Fen fiction : Michelle Paver's Wakenhyrst

Fen Fiction : A review of "Wakenhyrst" by Michelle Paver

Summertime Sadness: A review of "The Van Apfel Girls are Gone" by Felicity McLean

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone

by Felicity McLean

A bookreview

Euro Vision : The Capital by Robert Menasse (translated by Jamie Bulloch)

"The Capital" by Robert Menasse

Translated by Jamie Bulloch 

A book review

Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt, winner of the 2017 German Book Prize, has recently being published by MacLehose Press in an English translation by Jamie Bulloch.  In this incarnation, the novel’s title is rendered as The Capital.  This name, of course, a faithful and literal translation from the German, but I wonder whether it was also meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Karl Marx’s epic tome.  Indeed, political and economic theories also loom large in Menasse’s Capital, except that they are presented within the context of a zany novel about the workings of the European Commission. 

Die Hauptstadt has been described as the first great novel about the European Union.  It could well be the case.  I don’t profess to be some expert in Continental literature, of course, but the only other novel I know which uses the European Commission as a backdrop is “What happens in Brussels stays in Brussels” by the Maltese author Ġuże’ Stagno.  And that’s more a satire on Maltese politics and the Maltese representatives in the EU, than a novel on the European institutions themselves.   

Menasse’s work takes a wider view.  Its central plot element is a “Big Jubilee Project” which is being organised by the Commission as a celebration of the anniversary of its founding.   Ambitious EU official Fenia Xenapoulou hopes that this will be an occasion to improve the image of the Commission, whilst providing her with her big break.  Fenia’s Austrian assistant Martin Susman comes up with the noble idea of roping in Holocaust survivors, as a reminder that the European Union was built to ensure that Auschwitz would “never happen again”.  Unsurprisingly, as the organizers will discover to their chagrin, national interests and behind-the-scenes lobbying make the success of such an ambitious celebration unlikely.

Much as I enjoyed this novel, I must say that it took me some time to finally get immersed in it.  This is certainly not the fault of the translation – I’ve previously enjoyed Bulloch’s translations of The Mussel-Feast and Look Who’s Back, and as in those novels, The Capital is rendered in prose that is idiomatic and flowing.   I believe the problem is more with its sheer number of characters  (a recent theatrical adaptation involved 7 actors playing about 20 roles) – in the initial chapters especially, I thought that an introductory dramatis personae would have been helpful as a guide to the somewhat bewildering international cast. 

Another issue is with the proliferation of seemingly unrelated subplots involving, amongst other narrative complications: a pig on the loose in Brussels; a retired Professor preparing to deliver a final, memorable speech; a Holocaust survivor coming to terms with his impending death; a number of potential, never-fully-realised love stories and, more weirdly, a crime investigation which seems to have been borrowed from a Dan Brown thriller.  More frustratingly, some of these loose ends are never tied up.   

In other words, The Capital is a sprawling novel which could have done with some tightening.  However, its polyphonic narrative is, in itself, a good metaphor for the European Union, this patchwork of nations and cultures which, somehow, managed to build a future of hope from the cinders of a continent ravaged by war.  Indeed, this novel, despite its several comic and surreal elements, provides Menasse with the springboard to present his views on the European Union.  Despite the evident shortcomings, the bureaucracy and the backstabbing which seem to characterize the working of its institutions, especially the Commission, the central idea(l) of the EC remains a laudable one – the creation of a supra-national body to keep extreme nationalism in check, in order to ensure that the horrors of the 20th Century do no happen again.   In the age of Brexit and strident populism, its themes urgently relevant.

Kindle Edition, 432 pages

Published February 21st 2019 by MacLehose Press

***

Auschwitz – Never Again, is the mantra that underlines Menasse’s The Capital, revealing an earnest and burning message at the heart of what might seem ‘just’ a comic romp.   That is why I have no qualms about pairing this novel with a cult work by Polish composer Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) – his Third Symphony, also known as “The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. Premiered in April 1977, the symphony marked a clear departure from the composer’s usual dense and avant-garde style, in favour of a modal and emotionally direct language.  Its second movement sets a prayer scrawled by an 18-year old prisoner on the wall of a Gestapo camp in Zakopane.  This video is taken from the documentary Holocaust, featuring a performance recorded at Auschwitz.  Harrowing doesn’t start to describe this.  

