Showing posts with label stephen volk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stephen volk. Show all posts
Monday, January 7, 2019
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Golems and Bed-wetters
That sort of sums up the balance between the historical and the fictional throughout Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, in which Karl Marx and George Gissing share the stage with fictional protagonist Elizabeth Cree, her husband, and an assortment of fictional police detectives, music-hall performers, and horrifyingly mutilated victims of The Golem.
Peter Ackroyd's many histories and biographies often cross the line between factual and fictional, or at least factual and speculative. This isn't a problem in a historical novel. Ackroyd structures Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem in both narrative and documentary terms. Some chapters follow key characters through third-person narration, sometimes 'panning back' to discuss things in broader historical and narrative terms. Elizabeth Cree narrates some chapters in first-person. Some chapters are the (fictional) court transcripts of Elizabeth's testimony. And some chapters purport to be the diary entries of the Limehouse Golem.
It may seem a bit post-modernist, but it all works together quite smoothly. Karl Marx and George Gissing illuminate some of the odder places and truths of Victorian London, including an early computer, the dance halls, and Gissing's own peculiar life. And in Elizabeth Cree, Ackroyd has created a compelling, unreliable narrator whose life's journey focuses the narrative on the poverty and pleasures of London -- especially the music-hall pleasures.
It's all something of a treat, albeit an often bleak and difficult one (though not as bleak and difficult as Ackroyd's Hawksmoor or The House of Dr. Dee -- compared to them, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem is a warm-hearted romp. Be careful where you place your sympathies. And don't be fooled into thinking a baby Charlie Chaplin shows up. He doesn't. Ackroyd is messing with you. Highly recommended.
The Little Gift (2017) by Stephen Volk: Volk eschews the supernatural for the all-too-natural in this melancholy and chilling novella. An extra-marital affair leads to regrets and repercussions for a married man -- but not the sort of regrets and repercussions one might expect. You might call it a story about "Survivor's Relief." And you'd be right. Recommended.
The Bed-wetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee (2010) by Sarah Silverman: Published at what I guess was Peak Silverman, The Bed-wetter takes the reader through the first 40 years of the comedian's life in occasionally hilarious fashion. In the aftermath of the #Me Too movement, Silverman's portrait of the writer's room for The Sarah Silverman Program seems sort of icky, though. There just isn't as much comedy in the idea of men regularly wandering around with their balls out in a public space as there used to be. Lightly recommended.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Volume 1 (2014): edited by Mark Morris
ON THE TOUR – RAMSEY CAMPBELL
THE DOG’S HOME – ALISON LITTLEWOOD
FUNERAL RITES – HELEN MARSHALL
SLAPE – TOM FLETCHER
THE NIGHT DOCTOR – STEVE RASNIC TEM
DULL FIRE – GARY McMAHON
THE BOOK AND THE RING – REGGIE OLIVER
EASTMOUTH – ALISON MOORE
CARRY WITHIN SOME SMALL SLIVER OF ME – ROBERT SHEARMAN
THE DEVIL’S INTERVAL – CONRAD WILLIAMS
STOLEN KISSES – MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH
CURES FOR A SICKENED WORLD – BRIAN HODGE
THE OCTOBER WIDOW – ANGELA SLATTER
THE SLISTA – STEPHEN LAWS
OUTSIDE HEAVENLY – RIO YOUERS
THE LIFE INSPECTOR – JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT
SOMETHING SINISTER IN SUNLIGHT – LISA TUTTLE
THIS VIDEO DOES NOT EXIST – NICHOLAS ROYLE
NEWSPAPER HEART – STEPHEN VOLK
Horror writer Mark Morris's attempt to create an annual, non-theme-specific, original horror anthology begins here with this 2014 anthology from tiny Spectral Press. It's a specific nod to some vanished English perennials, most notably the annual Pan Book of Horror Stories.
And it's very good. So far as I understand the introduction, the stories were expressly solicited for this anthology from notable horror writers young, old, and seemingly immortal.
