Night Side of the River
by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson may not be generally associated with horror, but it is a genre which she has, on occasion, explored. A few years back, when Hammer had started a literary imprint, she was one of the authors commissioned to contribute to the catalogue. The result was The Daylight Gate, a feverish novella inspired by the Pendle Witch trials. Elements of the Gothic also permeate her most recent novel Frankisstein. She now returns to horror with Night Side of the River, a collection of original ghost stories interspersed with her ruminations on the otherwordly and accounts of her own “real life” encounters with the supernatural.
The thirteen stories which make up this collection are divided into four sections, based on their subject and approach. The opening section, Devices, is possibly the most interesting, and explores a theme which Winterson revisits in her last “personal” essay in the book – The Future of Ghosts. She portrays the possibility of the metaverse and virtual reality being new dimensions where ghosts may come home to roost. Winterson’s stories in this section are original, unusual and creepy.
The other sections of the collection are, possibly, more traditional in conception. Places, unsurprisingly, presents us with stories where the hauntings are intimately connected to their physical setting. People has more intimate tales, including the ironically titled “No Ghost Ghost Story” a poignant tale of loss and grief. The final section, Visitations, includes some of the stronger works in the collection, including the title piece Night Side of the River, a genuinely macabre horror story about the decidedly repulsive ghost of a hanged smuggler whose corpse was disposed of in the Thames.
I am
always intrigued to read horror literature by authors who are not best known
for the genre. All in all, this is a
strong and enjoyable collection. I found
the combination of technology and old-fashioned hauntings in Devices particularly
interesting. Ironically, the most disappointing part of
the book is probably the introduction, in which Winterson tries to give a quick
and personal overview of the treatment of death and ghosts in different cultures
around the world, and of the literary tradition of the ghost story. The problem is that there is very little room
for the vast subject to be given anything but a cursory examination. Traditions surrounding death are described
in a whistle-stop tour (which, however, does find the time to direct a couple
of digs to the Catholic Church), before Winterson moves on to the ghost story, which
is inexplicably and unhelpfully confused with the Gothic genre (most ghost stories
would count as “gothic” but Gothic fiction is rarely just about
ghosts...). This introduction nearly put
me off the book, which would have been a pity.
Read on, my friends, read on.
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