Haunted by Old Forms : Contemporary ghost story anthologies by "The Fiction Desk" and "Shadows at the Door"

 Haunted by Old Forms  

two ghost story anthologies

As October starts, many of my more Goth-minded friends start a countdown to Halloween. Or so it seems from my twitter feed, which right now is rich in suggestions for horror novels, ghostly tales and scary movies.  Here’s my own small contribution to this ghoulfest – reviews of two collections of contemporary ghost stories which reveal that the form is alive and kicking.  Or should I say, undead? 

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New Ghost Stories III : A Fiction Desk Anthology

The heyday of the "classic English ghost story" was in the 19th and early 20th Century, when a host of authors - some brilliant, others clearly less so - shaped the genre as we know it. The ghost story is, of course, a much wider cultural phenomenon, with its roots in the folklore and traditions of different societies. Even within the supposedly limited confines of the literary genre, the sheer variety of supernatural manifestations portrayed is surprising. There are the "proper" ghosts, souls returning from the dead to communicate with the living, complete unfinished business, wreak vengeance or, on occasion, for purposes as elusive as their diaphanous shapes. In the folk-horrorish works of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, the otherworldly beings have pagan overtones or are closely related to the faerie folk. Some apparitions are "demonic" and monster-like in nature - in M.R. James, the horrors are often unexpectedly physical - whilst, at the other end of the spectrum, the reader is occasionally left wondering whether the supposed hauntings are "all in the mind".

New Ghost Stories III is the eleventh Fiction Desk anthology and the third one to be exclusively dedicated to this genre. It features seven tales - six of which are the winners of the latest two ghost story competitions organised by the publication. Editor Rob Redman provides an introduction to the collection, as well as a brief preface to each story.

Refreshingly, the featured pieces are authentic supernatural tales, rather than exercises in “magical realism” or metaphorical interpretations of the “ghost” figure. They also owe much to the literary canon. Look closer, however, and you will realise that the same horror tropes which make them familiar to the reader are subtly being undermined. A case in point is The Crypt Beneath the Library by Barney Walsh. The setting is one which M.R. James would have recognised – a crypt housing a collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts possibly haunted by a spectral monk and/or a demonic figure. The protagonist, however, couldn’t be more different than James’s male professorial types. Bethany, in fact, is a young undergraduate “atheist medievalist” and the story itself can be read as a protest against the patriarchal university and college hierarchies implied in James’s stories. Similarly, Jerry Ibbotson’s The Intruder and Richard Agemo’s The House Friends both explore the “haunted house” genre and take it into new and intriguing directions. The Archivist, by Philippa East, evokes a different tradition – that of American scary movies. It is set in the sanatorium of an abandoned boarding school which will soon be pulled down. An archivist sent to catalogue the old school files comes across past horrors in the old documents, but also faces other terrors in the shape of an uncanny doll and strange nocturnal noises. It’s all very unsettling, but can we rely on the narrator?

Two of the tales struck me for their originality. Des Nuits Blanches by Will Dunn starts off as a sports story, a tale about an ambitious French cyclist and his strict regime of night-time training. When the supernatural element does kick in, it evokes ancient Alpine lore and its tales of evil spirits lurking in the mountains. Reads like Machen on a skiing holiday. Seth Marlin’s "The Dead Lie Dreaming", on the contrary, ventures into science fiction and presents us with a society in the near future where memories of dead persons are kept electronically alive. Like one of the oldest (Biblical) ghost stories – Saul’s meeting with the Witch of Endor – it is a cautionary tale which suggests we should keep away from the spirits of the dead, even when summoned by science.

This anthology shows that the ghost story is still very much alive, even if haunted by old forms. It is indeed telling that the collection ends with the most primeval fear of all. When the lights go out and the candles splutter – in other words, “When the Dark Comes Down”, as in Amanda Mason’s concluding piece of the same name – our oldest terrors are rekindled. And we get an idea of how the 'ghost story' might have begun.

