The Echoes by Evie Wyld

 

The Echoes

by Evie Wyld

Wahala by Nikki May

 

Wahala

by Nikki May

Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass

Black Drop

by Leonora Nattrass

A book review

Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley

Hot Stew

by Fiona Mozley

A book review 

Skin by Kerry Andrew

Skin
by Kerry Andrew
A Book Review

Ghosts of Evils Past : Susan Fletcher's House of Glass

Ghosts of Evils Past 

House of Glass by Susan Fletcher - A review

A house is meant to be a place of safety and intimacy.  The haunted house is a powerful symbol of horror precisely because it shows us a haven of domesticity upturned by an intruder, and a supernatural one at that.  It is hardly surprising that from being just one of many Gothic tropes, the haunted house eventually became the basis of a rich supernatural sub-genre. 

House of Glass is a historical novel within this tradition.  It is set just before the outbreak of the First World War and features a sprawling mansion – Shadowbrook – marked by dark, old rumours about its previous owners, the evil and hated Pettigrew family.  The last Pettigrew to inhabit Shadowbrook was the sensual, decadent and possibly mad Veronique - her ghost still walks its corridors and the pages of this book.   So far, so familiar.  Indeed, this novel shares many elements with other books within the (sub-)genre.   It has been compared to Du Maurier’s Rebecca but I would say that its mixture of Gothic thrills, historical novel and social commentary is closer in spirit to Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger.  What makes House of Glass particularly original is its protagonist and narrator, Clara Waterfield.  Conceived out of wedlock in India, and born in England where her mother Charlotte is dispatched to avoid a scandal, Clara suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta or “brittle bones disease”, a condition which causes fractures at the least pressure or impact. As a result, Clara lives a secluded London childhood, fiercely protected by her parents.  The premature death of her mother thrusts Clara into adulthood. Notwithstanding her syndrome, her walking cane and ungainly gait, Clara ventures out into the world.  The gardens at Kew become her refuge and she finds herself turning into an amateur botanist – “amateur” in the best sense of the word, that of a lover of knowledge.  This earns her the respect, friendship and support of Forbes, the foreman of the glasshouses.  It also leads to an unexpected invitation.  One day, Clara is summoned to Gloucestershire by the new owner of Shadowbrook, to oversee the installation of exotic plants from Kew in a new greenhouse in the mansion’s gardens.     

It is here that the ghost story proper begins.  Clara finds herself surrounded by mystery and secrets, by things that go bump in the night and malevolent attacks by an unseen visitor.  The housekeeper and maids cower in fear of the ghost of Veronique Pettigrew, a woman seemingly so evil that a mere mention of her name is enough to unleash poltergeist activity.  Clara is sceptical but her rationalist approach is put under severe test.  That summer will mark her coming to age, as she questions long-held certainties and beliefs whilst going through a sexual awakening.

At one level, House of Glass is enjoyable as a good old piece of storytelling.  But there is so much more to it.  What struck me at first is the blend of realism and the supernatural.   Shadowbrook and its gardens are inspired by the real-life Hidcote Manor Garden (a National Trust property in Gloucestershire) and this setting is lovingly and minutely described.  At the same time, Fletcher uses small details (closed, dust-filled rooms; peeling paint; a blood-stained billiard table) to evoke an atmosphere of fear and dread.  The scene has already been set for the nocturnal visitations which considerably ratchet up the tension.    

The Old Garden at Hidcote (image taken from National Trust webpage)

The novel also manages to take an established form and inject it with a strong dose of feminism.  Clara’s condition becomes a symbol of  female rebellion and resistance, her physical imperfections as transgressive as her assertiveness and inquisitiveness.  There is a parallel between the “cripple” Clara and the uniquely beautiful Veronique, both of them strong women trying to hold their own in a patriarchal society.  Clara ruefully notes that despite the fact that the male Pettigrews were violent and criminal, it was Veronique and her ‘sex orgies’ which gripped the attention of the sleepy village where she lived and which marked her forever as an epitome of immorality.  This leads to another theme which is central to the novel, namely that of truth and falsehood, and how accounts can be manipulated to propagate the world-view favoured by their narrator.

My only reservation as I was reading the novel was that there were a number of narrative gear-changes late in the book.  Engrossing as it is, the plot moves forward at a leisurely pace until about three-quarters in, when a raft of unexpected revelations propel the tale forward and lead us closer to the “sensation novel”.  In the final chapters then, there is yet another shift, as the work ends with a meditation on war.  The more I think about it, however, the more I tend to feel that my initial doubts were unfounded – the different facets of House of Glass ultimately add up to a convincing whole, held together by Fletcher’s lyrical and elegiac writing style.  For this is also a story about the passing of an era, and what are ghosts if not remnants, in one way or another, of a half-remembered past?  

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published November 1st 2018 by Virago

***

The English musical scene at the start of the twentieth century was going through a veritable Renaissance.  I was therefore spoilt for choice when selecting some tracks to accompany my reading of House of Glass. 

Despite the novel being set entirely in England, India remains very much in the background, a place which Clara associates with her mother and her unkown, distant past.  In this respect, the novel reflects the concerns of Imperial Gothic, particularly that underlying sense of guilt associated with Empire which has tended to become more accentuated in a post-colonial era.  Yet, in the years of the British Raj, there were artists who had a genuine interest in Indian and more generally Eastern traditions, one which went beyond the mere lure of the Exotic.    For instance, Gustav Holst (1874-1934), best known as the composer of “The Planets”, retained a lifelong curiosity about Eastern philosophy, beliefs and musical traditions, engaging with them in several works including Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda.

