Michelle Lovric – The Book of Human Skin

Tags

Book Review, Gothic Fiction, Michelle Lovric, Peru, The Book of Human Skin, Venice

Gothic, Grand-Guignol, Grisly, Grim and Gorgeous!

Good Heavens! Michelle Lovric has a rich, inventive imagination, steeps herself in research, wears it lightly, and overflows with a kind of earthy vitality that seems to belong to an earlier century and indeed to be more akin to South American literature than English literature. Or it may just be the time and the place she is writing about

The marvellous Book of Human Skin is set in Venice, and also in Peru, or what later became Peru, at the tail end of the eighteenth century, up to and beyond Napoleon’s death on St. Helena in 1821

The book is written in 5 voices, each of which is excellently delineated. Two of them are quite definitely of the devil’s party, even though one of them is a deranged nun who believes she is due to ascend in beatitude, and 3 are most definitely on the side of the angels

Minguello Fasan, born in 1784 is a vile, sadistic, sneering, puffed up and very funny scion of the house of Fasan. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the monstrously compelling central character of Patrick Susskind’s Perfume. Minguello, right from the start has a whiff of brimstone about him, and whether by nature or by nurture is determined to express that fully. He is the second born of the house, and aware of the dislike in which everyone holds him, including his parents, is determined to inherit all his family’s substantial riches. And he is a passionate collector of books which are bound in Human Skin.

Unlike Marcella’s my flesh proved insultingly mortal. The damaged finger turned yellow, then red and then black…..In the end Surgeon Ruggiero unceremoniously lopped the digit off. I had lost my index finger, my pointing finger, my stabbing-on-the-table-to-prove-a-point finger, my eye-poking, shame-slitting finger. I kept it in a box until the worms found it

Marcella Fasan is his younger sister. Born with a congenital weakness, she is initially loved by all, (except Minguello who loves no one) and almost immediately becomes the next target of Minguello’s sadism and ire (something happens to his older sibling) Marcella is intelligent, a gifted wielder of the pen and pencil, loyal, loving, resourceful and refuses to accept the role Minguello assigns her (dead through his many designs)

My pencil began to reveal fear in people’s eyes when they beheld me – me, the slightest, least fearsome creature imaginable. Even my hair was soft like chicken-down. The very cartilege of my nose was transclucent in the sunshine. But that, I was learning, is what frightens people: creatures who are weaker and rarer than themselves. I drew caricatures of elegant baboons, their eyes and tails askew with terror – fleeing from a tiny mouse – with my features – in a wheeled chair

Gianni delle Boccole is bright, devoted to Marcella, but appears a dolt. By circuitous means he learned to read (though most assume him illiterate); he is Marcello’s valet. Though he can read, he can barely write, and certainly has a more than usually phonetic grasp of spelling. Initially, his often hugely funny misspellings were a little irritating or contrived, but by the third or fourth of Gianni’s tellings of the tale, I was sold on him. And some of the tale is so dark and seamy than the levity of unintentional writos are a relief!

Swear my old Master Fernando give the boy babe one long look and betook himself to the furthest corner o the world. He were that shamed to be the author o sich an abdomenashun as Minguello Fasan, Great Canary ovva God!

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini is a poor young orphan, with a desperate desire to help and heal, and a large and tender heart, who gets himself, by hook or by crook, apprenticed to learn the craft of physic.

My famous patient, Napoleon, suffered his first attack of dysuria at the Battle of Marengo in 1800. I never got quite close enough myself to make a personal diagnosis, but they say his urinary pain was a terrible thing to behold. He would lean against a tree, moaning as he tried to relieve himself of a burning liquid clotted with sediments. His men rather admired his symptoms, which seemed those of an amatory complaint

These four start their journey in Venice, a proud, patrician, sophisticated, urbane, cultured – not to mention decadent (according to some) – state, whose fortunes will be changed by Napoleon.

Sor Loreta, the deranged, delusional nun, dreams of becoming a martyr, a saint, and the prioress of Santa Catalina, Arequipa, in modern day Peru

Arequipa, Peru, Santa Catalina convent

I contented myself with Santa Catalina. She knew she was married to Christ, for she received a vision in which she wore as a wedding ring the Holy Prepuce…..When she was just a child she threw herself into the boiling waters of a spring near her house in order to burn the skin of her face and body and so discourage human suitors……When they took my Santa Catalina away too, my soul rebelled inside my body. I scrubbed my face with the pepper and lye that I had hidden in my bureau drawer

Another way of looking at these five (and there are many other equally ebullient characters who might almost have strayed from Balzac or even Rabelais) might be in the tradition of some of Rossini’s operas. And I’m sure this is deliberate, on Lovric’s part, as another character, the kindly prioress of Santa Catalina, whom the deranged Sor Loreta is desperate to eliminate and supplant,  is devoted to Rossini’s music (not all nuns are quite the dour characters which the outside world thinks they might be)

In this, Marcella and Santo are of course the young lovers (Rosina, Almaviva/Lindoro) (Santo, like Almaviva in The Barber of Seville is expert in disguise in order to gain the enemy stronghold to meet his truly beloved) Gianni, valet, is Figaro, and Minguello the much more wicked version of the merely buffoonish Doctor Bartolo, and the equally sadistic Sor Loreta a notched up version of the prim Berta,

Act I Finale mayhem, production by Ponelle, Hermann Prey as Figaro, Teresa Berganza as Rosina, Luigi Alva as Almaviva

This is a glorious, twisty, turny (utterly credible within its own reality) plot. Characters that make sense in place and time. Humour which is as dark as you like, but, overall, an explosion of intelligence, vivacity, inventiveness and originality.

