic, Book Review, Dark Tales, Shirley Jackson

Jackson Shorts – twisted everyday psychology and supernatural horror

This is collection of seventeen short stories, most of which have been published in earlier collections and also appeared in various magazines, for example, The New Yorker. Here, they are gathered together in a new Penguin Collection

I received this as a digital ARC, for review purposes, and I assume that it is only intended to release these as a wood book, since it must be said the digital version was unusually poorly formatted – basically, there was no obvious end or beginning to each story, it ran continuously as a single tale, so the reader needed to keep their attention sharp for when a new sentence made no sense, connected to the one before

The tales fell into two types. The bulk of them were stories of every day small town people, possessed of a kind of psychological warp of some kind of nastiness. These reminded me forcefully of some of the short stories by a slightly later writer – Patricia Highsmith, though Jackson is funnier. In this vein, is The Possibility of Evil, a story about an elderly spinster, a model of rectitude, neat, devoted to growing roses, but whose nature at root is quite different, inventively spiteful.

The small town world is often deconstructed and shown to be cracked and wanting by Jackson, and the not so hidden cruelty in human nature is laid bare by her. Families, sibling rivalries, the cracks in relationships are given savage and often blackly funny treatments. Some of the stories, such as The Summer People are quite poignant and frightening in the potential realism which underlies them – a couple of still hale retirees who go year on year to a backwoods summer cottage, decide to stay on for longer. The local residents, warm and welcoming to tourists in the summer, close ranks once the season is over, and the couple are left with the creeping intimation of their mortality approaching, suddenly frail and frightened.

I particularly liked the small number of stories on the edge of supernatural – a strange and haunted picture, seen in the moonlight, in an old house, a picture of that house itself, which seems to have some kind of malevolent power….

As is often the case with collections of short stories, not all are of equal brilliance, and I do prefer the fuller flowering of Jackson’s novels, but this is still a pleasurable, shiverable read of Jackson shorts. As long as you stick to wood book format!

Had it not been Jackson, I might have abandoned this digital arc right at the point where the first story ended and the second began, with no spatial indication or demarcation point between them.

Dark Tales Amazon UK
Dark Tales Amazon USA

Tiffany McDaniel – The Summer That Melted Everything

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Book Review, Gothic Horror, Ohio, The Summer That Melted Everything, Tiffany McDaniel

A lush jungle of garden – and if it is Eden, it is before, within and after the Fall.

Tiffany McDaniel’s first novel The Summer That Melted Everything is a strange, unforgettable and wondrous one. It was a choice by my online bookclub, and has rather secured my continuing membership, as, in this case, it presented me with a book I would never have come to from my own reading preferences, and which hooked me from the off.

In fact, being honest, none of the choices-to-choose-from drew me from blurb alone, but it was the ‘Look Inside’ facility which made me sit up instantly and see ‘this woman WRITES’, so it got my vote, and I was immediately sucked into the centrifugal whirlpool of McDaniel’s strange, hot, summer of 1984 Ohio world :

The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not

Wha….a..t?! The devil invited, the heat not invited……who? Who has invited the devil? Why has the devil been invited……..and, you can see, I needed to know

McDaniel started with a sinister, compulsive and alluring drum-roll there, and her densely packed, image filled writing – a quite marked individual voice – grabbed me by the throat.

Le Douanier Rousseau – 1905 Painting, Lion Devouring Antelope -it’s the combination of beauty, innocence, terror and savagery which I found in this book

Okay here is setting, narrator, and sketch of the journey’s beginning and a loose laying out of terrain – but as the power, shock and particular unfolding can only happen for each reader, reading the bookmap for themselves, you need to bring your own (possibly violently swinging as you will be traversing through areas of magnetic interference) moral compass

I once heard someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface.

It was a resting in the southern low of Ohio, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where each porch had an orchard of small talk and rocking chairs, where cigarette tongues flapped over glasses of lemonade

Edward Hopper : People In The Sun 1965 – again there are sinister undercurrents implied here

Fielding Bliss is a 13 year old boy, son of a small town lawyer, Autopsy Bliss. And I nearly wrote Atticus Finch there, by mistake (more later) Fielding is, we quickly see, younger son in a happy, quirky family. He idolises his popular, kindly, widely admired-and/or desired older brother Grand, star of the baseball team, self-taught speaker of Russian, just because little brother Fielding tells him he has ‘Russian eyes’. Mom is a beautiful and warm woman….except a little damaged, as she has agoraphobia, and can’t go outside her house for fear of rain. And, it turns out, no real spoiler here, as it is revealed only a couple of pages in – it is Autopsy who has invited the devil by placing an ad in The Breathanian, the local newspaper of Breathed, Ohio.