Clara never gets to visit India (at least within the pages of the novel).  Ironically, however, even her childhood experiences of London are vicarious.  Her condition keeps her bedridden for long periods of time such that even the city where she lives appears to her like a distant land.  Of course, as L.P. Hartley reminds us, the past is itself a foreign country – Ralph Vaughan Williams’s second symphony – “London” – is inspired by the sights and sounds of the city.  First composed in 1912, it gives us a taste of the capital at the time of the novel’s events – this particular presentation is enhanced by photos from the era.

Shadowbrook – and its inspiration, Hidcote – are situated in Gloucestershire.  Gloucestershire Rhapsody (1919-1921) is an orchestral work by the poet and composer Ivor Gurney (1890-1937).  Gurney suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition exacerbated by his harrowing experiences in the First World War (he was a victim of a gas attack).  

Many other artists, writers and composers did not survive the war.  Amongst these was one of the most promising musicians of the early 20th century – George Butterworth (1885-1916), who was shot through the head by a sniper during the Battle of the Somme. Butterworth – hailed on his death as “a brilliant musician in times of peace, and an equally brilliant soldier in times of stress”  - is known for his settings of poetry from Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad”.  These poems  were in turn inspired by the Second Boer War - the song "The lads in their hundreds" tells of young men who leave their homeland to 'die in their glory and never be old' and, with the benefit of hindsight, seems uncannily prescient of Butterworth’s own destiny.  This performance seems to me to capture not only the thoughts of Housman and Butterworth, but also the nostalgic mood of the final chapter of House of Glass.

London Incognita : The Eden Book Society presents D.A. Northwood's "Judderman"

D.A Northwood's Judderman

The Eden Book Society lives again

Judderman is the second book in the "Eden Book Society" series published by Dead Ink Press.   I was toying with the idea of playing along with the meta-fictional premise of the series and providing a biography of its author D.A Northwood, the obscure writer who “disappeared from his Tottenham flat in 1981, at the age of 38”. Frankly, however, I think it does greater justice to the project to actually explain the 'conceit' which underpins it. Here it is, in brief.

 
The (fictional) "Eden Book Society" was set up in 1919, publishing horror novellas for a private list of subscribers. Eden books were elusive things - 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, and will reprint the novellas sequentially, starting from 1972. In actual fact, the books are penned by a group of specially commissioned writers. The list sounds like a roll-call of leading contemporary British horror writers: Andrew Michael Hurley, Alison Moore, Aliya Whiteley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, Sam Mills, Gary Budden. 

The brilliance of this project lies in the fact that the very concept behind it creates an aura of mystery and suspense. And then there's that meta-literary playfulness which is typical of classic Gothic. With the novels purportedly originally issued in 1972, the authors have to succeed in an ambitious double-act :  evoking the style of 70s horror whilst taking us back to the atmosphere of that decade. It's a sort of historical scary fiction. 

Where Holt House, the first instalment in the series, combined folk and existential horror,  Judderman falls squarely within the "urban weird" genre and, more specifically, the sub-category of London Gothic. The story revolves around brothers Gary and Daniel Eider, who are trying to catalogue a 'peripheral' city, one rich in urban myth and esoterism, a shadowy place they refer to as "London Incognita".  Amongst the dying embers of a decadent society, a new ghoul-like figure is sighted. It's the Judderman, a malevolent figure which seems to be made out of the evil which is gripping the city. Daniel follows this monster into oblivion. He goes missing, leaving Gary to roam in London’s occult underworld in a bid to solve the mystery of his brother's disappearance.

 
My first impression upon reading the novella (most appropriately, on a flight to London), was that this could have been a joint effort of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair, after a night smoking marijuana and listening to early Pink Floyd. "Judderman" is, like the work of these authors, strongly rooted in 'psychogeography', the quasi-mystical idea that urban spaces hold and summon a collective historical memory. Indeed, Daniel and Gary's feverish visions often involve images of old, ancient and even prehistoric London. Interestingly, the novella manages to combine the very real horrors which gripped the 70s (unemployment, drugs, racial and sectarian violence, IRA bombings) with imagined ones stemming from urban myth (such as monsters living in unused Underground stations) - a hellish marriage of London Cognita and Incognita. And to add more flavour to the meta-mix, there are extracts from lost diaries, stories within stories, quotes from fictional authors.

Who's behind this unsettling literary concoction? Perhaps the choice of Gary as one of the protagonist's names is a clue. But one can never be too sure. This is the Eden Book Society after all...

***

If I had to choose an album to accompany the novella, it would be Portishead’s self-titled album.  Yes, yes, I know that the band’s brand of trip-hop is primarily associated with Bristol, not London.  Yet, there’s so much about Portishead which reminds me of this novel.  When issued in 1997, critics noted its “Gothic” and “deadly” atmosphere and the very clear influence of 60s and 70s soundtracks.   And then there are the meta-fictional games : the album’s liner notes refer to samples taken from songs by other bands – in actual fact, most of the samples on the album were created by Portishead and credited to imaginary/invented artists.  For a feel of this “urban Gothic” sound, check out the video of “Only You” with the dark visuals of Chris Cunningham.