Saint Sebastian by Gerrit van Honthorst, circa 1623

As you can tell, I like Lovric rather a lot, following my earlier read of her later novel, involving the wonderfully tressed Irish sisters The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters

Photo of Lovric by Marianne Taylor, from Lovric’s website

The 466 page novel is followed by a much soberer and more explanatory 30 page afterword by Lovric, where she lays out the factual aspects of her book, and where she departed from the facts. In essence, all the historical information IS there, but may have been woven in a unique way by Lovric. The dots are in place, she does the joining.

I think I’ve gone off reading ‘wood books’ and will stick to the less potentially dangerous Kindled editions. Readers of this will understand my new sensitivities……….

The Book of Human Skin Amazon UK
The Book of Human Skin Amazon USA

Ransom Riggs – Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

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Book Review, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs, Young Adult Fiction

Not just a book for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs quirky, spooky, YA lit-fic horror crossover, set in Wales, is a sure-fire delight – with this adult, never mind the YAYAs!

Riggs is/was an avid collector of strange photos from long gone times, and began, particularly to be fascinated by faded, peculiar photos of children. Probably they were attempts at trick photography techniques, with the photographer playing around with exposure, framing, shutter time and the like, but he had amassed a steady collection of these from various flea markets and vintage sales, as the afterword to my copy, where an interview with Riggs is included, explains.

So, the photographs and the development of a fabulous story to link them, developed. The central character in this book, 16 year old Jacob, is shown some of these photos by his Polish Jewish grandfather, and then discovers more, and the people and meaning behind them.

Jacob is in many ways a typical adolescent of his kind. Gifted, (though not really initially understanding in what way) intelligent, introspective, a loner, not quite the son his controlling parents might wish for, he is nevertheless extremely close to his grandfather, Abraham, who appears to be retreating into senility, with paranoid stories of monsters. Following his grandfather’s death, which damages and fractures Jacob, he becomes determined to try and track down and discover more of Abraham’s past as a young boy, leaving his native Poland as the Nazis moved in, and arriving as part of a kindertransport at a school on a remote island off the coast of Wales; that is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

How Peculiar those children were, not to mention the Peculiarities of Miss Peregrine herself, and how Jacob (first person narrative) discovers his own connection to all this is a wonderful journey. It is extremely well-written, twisty, turny, mind-mangling and with some genuine shocks which do not feel gratuitous. And it has also a lightness of touch, Jacob has a self-deprecating, self-mocking sense of humour and is a fine companion for the reader.

And those photos (which made me choose to get the real, rather than eread, version) are most weird and wonderful

Although personally I felt that the inevitable fight between the goodies and the baddiesat the end was a bit clichéd, I am aware that such battles are needed, but this was the one section of the book where Riggs did not quite sustain his absolute originality for me, and also, the one area of the book where I realised I was not the intended audience.

Terrific page-turner.

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Amazon UK
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Amazon USA

Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen – The Rabbit Back Literature Society

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Book Review, Finnish Literature, Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

A most weird, wondrous, playful, dark and fantastical tale. Beware of writers bearing gifts.

Finnish writer Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen has written a creepily seductive, thought provoking, alluring and wickedly mischievous book, which might have special appeal for writers, since writers, aspiring and world famous, and the nature of fiction itself, is the subject matter.

Books have started to mysteriously change in Rabbit Back, a small town in Finland. Rabbit Back is also home to a world famous children’s writer, Laura White, who writes children’s’ books about a dark and mysteriously peopled world. Inevitably, being a world famous Finnish children’s’ author writing about invented, strange creatures which have a fascination for adults as well as children, there are obvious possible parallels that Tove Jansson may have been the initial inspiration for Jaaskelainen.

Laura White, it transpires, gathered around her a group of children, with the aim of grooming them into becoming writers. All are now grown, and famous authors in their own right.

However…there was a dark mystery behind Laura White’s creation of the Rabbit Back Literature Society, and its small, select recruited members. And the group also have an arcane, and somewhat deadly practice – The Game, which has evolved over the years, and exists for a set purpose of furthering the craft, practice and ritual of writing itself.

Kullevos, Curse by Akseli Gallen- Kallela (1865-1931) Inspired by the Kalevala, Karelian and Finnish national epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot Wiki Commons

The membership of the society has been restricted to 9, for many decades. Until a young teacher, with a recently published story, is invited by White to become the tenth member. Ella Milana, as well as becoming the newest member of the Society, is a keen literary researcher, and has discovered the strange changes appearing in classic texts.