Summer in Breathed was my favourite season of all. Nothing but barefoot boys and grass-stained girls flowering beneath the trees

Fielding is the first person narrator of the events of that strange, melting summer. He is also the one who first meets that devil, or, perhaps, the one who first meets a small boy of his own age, impoverished and hungry, who claims to be the devil, and is desperately wanting ice cream.

Yes, I know, strange, weird, but, believe me, not random, not weird-for-the-sake-of-bizarre. McDaniel knows exactly where she is going to take us, and everything we think we need to know (and much we had no idea we were going to need to know) will be revealed.And, I fully expect along the way you will shiver in shock and terror, bark in appreciation at the oddball humour, weep in despair, and be riven by pity and rage.

Again, no spoiler,  because this will come quite early. Fielding is not writing his story in real time – this happy boy is being looked back to from behind the eyes of an elderly, bitter, self-hating and broken man. The journey will take us from the then of 1984 to some seventy years later, and a trailer park.

Some startling comparisons have been made, by readers, professional and those like us to mark out the territory McDaniel’s book occupies – Shirley Jackson, AND Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. And I would like to add one of my own – Carson McCullers – who was (I quote Wiki here) ‘often described as Southern Gothic, …..explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts’

Generally I find myself harrumphing in disbelief at these kinds of comparisons. Not here. The Jackson comparison is apt for the wonderful combination of horror, a strange, dysfunctional world and sometimes savage, dark humour. Mockingbird gives us the child of a small-town lawyer, and events triggered by a small town mentality of suspicion and fear of the outsider which might go along with the better aspects of small-everyone-knows-everyone community. And the dark effects of small-town mentality also expose something which has wider, more pertinent effects country, and even, world wide. More later. As for McCullers, it is the mix of tenderness and brutality, both within the misfits, between the misfits, and towards the misfits – who, surely, are everyone

You say, ‘Momma, I just want more. I want to fly like the sudden light. I want to know what it’s like to have a reason to dance. I want all the possible love’

She says people like us don’t dance and we don’t fly. People like us, she says, don’t get more. We take the life we are given and we say grace and glory be to God who is His merciful wisdom has granted such bliss. You hate her God and His wisdom. You hate her acceptance of that empty life.

Added to this mix, quotations from Milton’s Paradise Lost at every chapter head nod us back to that complex portrayal of the devil. Milton is always reminding us Satan, Lucifer is fallen angel. The small boy who has arrived in Breathed in response to Autopsy’s invitation, takes the sobriquet Sal – Sa for Satan, the devil, and L for Lucifer, the reminder of the original, angelic light filled (lucent) angel before fall. There are other names belonging to other characters within the book that we might need to reflect on. Who is good, who is not good, what is evil, and who might be evil and how might evil move amongst us. And what of God, and who, and what, and who might be and how might goodness/Godness move amongst us

And all this complexity is twined and hooked into wondrous writing, as I hope my quotes have illustrated

William Blake – One of his many illustrations of Milton’s Paradise Lost – souls in hell

The further I read, the more I was thinking of the political events of the year, of the move towards a kind of global suspicious, fear-filled, small town isolationism – particularly on both sides of our ponds, but also wider. I had read that McDaniel writes in a kind of fermenting heat, and completes a first draft remarkably quickly. This book was published in June, so, putting those facts together I was assuming that the impulse of the book was very rooted in the events of this year, in the States, and the unleashing of dark populism. It was one of the questions I asked McDaniel, as she was invited to our on-line book group discussion, but, no, of course it takes a book a good two years to come to publication from acceptance. All I can say is, reading this I was so aware of the politics, the Zeitgeist of now

A small cavil – yes, there are times when I think McDaniel can overwrite and the wonderfully rich layers of meaning within her writing can sometimes become a bit left dangling, in need of pruning back, clipping, tidying up or even, finished off by leading them to a clearer conclusion. And to continue with the gardening metaphor……this is a first book. If McDaniel left a few weeds in situ, which might have been dealt with to better reveal the strange beauty of some of her plants, I also appreciate the vigour and the dynamism and the unusualness of her voice. A completely sanitised writing garden with every word neatly in its border and row would not have the compulsive weird energy of this one.

