Category: Short Fiction

Lisa Tuttle, ‘The Man in the Ditch’ (2011)

9th November 2011 / / 1 Comment

Linzi and J.D. are driving to their new house in the Norfolk countryside when Linzi thinks she sees a dead body in a ditch at the side of the road. As the couple renovate the property, thoughts of the dead man continue to play on LInzi’s mind, though J.D. is convinced that she’s mistaken. The initial shock seeing the corpse is very well-handled, as Tuttle lulls the reader into a false sense of security with the neutral tone of her description; and she brings the tale around to a satisfying, grimly circular ending.

Rating: ***½

Book and story notes: Gordon, Kenworthy, Pickin

7th November 2011 / / 2 Comments

Helen Gordon, Landfall (2011)

London-based arts critic Alice Robinson is thirty-four, unsure about her place in the world, and haunted by the disappearance of her sister Janey seventeen years previously, when her magazine ‘suspends operations’; taking advantage of her parents’ offer to house-sit for them, she moves back to the suburbs to take stock. Alice’s existence there is enlivened by the arrival of her sixteen-year-old American cousin Emily (who’s been sent over for an improving visit, though she’d rather not be there), and a large dog named Selkirk, whom Alice’s old flatmate Isabel has talked her into looking after (despite Alice’s dislike of dogs). Alice is mostly drifting through life in suburbia when her former editor holds out the possibility of an interview with one of her favourite artists, Karin Ericsson, a recluse who lives on the south coast – could this be the key to Alice’s getting her life back on track?

Helen Gordon’s debut novel is a nicely observed character study, ranging from pithy observations about minor characters (for example, Alice’s artist ex-boyfriend is described as “one of those men of a certain haircut who gravitated towards the east of the city” [pp. 8-9]) to more sustained portrayals of the main players. Alice’s neighbours’ boy, Danny, is a conflicted figure: saved from drowning as a young boy, that piece of great fortune has also made it hard for him to relate to other people (though one senses he ultimately means well), which in turn has led him to dabble in crime. Emily begins as something of a grotesque, obsessed with her body-image to an alarming degree, but, by novel’s end, she is moving towards a more positive view of life; she and Danny come together in a halting, and very real, fashion.

And Alice? She spends a lot of time thinking, but also falls back on instinct, reciting maxims from her Girl Guide and London days. Those recitations may feel forced when she’s at her parents’ house, but Alice’s practical instincts come into their own when she has travelled to the coast. She, like Emily and Danny, makes not so much peace with life, as a kind of messy truce.

Christopher Kenworthy, ‘Sullom Hill’ (2011)

Our narrator recalls his childhood in western Lancashire, in particular his period of friendship with John Stack (“You’d never see him in a group: it was John and one friend for a few weeks and then he’d move on” [p. 6]) and his ambivalent attitude towards learning-disabled Neil Kingsley. The protagonist admires John for his cheek and ability to stand up to his reprimanding teachers – but John’s bravado hides a violent home life, and now he’s picking on Neil.

This is one of the latest chapbooks to be published by Nightjar Press, who specialise in dark fiction at (or beyond) the edges of the supernatural. I make a point of mentioning this here because Kenworthy’s story takes a particularly striking approach to the subgenre. There’s nothing overtly (or even necessarily covertly) fantastical about ‘Sullom Hill’, but Kenworthy portrays John’s behaviour as being rooted in a bargain – maybe not one made with a supernatural agency, but a bargain of a similar kind. Neil’s response to John can be read in an analogous way. The effect of these is to imply a different way of looking at the world, and thereby to disturb the world’s equilibrium – creating a very subtle kind of horror.

Christopher Kenworthy’s website

G.A. Pickin, ‘Remains’ (2011)

The second new title from Nightjar Press takes us to a Scottish moor, where an ill-prepared walker (who is experienced enough that he shouldn’t be in his current predicament, and knows it) leaves behind an abandoned church and the remains of its surrounding settlement, and tries to find his way to the holiday cottage where he’s due to catch up with some friends from an old volunteering project – but the dark and the weather are closing in.

As a story, ‘Remains’ is very much focused on its landscape; Pickin effectively turns what is at first, if not exactly a friendly environment then at least one open to exploration, into somewhere more threatening. The ending is both nicely open and a neat closure.

Robert Shearman, ‘Alice Through the Plastic Sheet’ (2011)

5th November 2011 / / 2 Comments

Alan and Alice thought they knew their neighbours well enough, but discovered embarrassingly otherwise when they learned that Eric had been dead for months, and Barbara was moving out because she couldn’t cope with her feelings of loneliness. New neighbours duly moved in and, though the couple never saw them, they did hear the loud music coming from next door – and that was just the beginning. This unsettling piece features the matter-of-fact treatment of strangeness that Shearman does so well; Alan’s work life and relationship with Alice fray around the edges as the bizarre events proceed. The result is a story that really get’s under one’s skin.