Published September 2017 by The Fiction Desk

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The website Shadows at the Door is a digital platform where horror writers are given the opportunity to publish their supernatural tales. Curator Mark Nixon himself a writer of ghost stories, took this concept to another level with the publication of an anthology featuring authors associated with the website. Launched  following Kickstarter crowd-funding, the book is a joy to hold and behold – a high-quality hardback printed on glossy paper, with beautifully atmospheric black and white illustrations by Barney Bodoano.

But what about the collection itself? Shadows at the Door prefers its horrors subtle and favours stories with an old-fashioned touch. The thirteen tales in this anthology are mostly in the tradition of M.R. James and other purveyors of the “classic ghost story” – K.B. Goddard in particular (represented by A Macabre Melody) even manages to evoke the language beloved of late-Victorian authors. This is not to say that there are no grisly moments or sudden eruptions of violence (for instance in Mark Nixon’s own contributionQuem Infra Nos or in J.C. Michael’s Gytrash), but the emphasis is on atmospheric storytelling, where the horrors are implied rather than crudely spelt out. The types of haunting portrayed are varied – whilst some of the tales are clearly ghost stories (including one of my favourites – Caitlin Marceau’s moving Run) others touch upon dark fantasy (Christopher Long’s The Gallow Glass), fairytale (Deep by M. Regan) or folk horror (Pete Alex Harris’s Under Shiel Croft). Most of the stories have a strong sense of place. Indeed, the various settings range from English towns to the Scottish Highlands, New York and Melbourne and provide not just the backdrop to the action but, in some cases, a folk legend or tradition which serves as a germ of inspiration.

Published December 14, 2016 by Shadows at the Door Publishing

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I'll leave you with a track by composer Stephen Montague:  A crippled ghost at Halloween.  Sweet dreams. 

The long, hard road to vengeance... The Sheriff's Catch by James Vella-Bardon

The Sheriff's Catch by James Vella-Bardon

Of thrillers and historical fiction

I recently had the pleasure of attending the Maltese book launch (and book-signing session) of James Vella-Bardon’s The Sheriff’s Catch, the first volume of a projected “historical thriller” pentalogy.  The author himself spoke about the inspiration for his novel and this led me to consider it from a new perspective.  Here is a revisited and revised version of my review, originally posted on Goodreads

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Historical fiction has seen such a rise in popularity over the past decades, that it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a long-established and venerable genre. One could say that some of the earliest literature (including, say, the Iliad) is "historical", being based on actual facts which had happened in the past. The genre as we know it became particularly popular in Europe in the 19th Century, through the works of such authors as Scott, Balzac and Hugo. The historical novel was often the vehicle for Romantic ideals, and sometimes helped forge national identities in young newly-formed states (one thinks of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi).

What contemporary writers have at their disposal, in contrast to their predecessors, is a freedom to mould the genre to their own ends. Thus, I recently enjoyed Amy Sackville's Painter to the King, a re- imagining of the life of Velazquez rendered in modernist, stream-of-consciousness narration. On the other hand, "neo-Victorian" novels by the likes of Sarah Waters and Alison Littlewood are not only set in the 19th century, but also borrow tropes from genres of the time (including the Gothic and the sensation novel).

With The Sheriff's Catch, Maltese-born and Australia-based James Vella-Bardon, adds his name to historical novelists to look out for. His novel introduces us to our 16th century protagonist, sharpshooter Abel de Santiago who, after an orphan's upbringing in Malta, ends up joining the Spanish army and campaigning in the Netherlands. When his supposed friends kill his young, pregnant wife, ‘Santi’ deserts the army and embarks on a mission of revenge which leads him through several ordeals, not least a stint as a galley slave with the Spanish Armada. It is no spoiler to reveal (since it is stated on the back-cover blurb) that by the conclusion of the book, Santi will arrive in Ireland, at a time when the country is being terrorised by the marauding English troops - or "Sassenachs", as the natives refer to them.