The Summer That Melted Everything Amazon UK
The Summer That Melted Everything Amazon USA

And, specially for Statesiders – keen though I hope you are to instantly jump into this one – it might be worth waiting till after Christmas to get it as a present for your eReaders – it will be on a price drop promotion to $2.99. So it would definitely become worth waiting for!

Susan Hill – The Travelling Bag

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Book Review, Ghost story, Susan Hill, The Travelling Bag, The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories

Well written ghostlies, but creating mild goose-bumps rather than uncontrollable shivers

Susan Hill is always worth reading, and she does the ghostly brigade well, though I must confess to wishing for a little more of those factors which would have had me whimpering in slight fear, and turning on all the lights. She did this marvellously of course in The Woman In Black, knowing how to turn up the volume knob of terror slowly and inexorably.

This moderately long story collection comprises 4 tales of the ghostly, and whilst they are well done, the first two did not create any unease in me at all – possibly because the chosen constructions for both stories tended to minimise and undercut fear in the reader, because fear was not really there for the narrator.

The first story, The Travelling Bag is not the narrator’s own story, and so there is a distance from emotion, through the using of one person to tell another’s story. This makes it a ghost story told as entertainment, so I was not surprised to find no hairs rising on the back of my neck, though there might well be some vivid images which make certain readers feel a little whimpery and uneasy!

Boy Number 21 also has a device which turns the fearful volume knob down. The narrator is reminded of an event from his long ago childhood. This concerns the paranormal. At the time, others in his circle were a bit spooked, but he himself was not, so, really, the absence of the narrator’s fear didn’t stir mine

Degas: Intérieur

It was only the third, and really, the fourth story which made me get close to any kind of feeling spooked and a bit scared – and that, after all, is surely one of the reasons we like ghost stories (those of us that do)

The central characters in the last two are female, as indeed the possible spookers are. What makes it work is that the characters the reader is being encouraged to identify with are uneasy, and becoming increasingly so, as the story progresses, so we have mounting fear going on. In the third story, Alice Baker, the inexplicable spooky goings on take place in the mundane surroundings of the typing pool in an office block.

The last story, The Front Room, was the one which most satisfied my desire for being a bit scared, set in an unexceptional twenties suburban house, at a time pretty close to the present, as DVD players and TVs figure! What makes for a better fear factor is that everyone, bar the source, is in the end scared. And this includes small children, which somehow made the scary happenings more sinister and potent.

The Monkey’s Paw – W.W. Jacobs – scariest ghostly ever, written in 1902

Hill is an old-fashioned ghost story writer – which I like, in that she focuses most on the psychology of the person being ‘spooked’, not to mention, the psychology of the haunter, so that the journey is about increases in tension rather than the BANG! RATTLE! of a plethora of sudden shocks, clanking chains, groaning coffins and the like which are the territory of what I dismissively think of as ‘Pulpy’ Horror writers.

Though, personally, as stated I do rather like the scare factor of a good ghost story, so would have liked to be a little more terrified, this would be a good one for a reader wanting a milder, gentler shivering turn

        Photo credit Ben Graville

I bought this as a download, but the ‘real’ book by all accounts is a beautifully presented one, and it’s probably particularly well-marketed for a Christmas stocking filler

The Travelling Bag Amazon UK
The Travelling Bag Amazon USA

Michelle Paver – Thin Air

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Book Review, Ghost story, Himalayas, Kangchenjunga, Michelle Paver, Thin Air

Not quite as Dark as ‘Matter’ but casting its own creeping, chilly shadow…..

I had thoroughly shivered and enjoyed, in terror, Michelle Paver’s earlier, chilly-set Dark Matter, so I was both delighted and a little worried when offered Thin Air, with a similarly chilly – though elevated, setting. My worry was literary, rather than the cold terror which I ideally was hoping to find – those of us who like stories involving the ghostly are, after all, WANTING the clammy neck, the sweaty palms, the jumping at shadows experience – and thankful for the ability to blaze lightbulbs all around, rather than the flicker of candles in the darkness of the night.