White Coat Syndrome : "A Dedicated Friend" by Shirley Longford

Shirley Longford's "A Dedicated Friend"

A review of the third horror novella 

in the Eden Book Society Series

The “Eden Book Society” series published by Dead Ink Press reaches its third instalment with A Dedicated Friend, purportedly written in the 1970s by the little-known author Shirley Longford.  “Purportedly” because, as I have had the occasion to explain in my review of Judderman, the Eden Book Society project is based on an intriguing meta-fictional frame narrative.  The “Society” is, itself, part of this overarching story, an imaginary publishing house allegedly set up in 1919, which used to issue horror novellas for a private list of subscribers.   The books in the series have, in reality, been commissioned by Dead Ink Press from leading contemporary British horror writers: Andrew Michael Hurley, Alison Moore, Aliya Whiteley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, Sam Mills and Gary Budden.  However, they’re being published as if they are part of the back catalogue of the Eden Book Society, a reprint of novellas originally issued in 1972.

This poses an intriguing narrative challenge for the commissioned writers, who are faced with the daunting task of recreating the style of 70s horror novels and evoking the atmosphere of the decade, whilst remaining relevant to present-day readers with contemporary sensibilities.

What is also becoming evident as we reach midway in this “year of horror” (and may there be many more!), is that despite what appear to be strict stylistic parameters, the novellas take an unexpectedly varied approach.     Holt House, the first instalment in the series, combined folk and existential horror, whilst its follow-up Judderman was a dark piece of “London Gothic” – urban noir underpinned by a Gary-Buddenesque fascination with Deep Time. A Dedicated Friend is a weird little beast.  Of the three novellas it is the most understated, and certainly the one with the least “supernatural” (for want of a better word) overtones.  It is also, possibly, the most unsettling.

The story starts with Daisy being admitted to hospital after volunteering to donate a kidney to her aunt.  In the 70s, organ transplants were still innovative – and relatively risky – operations and this already gives the novella a certain frisson.  Things get weirder, however, when Daisy, eager to return home after the operation, is kept on at the hospital for reasons which are at best vague, at worst worrying.   In the meantime, her old childhood friend Eliza takes it upon herself to turn up at the hospital on a daily basis, bringing news about Daisy’s husband and children, who always seem to have a good excuse not to visit. 

What I particularly like about this series is that its horror is less of the gory type and more of a subtler ‘psychological’ nature.  A Dedicated Friend is a perfect example.  Whilst it has some elements of body horror, what really gnaws at you as the pages progress is a growing sense of dread, hopelessness and claustrophobia.   The novella is particularly well-judged in its attention to little details which make it more credible.  For instance, I liked the ingenious way in which the author fills us in about Daisy’s family life, despite the fact that all the action takes place within the hospital walls.  “Sensitive” young Alfie is particularly well-drawn even though he never actually appears in the story.

The playful biography of Shirley Longford at the start of the book tells us that this obscure writer cut her teeth on children’s books and that, even after she turned to horror, “she hoped to write romances for Mills & Boon”.  On finishing the novella, these biographical details take on a new significance: The Dedicated Friend may be a horror novella, but it also uses its protagonist’s relationship with her husband and children to probe the fragility of familial ties.  

Is the Eden Book Society project the best thing happening in horror right now?  Based on what I’ve read so far, I’d be ready to put my money on it.

Venice by night: Friedrich Schiller's "The Ghost-Seer" (translated by Andrew Brown)

Venice by Night... "The Ghost-Seer" by Friedrich Schiller

(Alma Classics edition, translated with an introduction by Andrew Brown)

The rise of Gothic fiction in the second half of the 18th Century, also referred to as “first wave Gothic”, is generally portrayed as a peculiarly English phenomenon.  This is hardly surprising, considering that the novel widely (if not uncontroversially) considered to be the first Gothic novel is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764).  It set the blueprint for a dark literary genre, obsessed with terror, death and the otherworldly, and was soon followed by works in the same vein by other English authors such Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford and Matthew “Monk” Lewis.  It would be a mistake, however, to consider this movement in ‘splendid isolation’ from what was happening in the rest of Europe.  Indeed, some of the defining elements of the Gothic are shared with Continental literature of the period, shaped by the ideals of Early Romanticism and the proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement.  German readers, in particular, had a particular appetite for horror novels, some of which were translated into English or adapted by English authors.  In writing “The Monk”, Lewis drew upon homegrown Gothic, but also upon German ‘horrid novels’.