Author James Vella-Bardon

Vella-Bardon's book takes us back more than four hundred years, but like the historical novels of Arturo Perez-Reverte, its models are the epic, swashbuckling 19th Century classics by authors such as Dumas. As was often the case with its literary forebears, The Sheriff's Catch was adapted for serialization prior to being published in book-form, and one can feel it in the thrust of the plot. There are continuous twists and end-of-chapter cliffhangers, which ensure that the reader is hooked from one passage of the novel to the next. Indeed, the constant sense of danger and Santi's reckless, death-wish attitude tend to make the narrative rather breathless, although there are passages when the reader is allowed to take a step back and delve deeper into the protagonist's character. This could be felt particularly in the final chapters, where the introduction of a female figure (possibly/hopefully an important character in forthcoming volumes?!) seems to give a different, yet no less enjoyable perspective to the book.

There is plenty to admire in this first instalment of the Pentalogy. It is clear that much research has gone into the novel, evident for instance, in the minute descriptions of the weapons and paraphernalia of war. Yet, this knowledge is lightly worn, and Vella-Bardon avoids the common mistake of suspending the flow to provide us with an encyclopaedic entry on the era portrayed.

The first-person narration, together with the graphic, and sometimes garish, evocation of the historical setting (smells and bodily fluids included), help provide a sense of total immersion into the period without making the reader feel spoon-fed. The sense of authenticity can also be felt in the dialogue - just to give an example, the style of the language changes to reflect the characters' switching from one language to another, with the use of a more archaic syntax and vocabulary when the characters are speaking Latin. It is not easy at all to mark a change in code without changing the language of the narration, but Vella-Bardon manages it nicely.

Until we meet again, Santi...

Paperback, 336 pages

Published March 15th 2018 by Unbound

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In his talk at the book-launch James Vella-Bardon explained that he chose 16th century Europe as the stage for his tale since this was an exciting century, a time of unprecedented upheaval. It also gave him the opportunity to pit against each other three very different cultures. 

The novel's hero Santiago was raised in Malta, which was then ruled as a fiefdom by the Knights Hospitallers, who paid a yearly tribute of a Maltese falcon to the King of Spain.     Most of us Maltese are immersed in Anglo-centric literature, and because of that we sometimes fail to appreciate what a great cultural and military power Spain was.  Vella-Bardon’s novel is a corrective in this regard.  At the time of the events portrayed, Spain was living its Siglo de Oro, a “Golden Century” (actually, longer) which started with the great voyages of exploration and ended with the death of Pedro Calderon de la Barca in 1682.   

One of the greatest Spanish composers of the period was Cristobal de Morales (1550-1553).  Here’s his Parce Mihi Domine, performed by the Consort of Melbourne, with piano improvisations by pianist Gemma Turvey.  This mixture of “old” and “new” fits Vella-Bardon’s novel very well.

De Morales is known for his sacred works.  The wordlier Santi might have been more used to sprightlier instrumental dances.  Here’s a ricercada by Diego Ortiz (1510-1570) a Spanish composer and music theorist in service to the Spanish viceroy of Naples and later to Philip II of Spain. 

And if you want a musical taste of 16th Century battles, here’s Clément Janequin: La bataille.  it precedes the Armada by a few decades, but it is a colourful evocation of war.  This performance by Jordi Savall and his Hesperion XXI is one of my favourites:

 

Elizabeth I not only promoted her kingdom’s military aspirations, but also sought to support artists and musicians, quite ironically relying on various Italian musicians to bring new musical trends to her shores.  It was Golden Age for English music, one which would eventually come to an end with the death of Henry Purcell.   An idea of the wide range of composers working at the time is given by the Triumphs of Oriana a collection of 25 madrigals by different composers published in 1601, most likely in honour of the Virgin Queen:

 

The music of William Byrd, a Catholic tolerated at the Protestant Court in view of his immense talent, sometimes reveals a dark strain, obliquely referring to the religious upheavals going on in Reformation England.  Ne irasciris is a good example. 