The literary worry was that there are always challenges when a writer manages something near perfection, and then repeats the same kind of recipe – will the reader have become wise to the particular authorial tricks, see them coming, and so not be able to feel and viscerally experience them, instead, stand outside and analyse

Well, yes, to a certain extent this did happen for me here, and has become responsible for a ‘like’ rather than a ‘love’ experience. It’s difficult to judge whether if THIS has been my first experience of a ghostly Paver, rather than Dark Matter, if this would have been the 5 and that the 4 – but I suspect not. One of the factors which made Dark Matter work so very well was that the central character was very much alone, which intensified the terror, the strangeness, the isolation.

Although Thin Air is still set in a forbidding, challenging cold landscape – one of the Himalayas, Kangchenjunga, there are many more people in this story so there isn’t quite the feeling of isolation which made Dark Matter so powerful.

Kangchenjunga East Face, from Zemu Glacier, (a scary face) Wiki

The period is shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. A group of 5 British climbers (and a larger group of accompanying Sherpas) are attempting to climb Everest’s third highest mountain by its most difficult, inaccessible route. One which has already been responsible for deaths, and which the Sherpas, undertaking their role only because of course they need to make a living, have grave doubts over. The Sherpas are far more aware of ‘supernatural forces’ and the need to respect the mountain, and also propitiate, by ritual, forces which might need propitiation or avoidance. There are conflicts between this approach and the forces of ‘rationality’ which denies any of those forces, which the scientific, left-brain British team represent.

Within the British climbing team, there are other, interesting conflicts, most clearly seen in sibling rivalry between Christopher ‘Kits’ Pearce, highly ambitious, successful mountaineer, and his brother Stephen, who is narrator. Stephen is a late choice for the team who are to proceed to the summit. He is a doctor, and a far more complex, introspective and open-minded character than Kits.

There are some mysteries and shadows over an earlier, unsuccessful attempt on Kangchenjunga by the ‘bad’ route. Stephen has a sensitivity towards the Sherpas and their intuition, plus a susceptibility to ‘feeling the atmosphere’ which his brother lacks. Nevertheless, he is a scientist, a rational man, so is also aware of the profound effects produced by altitude sickness. So there is an interesting conundrum for him – is he a classic ‘unreliable narrator’ – is what is going on ‘imaginings’ brought about by mountain fever and the altered physiology of oxygen starvation, or are there external realities. It is not just the reader who wonders, we follow Stephen’s wonderings.

Kangchenjunga, South-West Face, (another scary face) Wiki

To help us along and to decide whether the Sherpas or the rationalists should be trusted, there is a dog (just as there were dogs in Dark Matter) But, of course, a dog would also be experiencing altitude sickness…………..

As I got further into the book I was able to leave the memories of Dark Matter behind, and surrender to Paver’s telling of THIS tale

And my enjoyment and shiver mounted with the appearance of the terrifying object, deployed so brilliantly in one of the best and most shivery ‘ghosts’ I ever read – W.W.Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw. Paver has an object, and I whimpered anxiously as it brought the added accretion of my memory of Jacobs’ story into the room

I received this as an ARC from the publishers via NetGalley. It will be published, in hardback and digital in the UK on 6th October, and also on that date in digital in the States

Thin Air Amazon UK
Thin Air Amazon USA

Charles Lambert – The Children’s Home

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Book Review, Charles Lambert, The Children's Home

Midwich Cuckoos and The Beast

One of the great strengths of Charles Lambert’s eerie, unsettling short novel is that he sets up an odd world, one which seems inherently plausible but he does not attempt to dot the is and cross the ts of logic. There is sufficient day to day, detailed reality to carry the fantastical elements, and the writing style, which eschews whimsy and the ethereal, rather serves to underline the strange normality of its weirdness. This means that the odd and the more usual versions of ‘reality’ sit alongside each other in a kind of delicious tension of opposition

Morgan Fletcher is the heavily disfigured scion of an extremely wealthy family, whose strange family business goes back for at least a couple of generations. The reader (and Morgan himself) is not quite sure what the family business was – some kind of world trade, as his grandfather amassed all sorts of strange travellers’ curios from far off lands.