Milana has agendas of her own to pursue when something cataclysmic happens at the party which secretive, revered, Laura White gives, to introduce Milana as the tenth member, to the other nine, and to the wider, glittering celebrity world who accord White some kind of literary goddess status.

And this is Finland, where a belief in dark elementals may be more widespread. Snow, and the Far North, do weird and wonderful things to imagination

Forging of The Sampo by
Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Wiki Commons.

So, we have some strange conglomerate of a David Lynch Twin Peaks type clever weirdness, a crime investigation, an arcane, cultish group of highly intelligent, ruthlessly ambitious-in-the-pursuit-of-their-craft writers, Folkloric background, and a wonderful, wickedly dark and playful imagination. Not to mention a clear love of literature, and its power, and many reflections on just why writers write, who they are, how they do it, and how and why we read.

Everybody comes to the library naked. That’s why they come here-to dress themselves in books

It’s a joy. It’s a gem. It’s dark, spooky, not completely explained by reason. And I want more from Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen. There seem to be a couple of short stories translated into English, but not, at the moment, any second novel. Keep writing Pasi Ilmari, keep writing.

The translation must also be commended (I assume, not knowing Finnish!) because I had no sense of the clunky, as happens when translation is done by those who are too literal, and miss some kind of ‘writerly sensibilities. So I hope translator Lola M. Rogers is also making sure that Pasi Ilmari is steadily working on another book.

Reality was a game board for all of humanity to play on, formed from all human interaction. You could in principle make it up out of anything you wished, provided you all agreed on it. But it was easiest if everyone used square pieces, because they would all fit together and form a seamless whole

The Rabbit Back Literature Society Amazon UK
The Rabbit Back Literature Society Amazon USA

Lynn Shepherd – The Pierced Heart

Tags

Book Review, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Gothic Novel, Literary pastiche, Lynn Shepherd, The Pierced Heart

Finally, alluring, disciplined, properly disturbing Gothic. Shepherd does The Undead proud!

I am not, by any means, a fan of the vampire genre, which seems to have drowned in a sea of its own overdone gore.

However………….when a writer whose work I admire happens to write a book which features the pointy teethed, sanguinary creatures, that might well draw me in. The writer, not the genre.

Lynn Shepherd is a writer with a wonderful feel for nineteenth century literary fiction, primarily using classics of that period, as springboards to twist and skew and refocus, into detective novels. Her first, Murder at Mansfield Park, made a brilliant reversal of class and fortune out of Fanny Price, an Austen heroine who seemed far more pliant and submissive than most of Austen’s bright, intelligent women.

Her second, Tom All Alone’s (published in the States as The Solitary House) forayed into Bleak House.

Her third was a slight departure. Her central character, private detective Charles Maddox investigates events in the household of the Shelley/Godwin families. I found this third book more troubling, as she made free with the lives of real people, inventing unpleasantness around them. A Treacherous Likeness Like her second, this had another title in the States, as A Fatal Likeness

With her fourth, she returns to the territory of an original classic text, and writing something which her imagination takes her into a kind of parallel course with.

One of the several versions Johann Heinrich Fuseli painted of his iconic The Nightmare. Wki Commons

Having already stated I do not find the vampire genre appealing, I must also say I avoid ‘pastiches’ like the plague, because generally the original does the whatever so much better. The exception, is where something is written which is substantially different, substantially true to itself, and where acquaintance with the original can only delight and enhance reading of the new work – which, however, could PROPERLY be enjoyed on its own substantial merits, without any prior knowledge of ‘the original.

And, I must say, that knowing Shepherd had used the Bram Stoker novel, and her love of nineteenth century literature, and her understanding of place, time, culture and language of the period, and a kind of ability to inhabit the world of the original, I bought this book (not available as a download) eagerly, knowing I would not be disappointed.

And I wasn’t, I absolutely wasn’t. It becomes the fourth ‘vampire’ book I can read – and re-read – Stoker himself, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, Marcus Sedgewick’s rather more scientific imagining A Love Like Blood and now, what Shepherd has done.

Her research into historical events (The Great Exhibition, scientific investigations, thinking, and inventions) not to mention her inhabitation of Stoker’s text, is prodigious – but lightly handled. I was swept up feverishly turning pages, and it was only in the pauses between reading that I thought about that research, that plotting, that characterisation, those little embroiders of the text that are sly nods to the original.

Louis Haghe Painting. Crystal Palace – Queen Victoria Opens the Great Exhibition, 1851. Wiki Commons

Inevitably, there IS gore (well, it is within the subject matter) and, yes, it is rather shocking and horrid, but, she really doesn’t luridly indulge the X-rated aspects. And the violence is also plausible, (sadly) in its manner

It’s quite a short book – 233 pages, and is – magnificent.