 

For some Elizabethan instrumental fare, here’s “Mal Sims” by Giles Farnaby (1563-1640):

In the final chapters of the book, the action moves to Ireland.  As Vella-Bardon explained, the country was then in its “late medieval” period.  This however in no way implies a “regressive” culture.  On the contrary, the Celtic way of life was extremely sophisticated, with its own traditions, art and complex legal system. 

 

Turlough o Carolan, a blind Celtic harper, composer and singer, lived between 1670 and 1738.  However, his music has its roots in ancient Irish traditions. 

 

 

The Irish context is also a good excuse for the author to introduce an element of Tolkien-inspired epic fantasy, here represented musically by Steve Hackett and  Italian pianist-organist Marco Lo Muscio.

 

 

I'll leave you with the novel's tantalising book trailer:

Nu-folk : "Swansong" by Kerry Andrew

Swansong by Kerry Andrew

A musical review

Kerry Andrew is a musician with four British Composer Awards to her name. As a ‘contemporary classical’ composer she has written choral works which subtly subvert the tradition. As her alter-ego You Are Wolf  she (re)interprets folk songs in a contemporary, electronica-tinged idiom. Andrew's first novel, Swansong, is inspired by a folk ballad and shares some of the concerns and methods of her musical projects.

The novel's feisty protagonist and narrator is Polly Vaughan, an English literature undergraduate who, by her own admission, is more into booze, drugs and sex than into literary theory. After she experiences a disturbing incident in London, Polly joins her mother Lottie on an extended holiday in the Western Scottish Highlands. Polly hopes that this will help ease her feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

Plans, however, soon go awry. For a start, her attempts to build new friendships and relationships seem to fail miserably. Moreover, the natural environment, beautiful and wild as it is, also comes across as decidedly uncanny. Right on her arrival she spots a strange man pulling a bird apart in the dead of night. And as the days roll on, she starts to have increasingly strange and unsettling visions which cannot be easily explained away as the effects of weed on a heavy conscience. Could something otherworldly really going on?

What makes the style of this novel particularly distinctive is the stark contrast between the fresh, contemporary (and sweary) narrative voice and the elemental, mythical and timeless symbolism which underpins the story. This is not the only dichotomy present in the novel. Indeed, the book often presents us with opposites which turn out to be closer to each other than may be obvious at first glance. "Dead / Not Dead", the mantra which Polly repeats to herself, starts off as an expression of guilt and, by the end of the novel, attracts a deeper meaning. There are similar contrasts between the urban and the natural, the human and the animal, the old and the new. 

Andrew also manages to combine seemingly disparate genres. This is, at heart, a supernatural novel, a reworking of a timeless myth. But it also has elements of the psychological thriller, the crime story and the Bildungsroman. It is also a nature novel where the landscape itself becomes a central character. Somehow, it all manages to gel.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is that sometimes the metaphors pile on top of each other, giving the impression that the author is trying too hard to come up with an unusual or striking image. To be fair, however, Polly is herself a whimsical literature student and so the unconventional narrative voice is in character. 

What I do know is that when I finished Swansong, I suffered withdrawal symptoms, which does not often happen to me. That is when I realised how much I enjoyed this eerie but beguiling novel.

Published:  January 25, 2018

                                                     

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Of musical journeys

Listening to Kerry Andrew’s music provides an interesting counterpoint and, possibly, a different perspective to her literary work.   What it certainly carries over from her novel is her seamless mix of different genres.  She is classically trained, and her first British Composer Award was for a choral work called “Fall”.  Works for choir are still an central part of her musical oeuvre.  I particularly like the motet “O Nata Lux”, performed and recorded in this video by the London Oriana Choir as part of the five15 project 

Another concern of Kerry Andrew is writing for young and/or amateur performers.  One of her works, composed for the Wigmore Hall, is the community chamber opera “Woodwose”, which won her another British Composer Award in 2014.  Her latest British Composer Award win was in the Music for Amateur Musicians category, for a piece featuring the massed National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 2016 : “who we are”

Just as important to Andrew is her work as the artist “You Are Wolf” (youarewolf.com) under which name she has released 2 albums.  The first one “Hawk to the Hunting Gone” explores the theme of birds in folklore and includes a track called Swansong.