Something has happened, some kind of breakdown in society, and Morgan lives in isolation. His wealth means there are various retainers and servants about the place, but no one sees Morgan except his housekeeper, Engel, who arrived some time ago. Outside the walls of Morgan’s empire, there were at some point violent encounters between citizens. We assume as a result of some kind of apocalyptic collapse of society. Various myths have probably circulated about Morgan’s terrible disfigurement, and it’s quite possible that everyone is as afraid of seeing the terribly damaged man as he is of being seen. So one myth which Lambert’s book is hinting at is ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – and of course, in the fairy tale, the Beast is actually possessed of far more beauty in his soul than most of the ‘unbeastly’, of unexceptional physiognomy. There are mismatches between the outward mask and the inner beings of many. And Morgan is clearly a good man. However, children begin to arrive at his domain, no one is quite sure from where, or indeed, why. And Morgan’s goodness is shown by the fact he gives them sanctuary. And, pleasingly, the mysterious children are not repelled or frightened by his damaged appearance. Instead, they trust him.

Figures In The Mist, photographer Vtal, Deviant Art, Commons

The children are not quite what they seem. They have some curious abilities – their ferocious intelligence, their speeded up development, for one thing. Another literary memory being used is John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos. The reader, like the children, like Morgan, begin slowly to become a little less sure of their own, or anyone else’s agenda. There is also a ‘good doctor’ who comes initially to take care of the children’s health, and a firm friendship develops between Morgan and Crane, as they try to understand where the children have come from, who they are, and what is the purpose which Morgan is playing out in their lives.

There are also sinister forces outside, figures of authority, who threaten the children.

Lambert’s great skill is to start his story in the sweet and light, and by increments to turn those lights down, to create shadows, twilights, rustlings, and slowly leave the reader feeling more and more unsettled and uneasy.

As others have noted, this book crosses genres – it is a literary fiction, post-apocalyptic, science fiction-ish horror fantasy thriller digging around in dark myths and imaginings.

And its knotted up genres are brilliantly woven together. Lambert leaves the reader (well, for sure he left this one) with the feeling that there are probably further allusions to be found. There is some very dark and shocking stuff – but the darker Lambert gets the more delicately and subtly he describes things. He understands that less is far, far more, he really does

it set me thinking about those books we were given to read as children, about travellers and shipwrecked sailors. How they found themselves in strange lands. magical lands where time went backwards or animals spoke their language. But they weren’t strange or magical to the people who lived there, were they? The people who lived there were normal. How formless it all is until an outsider gives it form

I recommend this strongly – and suggest it is best read when the nights are still quite long, for full uneasy hairs up the back of the neck effect!

I was very happy to receive this as an ARC, from the publishers, Aardvark, via NetGalley. This is the second book I’ve read from Aardvark – on this showing, a most interesting publisher, going outside the mainstream

I was alerted to this wonderfully satisfying and strange read by Fiction Fan. You can read her great review with unsettling graphics here

The Children’s Home Amazon UK
The Children’s Home Amazon USA

David Mitchell – Slade House

Tags

Book Review, David Mitchell, Halloween, Slade House, Vampire Fiction

David Mitchell’s Vampiric Divertissement

Mitchell has been one of my favourite authors, since the appearance of his first novel, Ghostwritten, in 1999. His works are normally quite long, over 500 pages in length, and his fans wait, I am sure impatiently, for the next book – normally we wait for between 2 and 4 years.

So I was delighted to see, that barely a year after The Bone Clocks, another Mitchell had appeared. His publisher was also surprised!

Mitchell never really disappoints me too much, even when inevitably some books are not as completely satisfying as others. Slade House is, I think, Mitchell at play, Mitchell inventive (as ever) – and perhaps even Mitchell showing off a little, amusing and entertaining the reader, but with enough tenderness, compassion and humanity for the reader (well, this one, at least) not to mind if he demonstrates his wonderful ability to speak in many voices, to deploy the first person narrator, to poke fun at literary conventions (and himself) and to constantly pull rugs away from under the feet of his readers, leaving them sprawling and momentarily fooled.

He IS brilliant, and one of his brilliant gifts is to be able to effortlessly (it seems) glide into voicing many ages, both genders, many cultures. His characters appear from the off to have their own unique, authentic voice, and I feel as if I would know them.

In Slade House, he takes an idea which underpinned The Bone Clocks and runs with it, in genre fiction – specifically Vampire Gothic. In The Bone Clocks he was exploring a kind of transmigration of souls, an immortality, across time, by wiser beings, The Horologists, and a group of humans who discovered this secret, and, in the greedy way of us, wilfully abuse it by preying on others, The Anchorites.