What I particularly love, love with Shepherd, is her delectable, precise use of language, her structure is beautifully measured, there is a real craft here, which does remind me so much of the more formal language of nineteenth century literature

I found it hard to believe so great a tempest could be coming, seeing the white mares’tails high in the pearly blue sky and the wide sweep of sea barely rippling in the breeze, but the man had some knowledge that I did not possess, for by sunset the clouds had amassed into great heaving battlements of every colour –red, violet, orange, and green, flaming at the west in the dying sun, and darkening behind us as the storm gathered pace. We could see far ahead in the distance, the lights of the little town my father told me was our destination, and as the wind began to rise the captain rigged the ship as high as he dared, desperate to outrun the storm and make port before nightfall. But there was no time. There was a moment of deathly stillness, when the wind seemed to die in the sails………I could hear sea-birds wailing like lost spirits above our heads

Yes, that is right, it’s the arrival, in an unholy storm, by sea, to Whitby

There are several stories going on here. Charles Maddox, like Jonathan Harker, visits the ‘Dracula character’ in his castle home in the Austro-Hungarian empire. And the bulk of the novel is written through the voice of the omnipotent author, describing Maddox’s thoughts and actions.

1797 Robertson Phantasmagoria Capuchine Chapel Paris. Wiki Commons

There is also a parallel story involving ‘Lucy’ the daughter of a kind of stage magician, performing magical acts, and capitalising on the growing success and fashion for spiritualism, in the wake of the American Fox Sisters. Lucy’s story is told in her journal, and is in the first person (from which you can deduce, Lucy’s is the arrival in the storm)

Fox Sisters, Wiki Commons

There is also the omnipotent authorial voice revealing herself to be the self-conscious writer of this book, occasionally making mentions of scientific and social advances which will come in time. This is not in any way intrusive (well, not to me, anyway) and adds another layer, reminding us that this is a referential piece, springing from an established literary heritage, and that writing itself has a history, and that there are cultural fashions in writing.

Shepherd is playful, and she plays well; I like the way she teased me into actively thinking about what I was reading, even whilst my heart was in my mouth and I was being swept along by the ‘what-next, what-next’ of narrative. I needed to be slowed down, to appreciate the detail

There is an afterword, which also explains how her springboard for this book was not only Bram Stoker’s text, but some real history. And I was pleased to note that no REAL persons were harmed in the telling of this story

There is, also a genuine shocker of a climax. One which is ultimately most satisfying

Curiously, as mentioned, this book is not available as digital download in the UK (though Statesiders can get it in this format) It was also not released as an ARC ahead of publication either for NetGalley, UK, or in Vine, UK. Sadly, I suspect Shepherd and her publishers have kept things very low profile indeed over here, following a rather injudicious comment Shepherd made about another author some time earlier this year or last, which attracted loyal fans of the other author out in droves to negative vote on all her previous works. She is a very fine writer, and I hope will be able to recover the growing appreciation she had had from readers, prior to her foolish outburst.

The Pierced Heart Amazon UK
The Pierced Heart Amazon USA

Cecilia Ekbäck – Wolf Winter

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Book Review, Cecilia Ekbäck, Lapland, Sweden, The Far North, Wolf Winter

A so nearly excellent read, but fell badly at a far too ambitious and implausible ‘wrap’

For most of this roughly 400 page first novel by Cecilia Ekbäck, I was absorbed and immersed, and able to suspend my disbelief over some inconsistencies or improbabilities. However, within the final 50 pages, the author attempted a far too complicated trail of red herrings and multiple conspiracies, which rather weakened the undoubted strength of the book – the ability to capture a historical period, within an isolated sombre geography – Swedish Lapland in 1717, and a conglomeration of rather diverse, scattered communities, travellers and residents.

Without revealing spoilers, a small family, with clearly some not quite revealed `history’ and cupboards which might contain the odd skeleton, leave their coastal community of Ostrobothnia in Finland, to come to the mountainous, forested settlement of Blackasen Mountain. Mother Maija, an `earthwoman’ – midwife, father Paavo, previously a fisherman, and their two daughters, 14 year old Frederika and 6 year old Dorotea come to settle a homestead originally owned by Paavo’s uncle, who appeared to leave the homestead in rather mysterious circumstances.

Mystery in fact is everywhere. Maija, her own grandmother and Frederika have second sight, and can commune, willingly or unwillingly with elemental forces and the dead. Paavo is prey to extreme terrors and has become landlocked, unable to engage in his watery trade.

Blackasen Mountain itself has some curious, unsettling dark past, involving people who have gone missing. The landscape (beautifully described) is harsh, secretive, unforgiving and almost alive.

Lapland Photo by Isabell Schultz on Flicr Commons Share

The two daughters discover a slaughtered body. The scattered community are tight-lipped about what might have happened, and are inclined to try and convince themselves and each other that this is the work of a bear, or of wolves.

Meanwhile, on a wider stage, Sweden has been in conflict with Russia, the Swedish King may not be altogether the most popular and secure of monarchs, a Calvinist Church is trying to maintain and control hierarchies within society, and older, animist, shamanist beliefs are still more potent beliefs for some, than Christianity. There are also conflicts between the settled Swedish homesteaders and the nomadic community of Lapps.

