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

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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

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

Susan Hill – The Woman In Black

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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

Sarah Waters – Affinity

Tags

Affinity, Book Review, Gay and Lesbian Literature, Ghost story, Sarah Waters, Victorian pastiche

A perfect match of style and content by a real writer

The British writer Sarah Waters wrote a couple of stunning books (in this reader’s opinion) exploring the Victorian period, written from an unusual perspective – Waters is a lesbian, and most of the intimate relationships in her books are between women.

In two of these books, Affinity, published in 2000 and reviewed here, and Fingersmith, she is pitch perfect in inhabiting the literary style of the nineteenth century. I have a feeling re-reads are due!

Waters not only writes with finesse and precision about the Victorian world, but she has delightfully recreated a precise and balanced formality in her writing style, which conjures up the shades of Wilkie Collins and of course Henry James – a sly and crafty nod to ‘The Turn Of The Screw’ – in the naming of the medium’s control. As Affinity purports to be the writings from her two protagonist’s journals, the rather old fashioned structure of her prose is perfect.

Affinity, set in the 1870, is the story of a woman who visits prisons, doing good works, and there  encounters a young medium. Spiritualism was widespread at this time, both taken seriously and the subject of fraudulent investigation also. This is a ghost story, a love story, – and a complex twist of a story to be unravelled and revealed. Very Wilkie Collins.

She weaves her story splendidly – in a more leisurely (Victorian) era, this novel would surely have seen publication in one of the literary monthlies or weeklies, and we would all have had to wait, breathless with anticipation for the next installment! How lucky we are to be able to read at our own pace!

The ending was shocking, and disappointing – but entirely proper.

This might sound like a contradiction in terms, but I think those who have already read the book will understand!

If she were really a Victorian writer, perhaps the ending could have been different, but because she reflects a more modern sensibility of the world of Victorian spiritualism, the ending is as it should be.

I wished the book had ended some other way, from my viewpoint as a reader who had been led to involve with the main character, because of the writer’s skill. However as a reader in the more modern ‘observer’ role, with a twentyfirst century observation, she gives the only ending acceptable to that sensibility.

What a clever writer! Even more so for not just being a writer who plays mind-games, and is purely cerebral – she writes with the gusto, liveliness and vivacity of Dickens and Thackeray.

Affinity Amazon UK
Affinity Amazon USA

Michele Paver – Dark Matter

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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