One of the seminal works in the Continental canon is Der Geisterseher – Aus den Papieren des Grafen von O** (generally rendered in English as “The Ghost-Seer” or “The Apparitionist”), a strange novel by the poet, dramatist, novelist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805).  It first appeared in instalments in the journal Thalia between 1787 and 1789, only to be abandoned and left unfinished by Schiller who, apparently, developed a great antipathy to his own creation.   It has just been published on the Alma Classics imprint, in a translation by Andrew Brown who also provides an introduction, placing the novel in the philosophical and cultural context of its period.

The protagonist of the novel is the Prince of ------------------ who, we are given understand, is the third in line to the throne of Protestant state.  On a sojourn in Venice, the Prince becomes involved in a secret society known as the “Bucentauro”, a group of debauched members of high society, amongst whom count several influential prelates.  He also falls in love with a mysterious “Greek” woman.  All of this, however, could well be a front for an even shadowier Catholic group intent on converting the Prince to “the only Church outside of which there is no salvation”, fleecing him of his family’s riches in the process.  The Prince is, in fact, being stalked by an elusive figure he refers to as “the Armenian” who is, according to some accounts, a protean spy for the Inquisition and, according to others, a Faust or Melmoth-like figure who has achieved immortality through devilish means.

Arthur von Ramberg (1819-1875), Der Prinz
(illustration for Schiller's The Ghost-Seer)

It all sounds very convoluted, and it is.  On his part, Schiller purposely adds to the confusion through the narrative devices he opts for.  The first part of the story is recounted in the first person by the Count of O***, a friend and companion of the Prince.  After the Count leaves Venice to attend to personal business, the story continues in epistolary form, through letters sent by Baron von F_________ , a member of the Prince’s retinue, to the Count, updating him on the latest developments in connection with the Prince.  Both narrators are, by their own admission, unreliable narrators, who do not always understand the strange goings-on in which they find themselves.  The narrators cannot trust their senses – we, as readers, cannot take them at their word.  This is truly a novel where, to quote the Bard, “nothing is, but what is not”.  The work’s fragmentary nature is compounded by the fact that it was left unfinished.  Reaching the last page of  book feels like stepping out of a dream or hallucination, whose details and meaning lie tantalisingly out of reach.

The philosophy behind “The Ghost-Seer” is also curiously ambivalent.  It is often held up as an example of Schiller’s Enlightenment ideals – to me, this is not that obvious.  Take the author’s approach towards the supernatural.  On the one hand, much of the novel’s atmosphere (and its title) is drawn from the otherworldly aspects of the plot, with one of its key scenes a seance-like occult ceremony presided by a shady character based on the Count of Cagliostro.  Subsequently, Radcliffe-like, Schiller has his Prince unravel the supernatural elements, revealing them to be mere smoke and mirrors.  Yet, the explanation is so complicated, that like the Count, we are almost tempted to reject it in favour of a belief that something otherworldly must have been going on.  The same could be said of Schiller’s attitude towards religion.  Unsurprisingly for a Gothic novel, Catholics get quite a lot of bad press. But Schiller seems equally critical both of the drearier, stricter strains of Protestantism and, at the other extreme, of ‘freethinking’ unbelief. 

For an unfinished, slim novel(la), The Ghost-Seer has proven surprisingly influential, possibly because of the questions it poses only to leave unanswered.  It gave rise to a particular sub-genre of the Gothic – the “secret society novel”, variously referred to in German as the Bundesroman or the Geheimbundroman.   It is also one of the first works to exploit Venice as a backdrop for dark and/or supernatural  fiction, a tradition which continued with E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heinrich Zschokke and in the 20th century, Thomas Mann and Daphne du Maurier.  La Serenissima it may be called, but its alleys and canals, decaying palaces and hidden campielli whisper strange secrets, if only one were to listen...

Friedrich Nerly, View of the Grand Canal

***

Schiller’s An die Freude was famously set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven in the choral finale of his 9th Symphony.  Apart from that, however, there are few famous settings of his poetry, although one should mention Franz Schubert’s forty-four lieder based on Schiller’s poems.

On the other hand, the writer’s plays have proven particularly popular in opera adaptations.  Verdi was a particular fan:  I Masnadieri is based on The Robbers, Giovanna d’Arco on The Maid of Orleans, Luisa Miller on Intrigue and Love, Don Carlos on the eponymous play and La Forza del Destino, partly, on Wallenstein.

Here’s then, a Schiller musical “dessert”,

First on is a scene from the Third Act of I Masnadieri, the work which, together with The Robbers, is most often cited as an example of Schiller’s “Gothic” streak.