The small community, with its isolated homesteads, its nomadic winter Laplander visitors, is both closed in on itself and mutually suspicious of itself.

A small cast of characters, and the probability that it is someone within the community, rather than bear or wolf who is the murderer.

Wikimedia Commons, Canis lupus standing in snow

Almost everyone appears to have secrets; and, because of this, almost everyone might have motive.

History, crime, thriller, and the ratchet turned up into horror with the highly plausible (given the culture of the time and place) supernatural elements, and some stunning writing which brings home the harshness and difficulty of survival, and the terrifying, brooding beauty of the land itself, kept me engaged as Maija and Frederika, driven by the strength and fierceness of their own natures, are drawn into the need to understand and investigate. Mother and daughter also have their own conflicts with each other, and with the acceptance, or otherwise of the ‘gifts’ they have.

Character, relationships, narrative, setting, descriptive writing are all engaging. If only the author had known when to stop, and when a conspiracy and a whole raft of red herrings are just a bunch of fish too far.

This did, just, get the 4 star rating which means it made this blog, as in the end, on reflection the absorption of the reading experience for most of the book pulls this up into `recommended’ despite the crashing, thumping overdone complexities of the final solutions.

However……… Ekbäck is for sure a writer to watch

And for those who care about such things……please be aware that though wolves may figure in the story, as creatures who inhabit the cold Northern forests, and though I mentioned there are supernatural elements, please be assured nothing so crass as that oh-so-predictable and formulaic appearance of a werewolf mars the pages of this book! Werewolves are thankfully conspicuous only by their absence!

I received this as an early ARC from the Amazon Vine UK programme. It is due for publication in February 2015

Pre-publication comparisons have been to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Stef Penney’s The Tenderness Of Wolves, both stunning first novels. I didn’t find the comparisons unwarranted, for most of my read, even though in the end this author had had a rather clumsy tumble, where Kent and Penney were sure-footed all through

Wolf Winter Amazon UK
Wolf Winter Amazon USA

Susan Hill – The Woman In Black

Tags

Book Review, Ghost story, Susan Hill, The Woman In Black

As the nights get longer: ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night

Susan Hill’s transmogrified-into-many-media “The Woman In Black” remains a wonderful, atmospheric ghost story, still holding its own after its 30 plus years in print. Though I’m – amazed/amused/shocked to find that it is now listed as a best seller on Amazon in the CHILDREN’S ebook category. I don’t believe it was initially written, or published, for that market. So I’m not quite sure what this shows – the literary sophistication of children? Sure, post a-film-starring-Daniel-Harry-Potter-Radcliffe, probably new audiences are coming to the book, but it is quite a slowly paced, literary piece of writing (hence its standing the test of time on a re-read for this reader). It’s a properly paced, slow-burn, atmospheric piece of writing, with a wonderful sense of lonely place – set on the North-East coast, much of the horror arises from Hill’s ability to create an eerie, beautiful, mysterious and isolated tidal estuary landscape, complete with the suckings and soughings, the glimmers, glistens and dankness of wind, water and sea-frets.

Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire, photographer Richard Humphrey, Creative Commons licence

Arthur Kipps, now a middle aged man on his second marriage, is immured in a family Christmas. His teenage stepsons embark, in high spirits, on the telling of ghost stories

Unwillingly, the years roll back memories of a quarter of a century and more ago, when Kipps, as a young solicitor, was sent to deal with the estate of a recently deceased reclusive woman in her eighties, who had lived in isolation in a house at Eel Marsh, some distance from a little market town called Crythin Gifford. Eel Marsh can only be reached when the tide is out, and is then completely cut off from the outside world, and the outside world from it, once the tide comes in again. There was some unexplained horror to do with Eel Marsh. Locals drop veiled hints, but Kipps, a pragmatic, modern young man, not given to flights of fancy is of course dismissive…………..until.

This is a proper Victorian Gothic style story, even though set in a modern era. Everything is done through its effect on Kipps, the slow drip drip of fear and horror into his psyche. It’s a superb ratcheting up of horror, and there is nothing to cynically laugh at, no crass clankings of chains and slamming doors, opening graves and the like. Hill takes normality and just progressively makes it go wrong, chill and definitely evil.

We had travelled perhaps three miles, and passed no farm or cottage, no kind of dwelling house at all, all was emptiness. Then, the hedgerows petered out, and we seemed to be driving towards the very edge of the world. Ahead, the water gleamed like metal…..I realized this must be the Nine Lives Causeway…..and saw, how, when the tide came in, it would quickly be quite submerged and untraceable……..we went on, almost in silence, save for a hissing, silky sort of sound. Here and there were clumps of reeds, bleached bone-pale, and now and again the faintest of winds caused them to rattle dryly

And that’s BEFORE the sea-frets come!

A short, chilly, chilly, read. Hill is a writer who understands less is more and has no need for crude schlock effects.

The Woman In Black Amazon UK
The Woman In Black Amazon USA

Marisha Pessl – Night Film

Tags

Book Review, Marisha Pessl, Night Film

Grand Guignol, Gothic, Questy, Operatic and Charismatic.