Slade House is told through the first person voices of a succession of ‘victims’ of a nasty pair of soul vampires, rather than the pure blood sucking variety. The conceit is that the all-too-human pair, who have discovered how to be immortal through necromantic means, need to eat a soul every 9 years. So far, so fantasy genre macabre, and I have to admit, were it not Mitchell, I would not have wanted to read this.

It being Mitchell, it offers the opportunity for the reader to get inside the ‘soul’ of an imaginary person through the authors facility with the first person narrator.

The first section, or voice ‘The Right Sort’ is, for me, the most beautifully soulful, and I guess, personal. The year is 1979, and the narrator is Nathan, a young boy, who seems to be on the Asperger’s spectrum. We are never told this, but come into realisation because Mitchell helps us to think inside him. (Mitchell has an autistic son). I cared more about Nathan than any other character, and found this section funny, heart-breaking and terrifying as I realised what was happening

“I’m not in the Scouts any more,” I remind her. Mr Moody our scoutmaster told me to get lost, so I did, and it took the Snowdonia mountain rescue service two days to find my shelter. I’d been on the local news and everything. Everyone was angry, but I was only following orders

The second section, Shining Armour, indeed concerns ‘A Knight In’ , and is set in 1988. D.I Gordon Edmonds is investigating a ‘cold cases’ crime. He is a kind-hearted man, with a nice, dryish sense of humour, and, at the moment, vulnerably looking for love, following a relationship break-up

Oink Oink is the sad, 1997 set story of Sally, an overweight young woman whose self-esteem is rock-bottom, and who has got involved with a group of people who are interested in the paranormal. They are hot on the cold and colder cases of two sets of earlier disappearances (and yes, each story links back to the earlier one)

People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go

In 2006, the narrator of You Dark Horse You is Freya, a tough and cynical journalist, with her own agenda to the stories which went before

Grief’s an amputation, but hope’s incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed

In each story, we learn a little more, and revisiting the earlier stories gets a little more satisfyingly twisty, and throws in variations. Mitchell gives us enough to let us think we know where we are going, and enough of a little mixing up to do that sleight of hand rug pulling

The final section is up-to-date in 2015, and follows the story of Iris, a Canadian psychotherapist, though her story is narrated by someone else

That final section also has a few delicately dropped references for readers of The Bone Clocks. It’s not at all necessary to have read that previous work, it’s just a little playful twirl which Mitchell gives, for the amusement of the reader who has

For me, the last section was the weakest, because here is where Mitchell needs to explain certain things for the edification of those who have not read that earlier work, or may have forgotten some of the theories behind it. So, given a first person narration, he has to use the device of one person who knows everything having to give a dissertation of facts and ideas to another character – it is the equivalent to, in a crime novel, the detective laying out how the crime was solved to the denser underling – it’s a device for the reader’s benefit. Mind you, knowing Mitchell, there may also have been a conscious playfulness in this, as he is not above poking fun at himself and deconstructing his writerly devices.

Now you won’t quite find this in Slade House, but it’s an irresistible reminder of an oldie, but goldie – or should that be bloodie – moment from the vampy canon

I liked this enormously, but because of Nathan’s story, though Slade House is ‘MitchellLight’ , I have inched to 5 star.

I was delighted to get this as an ARC from the publisher, via NetGalley. It will be published tomorrow, 27th October, nicely in time for Halloween

Slade House Amazon UK
Slade House Amazon UK

Andrew Michael Hurley – The Loney

Tags

Andrew Michael Hurley, Book Reivew, Gothic Novel, The Loney

Take two crumbling creaking gothic mansions, a hostile, sea-fretted landscape, a small group of incomers, stir well, and shiver……….

Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney is a proper, Gothic literature horror story. But it may disappoint some genre aficionados because Hurley is a writer of literary fiction, subject matter of the book, psychological horror. Though there is certainly creepiness and terror, not to mention a whiff of brimstone within its pages, there are no lovingly lingered over schlocky buckets of gore, crude descriptions of unbelievable monsters and triple headed foul breathed roaring demons. The horror is not laughable or BANG! a sudden shock, rather is steadily mounting, seeping anxiety. Hurley carefully winds his readers in, ratcheting up disquiet, and lets the reader’s own imagination paint un-nameable creep.