There's quite a bit of range here, though all of the stories are indeed horror stories and not fragmentary exercises in the weird or the overly comical.
A couple of misfires are the result, but much of the anthology ranges from good to excellent. Stephen Volk's novella, "Newspaper Heart," is a stand-out with its sad and surprising examination of childhood loneliness set against Guy Fawkes Day. Ramsey Campbell's somewhat addled never-was rock star unravels in Liverpool, longing to be included on the city's bus tours of the homes of the famous. And Alison Moore's "Eastmouth" is a chilly, suggestive bit of horror with some resemblance in content (though not in style) to Ramsey Campbell's work.
Another stand out is Canada's own Rio Youers with "Outside Heavenly." It's a sinister knock-out about a Southern small-town tragedy that leads a guilt-plagued sheriff down his own river of darkness to find answers in a place he never, ever should have travelled to.
There are other fine stories here, in a number of different keys of horror. Hopefully sales of the anthology will allow this to become an annual tradition -- Morris has done good work here. Recommended.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Best New Horror; Not-so-good Old Horror
Another year, another solid Best New Horror anthology from editor Stephen Jones. The 25th such annual anthology, as it turns out. Besides the stories, the lengthy sections devoted to works that came out in 2013 are excellent, as is the sad-making Necrology of deaths of people connected in some way to the horror genre.
The anthology is book-ended on the fiction side of things by two standalone sections from Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series. They're enjoyable and deeply metafictional and possess horrifying elements, though they're not particularly horrifying. Neil Gaiman's short-short story, "Click-Clack the Rattlebag," apparently wows when read aloud by the author. On the page, it's the slightest of slight jaunts.
My favourite stories herein include "Holes for Faces" by Ramsey Campbell, a mournful look at the inner life of an endlessly put-upon child; "The Gist" by Michael Marshall Smith, a sad look at a wasted life; and "Isaac's Room" by Daniel Mills, an effective tale of an Internet-augmented haunting that gains a lot of effectiveness from its low-key, under-stated nature.
Joel Lane's "By Night He Could Not See" is a poetic and ultimately twisty tale of revenge from beyond the grave, while "Come Into My Parlour" by Reggie Oliver deals with a child's much-disliked aunt in another of Oliver's excellent riffs on the classic English ghost story epitomized by the stories of M.R. James.
Stephen Volk's short novel Whitstable also stands out. It's far and away the longest tale in the anthology. It's also one of the two or three best, and well worth the length. Volk takes the germ of a concept from Fright Night, among other works, in this story of a boy who comes to Peter Cushing for help because the boy's soon-to-be-stepfather is a vampire.
The story goes off in a completely different direction that what one might expect from this beginning. It's a deeply researched look at Peter Cushing's life, set in the months after his beloved wife died of emphysema in the early 1970's. It makes Cushing a sympathetic character, but it also extends some level of pity to the monster he chooses to pursue. It's really lovely writing.
All in all, a solid year for Best New Horror. Highly recommended.
Extraordinarily odd anthology is really only noteworthy as being prolific anthologist Peter Haining's first editorial work. And he would put together many volumes superior to this one. But we've all got to start somewhere.
Why is it odd? More than half the book consists of out-of-copyright stories, many of them classics. But The Hell of Mirrors doubles up on entries by several authors. Then we jump from the 1890's to two weird tales in translation from Japanese fantasist Edogawa Rampo. The we jump another 35 years to two solid but undistinguished stories from the same science-fiction magazine, both released the year before this anthology came out. It looks like a job of selection that must have taken about an afternoon, with no apparatus other than a brief introduction to explain to us who the writers are and why these particular stories are important.
If you came across this for a couple of bucks in a used bookstore somewhere and hadn't been exposed to the stories by Poe, Bierce, and Le Fanu, then I suppose it would be worth the purchase. But for the most part, the best stories are much-anthologized and the lesser stories by Slesar and Porges, while mildly enjoyable, can easily be skipped. Not recommended.
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