Here’s a live performance of Cuckoo:

Kerry Andrew’s interest in folklore goes beyond a love of ballads and traditional songs.  She has recently written an erudite article for the brilliant Folklore Thursday website on swans in myth and folklore.  It features several references to her debut novel and its sources of inspiration.  But it does contain some spoilers – so perhaps the article works better as an “afterword” after the novel has woven its spell.

Horror Autofiction? "I Always Find You" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Horror Autofiction - "I Always Find You" by John Ajvide Lindqvist

A review

Some years back I had enjoyed - with some reservations - Lindqvist's first and best novel "Let the Right One In". It was that which led me to try his latest book to be published in English (in a translation by Marlaine Delargy) - I Always Find You - the second instalment in the "Places" trilogy. Unfortunately, it left me with a sour taste, a reminder that in-your-face horror is, alas, not for me... Which, of course, does not mean that there's not much for others to enjoy in this book. 

Lindqvist has often been compared to Stephen King and one can see certain parallels with the American master of horror. Lindqvist is as much concerned with the realist/social aspects of his story as with the supernatural ones. In this case, the protagonist-narrator is a fictionalised version of the author himself, who is recalling events which occurred in 1985, as well as a disturbing incident from some years before that. In the mid-80s, the narrator/author was just 19 years old and starting out as a young showman/magician. He moves into a small and decrepit flat in a run-down apartment complex in Stockholm and the 'horrors' he has to face are the very real daily challenges faced as a teenager coming to terms with adult life. A novel does not need to go far back to count as convincing historical fiction and, in this case, judiciously-placed cultural and historical references (Depeche Mode, skinheads, the assassination of Olof Palme) take us, very effectively, back to 80s Stockholm. One also gets the impression that mixed with the distaste for the sordidness which city life could bring, there's also a vague sense of nostalgia.

The supernatural elements start, literally, with drainage problems. The apartment condomini share a communal laundry and bathroom and, out of the blue, an out-of-order sign appears on the bathroom door. Soon after, cataclysmic and ominous signs manifest themselves - birds fall out of the sky, John suffers from a constant claustrophobic feeling and the neighbours start behaving strangely. And the bathroom seems to beckon.

What follows is hard to describe without giving away much of the plot. And so I will leave any intrigued readers to discover for themselves the strangeness which lurks in the cover's bathtub. Suffice it to say that it is both splendid and bizarre, and evidence of the author's wild flights of the imagination. However, it also leads to some bloody and, at least to me, repulsive scenes and it is here that the book started to lose me. 

Lindqvist manages to give even the more outlandish aspects of his book a social and political underpinning. It is an interesting approach even it sometimes gives rise to rather preachy monologues. 

Overall, a mixed bag, which gives a horror twist to the "autofiction" genre.

Published September 20th 2018 by riverrun

The Seasons

The Seasons

Walter Crane (1845-1915) The Masque of the Four Seasons

We are but dreams. Our

children walk the sun-kissed land,

honey on their lips.

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The shimmering earth

beckons, ripe and languorous;

fire at its heart.

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Your tear-speckled eyes

Capture the slate-coloured skies.

Soon, the rain will fall.

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Shivering trees stoop,

naked in the leaden air.

The year has grown old.

Five go on a Finnish Adventure... "Secret Passages in a Hillside Town" by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Five go on a Finnish Adventure : Book review of "Secret Passages in a Hillside Town" by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (translated by Lola Rogers) 

A few years back I had read Jääskeläinen’s "The Rabbit Back Literature Society". That novel had been compared to “Twin Peaks meeting the Brothers Grimm” and was a dark and cryptic work which hovered rather awkwardly between outright supernatural fiction and magical realism. I had found this ‘ambivalence’ ultimately disappointing, but the novel was intriguing enough to make me want to sample the author’s latest offering, recently translated into English by Lola Rogers.