Yes this was a book I which I had, on a few evenings, to put aside and not continue with as ‘bedtime read’, because I was feeling distinctly anxious, and had to distract myself with lighter hearted fare.

The setting is the 1970s, and forty years later, with the central character and first person narrator looking back to the events of that time. Tonto and his brother Hanny (Andrew) were the teenage children of strict Catholic parents, living in London. Hanny has never spoken, and goes to a special school. His parents, particularly his rigidly doctrinaire mother, fervently hope and pray that God will vouchsafe a miracle. Every year, they go on pilgrimage to a very low level ‘British Lourdes’ on the North West coast, with their priest and a small handful of other church goers. Every year, the place they visit becomes a little more spooky, a little less wholesome, a little darker.

In fact there are other, older forces at work in the treacherous, inhospitable landscape. The ‘shrine’ which Christianity saw as sacred to St Anne, appeared to be in territory where paganism, witchcraft, and possibly devil worship had an earlier background and continue to exert a dark influence.

Lugworm, Whitehaven Beach, Cumbria Wiki Commons – suitably slithery feeling!

So…..what we have is almost the classic Gothic set-up, beautifully done, and managing to evoke the memory of some cultish, noirish films – I thought of American Werewolf in London (though not a werewolf is in sight – it’s the clannish, sinister mien of some of the locals) Straw Dogs – ditto, though it’s the mounting menace, rather than graphic violence, and, of course, in evocation of a horribly sinister landscape, Susan Hill’s Woman In Black.

And in the middle of nowhere, not one, but two crumbling old houses with history, and a sucking, treacherous tidal path between the two, sea-fret, bone-cold sea, rip-tides………and, oh, the horror, the horror!

On the floor and on top of the long wardrobes were Victorian curious under dusty glass domes that had always frightened me to death when I was a child. Exotic butterflies, horribly bright, impaled to a stump of silver birch, two squirrels playing cricket in caps and pads, a spider monkey wearing a fez and smoking a pipe……….between our beds sat a clock on which the hours were indicated by little paintings of the apostles. Mummer thought it wonderful, of course, and when we were children she told us the story of each of them: how Andrew had elected to be crucified on a saltire; how James was chosen to be with Jesus during the transfiguration and how he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa on his return to Judea

Hurley has several pin-sharp arrows which hit the target – he is excellent at bringing landscape into being as an important ‘character’ As mentioned, the fact that this is ‘about stuff’ and not just a pile of old horrid gore for the sake of creating a pile of old horrid gore made this compulsive reading. I also liked the sympathetic as well as the unsympathetic view of faith – Hurley presents us with credible and rounded people. And, in with the dark mix there are also characters who are warm, wise, and humorous

An extremely positive review of this in the Guardian (quoted on the book jacket) compared Hurley, as an equal, to Du Maurier, Walpole and Shirley Jackson – writers who delved admirably in dark psychology, told a winching up the horror by degrees tale, and wrote with a suitably sharp and precise pen. Generally comparisons have me snorting in derision. This didn’t.

As well as being a fine fine ‘horror’ there’s also lots of ‘about stuff’. I was left thinking on faith, the losing of faith – there is a marvellous, heart-breaking, sickening (in the right way) section on this.

I wasn’t altogether satisfied with the final ten pages where the narrator is in present time, and some ‘closure’ is reached. It seemed a little bit of a let-down after a marvellous, unsettling journey, but this is not enough to retreat from a five star read

I was delighted to receive this as a copy for review from the publishers, John Murray, via bookbridgr. Hurley’s book was published last year, on a print run of 300 by a small independent publishing house, Tartarus Press. It sold out remarkably quickly and a deserved buzz led to the pick-up by Murray. It certainly feels to me like the book is an organic success, rather than something created by the over spinning and over hyping of money men and women

Recommended. Keep the lights on. One word of warning – this may not be the book for those who do like the genre to be high octane action on every page, but if you like your creep to be slowly and inexorably twisted, by increments, this should get you imperceptibly shivering more and more!

The Loney Amazon UK
The Loney Amazon USA

I believe it is only currently available in digital in the States, and won’t make it to hardback till 2016. Available both ‘in wood’ and in digital in the UK.