The adjectives above could apply equally to the cultish figure this book is about as it could to Marisha Pessl’s stylish, risk-taking, occasionally over-blown book.

Just as she was on the edge of losing me in its last hundred pages, through becoming a bit too fantastical for belief, she did yet another, effortless, audacious, utterly credible, didn’t-see-it-coming volte-face, tipping her book into a direction I hadn’t seen would be there, and leaving me shaking my head in admiring amazement.

Enough with the adjectives; just what is it about, and why is it so fabulously original and worth reading?

The narrator and almost central character, Scott McGrath is an almost washed-up middle-aged man, an investigative journalist with an obsession. His obsession is the reclusive, dark cult, noirish auteur film-maker Stanislas Cordova, whose queasily shocking films, full of investigations into the dark side of the human soul, have become cult classics, banned from mainstream showing. An underground legion of Cordova fans, world-wide, arrange hidden showings of his movies (he has not made a new one for years) using social media and deeply hidden, protected-from-prying-eyes websites which you must know about to even find, let alone get access to.

Rumours escalated about Cordova over the years. He has always eschewed publicity, whilst his films gained notoriety through dark hints and rumours. Some of these are that his films, dealing with death, sex, violence, hidden and shameful desires, were ‘for real’. Many of the actors and crew who worked on Cordova films appeared to have had strange epiphanies as a result of the experience, and have vanished off the radar. Those that are still around refuse to talk about Cordova and the film they worked on.

Viewers of these films also report shocking, changing experiences and well-mangled minds as a result – hence, the banning of those films.

Flicr Commons. Escher Eye. Marcio Geraldo

McGrath did attempt to instigate an expose of Cordoba some years previously. The result of this was professional and personal suicide. He became unemployable after an emotional anti-Cordova outburst on TV. His marriage broke apart under the strain of his obsession to expose Cordova. He is resentfully ticking over, convinced he was set-up to fail by Cordova himself.

Then news breaks (this is start of the novel, not a spoiler!) that Cordova’s daughter Ashley,  an incredibly gifted classical pianist, has been found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned New York warehouse. The verdict is suicide.

McGrath is not convinced, and begins another Cordova investigation, picking up a couple of unlikely, shadowy sidekicks along the way, a small-time drug dealer and a restaurant coat-check girl, actress wannabe.

What makes this different from any other well-written, imaginative thriller-cum-crime investigation, are the audacious games Pessl plays with her medium, adding to reader enjoyment and justifiable, rather than authorial self-indulgent, mind-mangling reader experience.

These include fanzine web-pages, photographs, police reports, medical records, and pages from the New York Times, including its on-line pages, reporting Ashley Cordova’s death, and an early interview with Cordova from Rolling Stone, before he completely eschewed such practices.

The interactive, this-is-reality experience also steps beyond the book’s pages as, in both Kindle and real book, some pages contain a particularly Cordova-apt symbol. Readers possessing an Apple or Android device can download a free Night Film app, and then, taking a photo of the pages containing the symbol will launch webpages so that the journey continues on-line.

I am sulking, badly, as a woefully discriminated against Blackberry user. Random House, the publishers, have no plans to launch the Night Film app for Blackberry, and my Windows PC and lappy, not to mention the Blackberry, uncompromisingly tell me that the app is not compatible with my devices.

I feel like Scott McGrath, before he found a way into the Cordova secret fan website.

Pessl has been compared to many other writers, in terms of her subject matter and style – predictably, these include the Steig Larsson Millenium trilogy (Pessl a more imaginative literary writer) and Donna Tartt’s Secret History – Tartt is cooler, more cerebral, more intellectual,  more reflectively introverted and more disciplined in her writing and imagination I think.

There is something so very joyously lush and unrestrained about Pessl – this is not a ‘magic realism’ novel, but she has the rich, fantastical imagination of particularly the South American Magic Realists.

However, the comparison which most hit home, in literary fashion – though not till the final 50 or so pages of the novel, was that classic, early ‘mess with the head of the narrator AND the reader’ book by John Fowles, The Magus, an example of  so-called ‘god-game’  writing. Pessl engages with a variety of this, and I have some similar ‘the reader has been rearranged’ sensations.

However, it is the world of film she seems mostly to inhabit, a wonderful amalgam of Hitchcock, the Blair Witch Project, The Omen, David Lynch, Tarantino, not to mention the suspicion that Polanski and Kubrick might have been partial inspirers of Cordova.

I recommend this highly. I have now bought her first book, and fully intend a re-re-re read of The Magus!

Night Film Amazon UK
Night Film Amazon USA

Michele Paver – Dark Matter

Tags

Arctic, Book Review, Dark Matter, Ghost story, Michele Paver

The Darkness, The Coldness, The Solitude and The Horror. Oh The Horror

Someone recommended children’s author Michelle Paver’s adult book, Dark Matter to me. And I wish I could remember who – it was another reviewer or a book blogger. Thank you, whoever you are.

