The Castle
by Chuck Valentine
Book 6 in the Eden Book Society Series
The Castle brings to an end a run of six horror novellas published by Dead Ink Books as part of its “Eden Book Society” project. I have reviewed the other volumes in this series on this blog but, for the benefit of newcomers, here’s a brief description of this innovative project. The (fictional) "Eden Book Society" was set up in 1919, publishing horror novellas for a private list of subscribers. Books published by Eden were elusive artefacts - written under a pseudonym, available only to a select few, occasionally turning up in jumble sales or unexpected locations. Dead Ink Press, the publishing house behind this literary experiment, purportedly acquired the back catalogue of the Society, with the aim of reissuing the novellas sequentially, starting from 1972. In reality, the books are penned by a group of specially commissioned writers who hardly need any introduction: Andrew Michael Hurley, Alison Moore, Aliya Whiteley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, Sam Mills, Gary Budden. These authors face the challenging task of evoking the style of 70s horror whilst taking contemporary readers back to the atmosphere of that decade.
A search on social media (or a good look at this blogpost) will reveal the identity of the real author of The Castle, the novella which brings the series to a worthy close. However, to play along with the project’s conceit, let me introduce you to the work’s fictional creator, “Chuck Valentine”. Born in Chicago in 1940 and, primarily, a botanist, Chuck turned to writing after an obscure and near-fatal accident. Science’s loss was literature’s gain, leading to the publication of the “deeply disturbing” Devil’s Helmet at Dawn and, for the Eden Book Society, the novella The Castle.
A botanist he might have been, but Valentine also appears to have had a lively interest in philosophy. Indeed, of the six Eden volumes, I would say that The Castle is the most cerebral, grappling as it does with themes of fate, choice and free will, in the guise of a meta-literary tale about a reader trapped within a haunting, haunted book.
The novella is narrated in the first person by Jaime, the socially awkward son of renowned horror writer Magnus Hunt. After his dad’s death, Jaime’s life becomes increasingly overshadowed by his father’s reputation. On the one hand, Jaime is weary of the frequent interviews he and his mother have to endure, but, on the other hand, he seems obsessed with his father’s works. Imagine his surprise, then, when amongst Magnus’s books, he discovers an unpublished manuscript of which he was previously unaware, despite its bearing a dedication To Jaime. The unpublished novel was structurally innovative for its time, a prototype of the “choose-your-own-adventure” books which would become popular in the 80s, a “book of two halves that explores the interplay of free will and fate”.
The alternative storylines bring out the distinction between the protagonists – Boy A is intrepid and brave, Boy B “wants nothing more than to be home, safe in his bed”. Both boys are faced with the eponymous “Castle” and the horrors within and without. Following an esoteric ritual, Jaime ends up within the pages of his father’s novel, undecided whether he should act like “Boy B”, which is what he feels like, or “Boy A”, which is what he would like to be.
Precisely because of this philosophical underpinning, the narrative of The Castle is not always linear and sometimes feels rather disjointed. Of the novellas in the series, it is also possibly the one which least attempts to frame the story within a “70s” ambience, except for a brief, half-hearted reference to “Nixon clinging on to power, the Vietnam War trickling to an end, the power cuts getting worse”. That said, the novella is strong both on concept and on atmosphere: the claustrophobia felt the narrator is well brought out, and the descriptions of the castle, with its dark passages, spectral hounds and disturbing femme fatale are pure Gothic, while serving as a quasi-Freudian metaphor for the fears of a young man who cannot escape the influence of his father.
Reaching the end of this book also meant completing a series which I still believe has been one of the best things in horror publishing in recent years. The Eden Book Society project was originally announced as a long-term initiative, with the “1972” novellas being just the first year in a series exploring “the evolving fears of British society as it moved through the 20th Century and eventually entered the 21st”. With the challenges faced by publishing houses, particularly small independent ones, in the past years, not least due to Covid restrictions and increased costs, I think it is unlikely that the series will be reprised. I sincerely hope I’m wrong. In the meantime, though, do grab a copy of The Castle, and, for that matter, its companion volumes, before they become as elusive as that legendary 1972 set.
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