In its initial chapters, this novel seemed quite different from its predecessor, apart from its small-town setting and “bookish” background. Indeed, it starts off as a gentle, if quirky, tale of mid-life romance. Olli Suominen, the head of a publishing company based in Jyväskylä, is going through a crisis. Book sales are not what they used to be and, as far as family-life is concerned, he seems to be growing distant from his wife and young son. Through Facebook, he gets in touch with Greta Kara, an old flame who has since become the bestselling author of an influential self-help guide to “living a cinematic life”. He somehow convinces her to issue her next book – a ‘magical’ travelogue about Jyväskylä – through his publishing house. This promises to boost Olli’s business, and amorous, prospects.

But Olli’s Facebook exchanges with Greta also rekindle memories of another group of childhood acquaintances – the three Blomroos siblings and their cousin Karri. Together with Timi, Olli’s dog, they formed a Finnish equivalent of the Famous Five. In true Enid Blyton fashion, they spent their summer holidays together, shared long, glorious, sunny days on riverside picnics and solved mysteries along the way. Typically, they also explored secret passages. And here things start to get weird, because unlike the relatively workaday secret passages in Blyton’s novels, the Toulura tunnels seem to warp reality and cause time to go completely off-kilter. Unsurprisingly, Olli’s memories of the secret passages are vague and confused, but we eventually learn that they were the theatre for shocking happenings experienced by Greta and the Tourula Five.

Whether you will enjoy the novel from this point forward will depend on how crazy you like your fiction to be. In my case, I generally prefer novels which follow an internal logic, however strange their premise. And to be honest, it was sometimes difficult to understand where this book was going . But it still hooked me to the last chapter. Or chapters, given that the novel rather puzzlingly presents us with an alternative ending – probably a nod to “alternate movie endings” which are sometimes available on certain movie DVDs.

So, how should we interpret Secret Passages? Should we take it at face value as a work of supernatural fiction? Or is this actually realist fiction, using elements of fantasy to give us a glimpse of the workings of Olli’s mind? Is the book a satire on modern life which, thanks to social media, seems to be all about living a “cinematic life” worth sharing with the world at large? Or is this an adult parody of Enid Blyton mysteries, particularly the underlying gender politics simmering below their surface? Perhaps it’s all of this, but it makes for a wild and crazy ride.

Paperback, 416 pages

Publication Date: December 12th 2017 by Pushkin Press 

(Pre)history of violence : Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
A book review

Silvie and her parents join an archaeology professor and three of his students on a field trip to Northumberland. The trip is an experiment in "experiential archaeology" in the sense that its participants try to recreate and re-enact the living conditions of the Iron Age tribes which inhabited these remote areas. The professor's intentions are innocent enough, at least at the outset - a mixture of academic curiosity and a "Boys' Own" thirst for adventure which he seems to share with his students. Silvie's father, on the other hand, has darker motives. We soon learn that he has supremacist fantasies about "Ancient Britons", whom he considers a pure, home-grown race, untainted by foreign influences. He idolises their way of life which, albeit nasty, brutish and short, is for him a test of manly mettle. And he has a morbid fascination with the Bog People, Iron Age victims of human sacrifice.

At first the group dynamics make the novel feel like an episode of "Celebrity Survivors" as we sense the increasing friction between the disparate characters. However, things decidedly take a turn for the sinister when the men decide to build a "ghost wall" - a wooden barricade topped by animal skulls which the ancients apparently used as a means of psychological warfare against invading hordes. 

Ghost Wall is a slender novella which packs a punch. The narrative element is tautly controlled. There's a constant sense of dread, of violence simmering beneath the surface. These leads to a terrifying climax, in which the novel skirts the folk horror genre to chilling effect.

More importantly, however, the work is a timely indictment of patriarchal and racist prejudices which, though distinct, often fuel each other. It also seems to suggest that even monsters have redeeming features which endear them to their own victims, whilst seemingly innocent persons can commit grave acts when they give in to atavistic instincts. Perhaps what make this novel so disturbing is that these horrors are all too real.