This is fabulously terrifying. It is described as a ghost story, but the terror is the way Paver takes the reader into the mind of her central character, Jack Miller. Set in the 30s, Miller is an intelligent man, from a poor background. Trained as a physicist his education takes him out of his own class, and into the rigidly upper class world of higher education (at that time). Poverty and class, and his own suspicious nature, seeing insult both where insult is intended and when it is not, have held him back from continuing his education and climbing into social poise.

He gets the opportunity to be part of an exploratory group doing research in the Arctic, as a wireless operator, to be part of a group with a handful of other men.

Something fated hangs over the group, as one by one they drop away through family disaster or illness, even before starting out. A Norwegian Ship Captain, charged with getting the by now shrunken group of 3 men to a remote (fictitious) place somewhere far beyond the Svalbard Archipelago, does not want to take the men to their destination. He and his crew hint at a history of the place which is too dark and terrifying even to be uttered.

The group of 3 – two of them representatives of the British ruling class, and Miller, discount these hinted at warnings of doom and horror, and insist on the rational approach.

First there is the natural claustrophobia and tension which might arise for any isolated group in wilderness. Then there is the added growing terror of – not the land of the midnight sun, but the time when it turns to the land of the noonday dark. The endless four month night.

Paver has us inhabit Jack’s mind, and it is the terror of one’s own fears which give this powerful novel its force.

I did not even need anything ‘unexplainable’ to happen to render me sweaty palmed, racing pulsed, and sick to my stomach in fear.

Imagining the howling wind, the intense darkness, the isolation of a frozen sea where no ship can come for several months was enough.

Imagine as the world turns to that four month darkness :

Only an hour or so of twilight is enough to confirm normality……Without that – when all you can see out the window is black………..The suspicion flickers at the edge of your mind: maybe there is nothing beyond those windows. Maybe there is only you in this cabin, and beyond it, the dark

Paver slowly ratchets up the endless darkness and a brooding malevolence in the limitless, icy wastes, where anything begins to be plausible, because imagination will make the impossible real.

Oh there certainly are recountings and happenings to make the hairs stand up on the back of the neck, but, for me, it is the confrontation with insidious thoughts and reflections which are the real chill

The stillness is back. The dead cold windless dark. That’s the truth. The dark. We’re the anomaly. Little flickering sparks on the crust of this spinning planet – and around it the dark

Atmospheric, haunting, and genuinely terrifying (if you have any imagination at all!)

I recommend it all right. At least while it is daylight.

The book is accompanied by illustrations of that Polar landscape, between the chapters.

Dark Matter Amazon UK
Dark Matter Amazon USA

Graham Joyce – The Tooth Fairy

Tags

Book Review, Coming-of-age, Dark Fantasy, Graham Joyce, Horror, The Tooth Fairy

Mash-up fantasy, horror, comedic social commentary. And it works

Graham Joyce‘s Tooth Fairy is a coming of age book in the same way as Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is, or John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things. The genre is somewhere between horror and fantasy, but Joyce is using the power of fairy tale, myth, the shadow world to explore, with humour and with savagery the world of imagination, darkness and intensity which I suspect most of us were well aware of in childhood, and particularly in adolescence, but are inclined to ring-fence, put away and talk ourselves out of remembering as we don sober suits, responsibilities and become owned by the world, rather than by our febrile imaginations.

Set in the Midlands, in the early 60s, the book follows the fortunes of a small group of friends Sam, Terry and Clive, later joined by the classier, horse-riding Alice, and by Linda, slightly older, much more sophisticated, striding into the uplands of sexuality way before the 3 boys she originally bosses and nannies.

Sam, aged 5, loses a milk tooth, and meets a Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy is like nothing from Peter Pan. He/she/it is a sexual shapeshifter; feral, filthy, violent, alluring, murderous, vengeful, wounded, lost, tender, anarchic and comically, lethally, viciously destructive. The Tooth Fairy represents the dark, hidden, I-have-no-idea-what-is-going-to-happen-next-randomness of life. Only Sam (a perfectly normal and ordinary lower middle class boy, going through school, going through adolescence, meeting bullies, kind teachers and alcoholic psychiatrists) sees the Fairy, though occasionally others sense its presence.

So……….think a comic, inventive writer who can precisely get inside the heads of a group of young boys, but that writer also does not shy away from perfectly dark and horrific places in reality (suicide, violence, murder, drug abuse, sexual abuse). And that writer can come up with a cracking good narrative, and have the sharp, witty observation about a particular period in time and place similarly, for example, as Jonathan Coe does.

Amorphophallus titanum, Corpse Flower

Joyce is a mash-up fantasy, horror, comedic social commentator of a writer, who creates real, utterly believable characters, and just twists their world, whilst maintaining the truthfulness of personality and psychology and the daytime reality we are familiar with.

This is a book for adults, not for children, even though the central characters are children, and young adults

The Tooth Fairy Amazon UK
The Tooth Fairy Amazon USA

 

Lynne Truss – Cat Out Of Hell

Tags

Book Review, Cat Out Of Hell, Cats, Horror, Humour, Lynne Truss

A Cat Is Purring. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. (No spoilers, only lures)

Lynne Truss has written a witty, scary, oddball, corpse-filled. literature-loving, perfectly-punctuated, (I assume) , delight of a book.