Gioacchino Rossini is best known for his comic operas. However, his last theatrical work, Guillaume Tell based on Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, is a grand opera rich in Romantic ideals, including several “nature scenes” reflecting the concept of the Sublime.

To end, a contemporary work by composer and cellist Graham Waterhouse.  Composed in 2005, Der Handschuh is a melodrama for cello and speaking voice, composed to mark the 200th anniversary of Schiller’s death.

Flash review : “Bottled Goods” by Sophie van Llewyn

“Bottled Goods” by Sophie van Llewyn

Bottled Goods has just been longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, after having previously been longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019 and nominated for the People’s Book Prize.   Here’s a brief review I had written when I read this “novel-in-flash” last year…

When Liviu's brother defects to the West, he and his wife Alina are hounded by the Romanian Communist authorities. We are in the 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, and not even well-connected Aunt Theresa, who practices the forbidden old folk ways even whilst her son works for the regime, can save Alina and Liviu from the unwelcome attentions of the Secret Police. The constant danger blights a relationship which could, and should, have been a special one.

 
Totalitarian rule casts a shadow on the history of the last century. Bottled Goods is neither the first nor the last novel to be inspired by the horrors of authoritarian governments. What distinguishes this novel from many others is its stylistic and narrative approach. 

It is, first of all, a "novel-in-flash" - written in the form of short interrelated vignettes which can, and in some cases have, been published as standalone pieces. Moreover, the narrative sometimes wanders into the territory of magical realism. These flights of whimsy give the novel a light touch, even whilst it's presenting us with the terror of a communist regime and its tragic impact on ordinary lives. The novel is permeated with a sense of fear and dread, yet the pill is sweetened by the fairytale narrative.

This is an original début from a distinctive literary voice.

Paperback, 176 pages

Published July 11th 2018 by Fairlight Books

http://www.fairlightbooks.co.uk/bottled-goods/

Dark Albion : A review of "This Dreaming Isle" (edited by Dan Coxon)

This Dreaming Isle (Edited by Dan Coxon) 

A book review 

What is “folk horror”?  Perhaps, like proverbial True Love, you’ll only recognize it when you meet it. Both as a term and as a literary and artistic genre, it defies a facile definition and is possibly easier to explain with reference to its typical – yet by no means exclusive – elements.  The term itself is often attributed to British film director Piers Haggard, who coined it in a 2003 interview to describe his own film The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971).  It was subsequently taken up by Mark Gatiss in his 2010 BBC4 series “A History of Horror” and applied not just to Haggard’s movie, but also to other films of the era with which it shares certain traits, such as Witchfinder General (1968) and the iconic The Wickerman (1973). One of the chief texts to explore the genre, Adam Scovell’s Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, cites a lovely quote from Andy Paciorek:

“One may as well attempt to build a box the exact shape of mist; for like the mist, folk horror is atmospheric and sinuous. It can creep from and into different territories yet leave no universal defining mark of its exact form.”

And yet, some basic elements can be identified in both literary and filmic manifestations of the genre.  Landscapes, especially their ancient contours, are generally an important aspect of the story, often going beyond mere scene-setting. Plots often include references to folklore, myths and legends. More often than not, pagan or occult cults or beliefs make an appearance, in contrast with either a Christian or, quite ironically, material/secular worldviews. Another regular trope is an urban dweller moving to a rural context, and being overcome by ancient, pagan or natural forces – possibly a symbol of the inherent struggle between man and beast. 

The term “folk horror” might be fairly recent. Its concerns are not. Indeed, stories by the likes of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood are often cited as forerunners of the genre.  I would go back even more and venture that its roots are to be found in the dark Romanticism of the late 18th and 19th centuries, with its fixation with the Sublime – the terror and magnificence of the untamed forces of nature – its revival of interest in ancient folklore and legends, its themes of the alienated individual, and its fascination with the supernatural. To give just one example, beneath its farcical exterior, Goethe’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (famously set to music by Felix Mendelssohn), explores themes not far removed from those of folk horror.    

“This Dreaming Isle”, issued by speculative fiction publishers Unsung Stories, was funded through a Kickstarter campaign by like-minded fans of weird fiction (including yours truly).   When “This Dreaming Isle” project was launched on Kickstarter, the target of the campaign was to fund a “horror and dark fantasy anthology inspired by the British landscape, featuring leading horror and fantasy authors”.  Editor Dan Coxon explains in his introduction to the collection:

It was always our intention to allow the contributing authors a free rein...we asked only that they should tie them to a specific place in the British Isles, and should in some way explore the myths and traditions, the folklore and history that make this land unique.