The problem is – I can’t say very much about it without spoiling the journey which you, dear reader, need to make for yourself, without your own voyage of discovery being marred by inadvertent and carelessly strewn spoilers by this (or any) reviewer.

I was one of the very lucky ones, getting this as a very early ARC from the publisher, and all I had to go on, was this, from the fairly minimalist (great, no spoilers!) blurb:

 By acclaimed storyteller Lynne Truss, author of the bestselling Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the mesmerising tale of a cat with nine lives, and a relationship as ancient as time itself and just as powerful.     

The scene: a cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Inside, a room with curtains drawn. Tea has just been made. A kettle still steams. Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat. The story about to be related is so unusual yet so terrifyingly plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting. The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant. 

‘Shall we begin?’ says the cat.

I must admit, the dustjacket picture didn’t particularly lure me – I thought it a little bit whimsical, and feared something which might be chocolate box cutesy humour funny-ish.

But of course, I know Truss is sharp, dry and pithily rather than fluffilly funny.

The story is dedicated to a friend who likes ‘proper’ horror stories, so, clearly this is going to be some sort of tickle your funny bone with horror mixture. (And more)

Okay, to try and lure you, o reader. Your cast of characters includes the above-mentioned talking cat (and another), an endearing dog (more of whom I must not say in order to avoid a spoiler) except that he belongs to a couple of academic Cambridge University librarians and is called Watson, so is the butt of several jokes which will delight Sherlockians. Then there is the central human, recently bereaved, in a Norfolk holiday cottage, with his laptop, no internet access but a previously sent folder from a fellow librarian. There is an actor who is a little slow on the uptake.There are a good few bodies. There are copious classic literature references (our man is a librarian, after all) . There is academic and historical research into occult literature.

Even if you are remarkably unacquainted and uninterested in library stacks, Victorian fiction, the history of occultism, Egyptology, demonology or preconceptions about cats and dogs, this book will I think be a page turning delight. Believe me. Our talking cat doesn’t do chat, for example, but masters cryptic crosswords and is highly supercilious (and other things)

Don’t mess wid me, punk

As for the dedication to the friend who likes ‘proper’ horror stories, suffice it to say that in bed early in the morning, having fed the cats, and enjoying my breakfast cuppa, with a cat nestling cosily beside me I read this (I have made a few excisions to avoid spoilers)

 The exceptional cats…..aren’t the product of some sort of miracle…..they just haven’t degenerated the way all the others have….this explains such a lot about cat behaviour….When they hiss at us, you can tell that they really expect us to fall over and die…because that is what used to happen. So when we stand there, unharmed, and laughing in their faces, they’re completely miffed…..they’re conscious of having lost their ability to do serious evil, and they feel bloody humiliated

At which point, cosy nestling cat began to talk….”Mrr…Mhaa…Mmmaaaahhr”  and I must admit I had a slight ‘hairs up’ moment at the timing, and she continued to utter short little cat exclamations for no reason I could discern. Then she climbed onto my lap, gazed at me seriously, as she is wont to do, and began kneading and purring. I read on….

You know the way cats do that trampling sort of thing on your lap……It was how cats used to kill people by pretending to be friendly and then severing their femoral arteries! Purring was the way they sent people into a trance…..

Upon which, I discreetly (not wanting to anger her) but purposefully got up and had a shower.

There is so much to enjoy in this, and I hope that I have persuaded you to read it, on publication. Believe me, this is nothing like any of those wonderful, but whimsical Paul Gallico cat books, and DEFINITELY nothing like the ‘spiritual’ fluffy cat books currently in vogue

I did feel that the final section managed the balance of horror and humour rather less well – the detecting and investigation part of the story was terrific, but the inevitable confrontation between antagonists, once deduction has happened, did see my extreme enjoyment wane a bit. I felt Truss was rather better at slow set up than at rapid action.

Overall though, I absolutely recommend this

PS Any one interested in giving a home to 3 extremely good natured cats? I don’t THINK any of them know how to read emails. Well I hope not. Was that scratching behind the wainscoting………..?

Oh – and finally, such is the authenticity of Truss’s writing that even though I know (don’t I?) that this IS a fantasy, I was interested in seeing what had been thrown up in the research, and Googled some of the named characters and search terms cited by our academician and found……….(well, that would be telling, and maybe YOU will just have to see for yourself!)

PPS Aficionados of Truss’s’ grammatical works: any crimes of MY grammar and punctuation above, are to be deplored. Please DON’T tell Truss about my linguistic offences.

Cat Out Of Hell Amazon UK
Cat Out Of Hell Amazon USA

(A post blog publication edit. Kudos to WordPress’s ‘similar posts’ widget which paired this book with a couple of very sensible fiction ‘fellow travellers’, especially a Shirley Jackson book……but the third, which made me laugh hugely, was a non-fiction book about 150 birds of Britain and Ireland. Given the title of the book reviewed above, make that 149,148,147……..)