The result, which Coxon describes as “startling”, is that most of the stories could be considered to fall in the “folk horror” category, exploiting as they do certain tropes which have come to be associated with the genre.  At the same time, the sheer variety present within the general, unifying theme of the anthology shows how rich this seam of dark inspiration can be.

As if to emphasize the central role landscape plays in this anthology, its seventeen stories are divided into three “geographical” sections, respectively titled “Country”, “City” and “Coast”. The structure forms a satisfying arch, with the shortest section placed in the middle.

“Country” starts with a particularly strong entry, The Pier at Ardentinny by Catriona Ward.  The story, featuring a young woman’s visit to her older fiance’s family in Scotland, initally comes across as a rather twee excuse for a lesson in Scottish folkore, until the final page turns it into an Angela-Carteresque tale. Jenn Ashworth’s Old Trash, set in a camping site near Pendle, references both the notorious witch trials and legends about spectral dogs.  

The unexpected success of Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel “The Loney” did much to push folk-horror into the mainstream – to this anthology, Hurley contributes In My Father’s House, a strange piece about a man, his elderly father and weird goings-on around Christmas.  Land of Many Seasons is an understated piece by Tim Lebbon about a solitary landscape artist hounded by a ghostly figure.  One of the best things about Aliya Whiteley’s Dark Shells is its captivating narrative voice, that of an old woman haunted by memories – and, perhaps, something more.  The section ends with 'Domestic Magic (Or, things my wife and I found hidden in our house)' by Kirsty Logan.  An interesting structure and an original take on Scottish water folklore makes for a different and striking read. 

Folk horror often relies on a rural setting.  But urban life also has its angst, one which can be effectively expressed through the medium of horror.  The City section gives us some good examples – think urban Gothic, brought up to date.  And one can hardly be more up to date than James Miller and his Not All Right, about an alt-right internet troll who comes to a chilling end.  The Cocktail Party in Kensington Gets Out of Hand promises a rather extravagant tale, and Robert Shearman delivers.  It’s one of the more surreal pieces, more Buzzati than Machen perhaps, about a male escort hired to be a rug at an exclusive do.   It gets stranger with We Regret to Inform You by Jeanette Ng.  An epistolary tale through emails, set in what seems to be a contemporary but different England, it veers uneasily between alternative history and post-apocalyptic fiction.  Lodestones by Richard V. Hirst reminded me somewhat of a particular Mieville story about a street which kept disappearing – here, a shortcut to work leads us on a drive to a weird variant of Manchester.   

It’s back to nature in the last section of the anthology, which takes us on a fictional journey around the British coast.  Time is fluid in Gareth E. Rees’s The Knucker, in which a time-warp serves to combine three storylines.  This idea that landscape itself can harbour ‘memories’ is also central to Hovering (Or, a recollection of 25 February 2015) by Gary Budden.  Budden’s stories could be described as the fictional equivalent of “psychogeography” a-la Iain Sinclair.  In this worldview, history, whether natural or human, shapes the rural and urban landscape and leaves residues which can be picked up by the more sensitive sort.  Whereas authors like Sinclair use their imagination to read the past into contemporary landscapes, Budden exploits this concept in his works, which present us with individuals burdened by the weight of Deep Time.    Is this story entirely fictional? It Seems purposely written to feel autobiographical.  Perhaps it is.  It makes matters uncannier still.   

Although well-known as a writer of neo-Victorian supernatural fiction, Alison Littlewood uses a contemporary setting for The Headland of Black Rock in which an actor on holiday is seduced by a mysterious woman he meets on the wild Cornish coast.  Alison Moore’s The Stone Dead taps into the ghost story tradition, although it also explores more prosaic horrors such as stifling family members.  It’s a good yarn, albeit not really related to the “coastal theme”.  The same could be said about The Devil in the Details, a rather Jamesean story about a haunted mural at St Brendan on Sea.    

The anthology comes to an end with Swimming With Horses by Angela Readman.  And here, as in Littlewood’s piece, the sea and its myths and legends once again take centre stage.  A run-down coastal resort seems hardly the setting for an uplifting story but, unexpectedly, this tale turns out to be the perfect contrast to Catriona Ward’s opening gambit.  The final, luminous paragraphs take us from the realm of folk horror to somewhere else – brighter, more hopeful, but just as tinged with the mystery of the landscape.

Paperback, 328 pages

Published November 19th 2018 by Unsung Stories

URL: http://www.unsungstories.co.uk/this-dreaming-isle/