Rating: ****

Link
Robert Shearman’s website

Ramsey Campbell, ‘Getting it Wrong’ (2011)

22nd October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Misanthropic film buff Eric Edgeworth is interrupted one evening by a phone call purporting to be from a radio gameshow; would he be the ‘expert friend’ of the current contestant, Mary Barton, a work colleague he barely knows. Edgeworth is convinced this a hoax being staged by some of his fellow-staff at the Frugoplex cinema; but, as the calls continue and Mary is absent from work, it becomes apparent that something more sinister is happening. This is a typically well-constructed story from Campbell, with a satisfying pay-off and a portrait of the crabby Edgeworth that’s grimly amusing. But there’s a sense of artificiality about the piece – perhaps from the fake brand names used, perhaps from those moments when the characterisation becomes a little too broad-brush – which stops it from being truly creepy.

Rating: ***

Link
Ramsey Campbell’s website

John Ajvide Lindqvist, ‘The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer’ (2011)

16th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Six months after his partner Annelie died in a road accident, our narrator moved with his son Robin to a cheap house in the forest; he got rid of the things he thought were unnecessary, but soon regretted being so rash in destroying Annelie’s things. All that remained was her old piano, which he now insists Robin learn to play. But what is the strange music that the narrator hears his son play, and what does it have to do with the murderer who once lived in their house. This is a great story (excellently translated by Marlaine Delargy), as Lindqvist ratchets up the tension and the sense that the narrator is losing his grip on reality. What makes the tale for me is the wonderful uncertainty or whether the supernatural explanation for events is valid, or whether it’s all in the mind of a desperate father.

Rating: ****

Link
John Ajvide Lindqvist’s website

Dennis Etchison, ‘Tell Me I’ll See You Again’ (2011)

15th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

One sweltering day, Sherron sees her friend David cycle perilously close to his father’s truck… and finds him lying underneath the bicycle, apparently with no breath or heartbeat – yet, a short time later, he’s fine. Could this be some kind of survival mechanism, and what exactly could have brought it on? ‘Tell Me I’ll See You Again’ is a short piece that uses its brevity to great effect; an atmosphere of strangeness and disorientation builds up because we have so little time to grasp what’s going on. And Etchison’s closing sentences are simply beautiful.

Rating: ***½

Brian Hodge, ‘Roots and All’ (2011)

14th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Cousins Dylan and Gina travel to the remote farmhouse of their recently-deceased Grandma Evvie, to sort through her effects; a long-term drug problem has caused the area to go to seed. Never far from Dylan’s mind are Evvie’s old tales of what she called the Woodwalker, and the mystery of his sister Shae’s disappearance eight years previously – a mystery which will be solved by tale’s end. Hodge brings the disparate elements of his story together in unexpected ways, and thre’s a grimly satisfying inevitability about the ending.

Rating: ***

Link
Brian Hodge’s website

Book notes: Hampton-Jones, Fry, Wakling

11th October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Hollis Hampton-Jones, Comes the Night (2011)

Hollis Hampton-Jones’s second novel is a study of nineteen-year-old Meade Harden: bulimic, addicted to prescription drugs, and unhealthily obsessed with her twin brother, Ben Ho. Born in Nashvile, the Harden twins are currently in Paris, where their studies – Meade’s in cookery and Ben’s in art – are being funded by their parents. Concerned that she may be losing her brother’s attention to a girl he met at college, Meade takes up an offer from a fashion photographer, Majid, to get her into the world of modelling – but her downward spiral only continues.

Naturally enough, Comes the Night is very much focused on the character of Meade and her concerns; this has its drawbacks – Meade’s constant returning to the same few topics can become wearying. Yet, at the same time, there are some brutally effective moments, such as when Meade lists the contents of her own vomit as the ingredients of a recipe; and the tight focus on the protagonist’s subjectivity leads to some interesting disorientation – the novel’s sense of place is fragmented, for example, because Meade is so uninterested in the outside world. Comes the Night is a short novel which arrives, does what it does with a single-minded determination, then ends in what by then may be the only possible place.

Links
Hollis Hampton-Jones’s website
Some other reviews of Comes the Night: For Books’ Sake; Bookmunch.

Gary Fry, Abolisher of Roses (2011)

Having read and reviewed (and enjoyed) the first and third titles from Spectral Press, I now skip back for the second; however, I’m not as impressed with this tale as I was with the others. Peter, a successful businessman, travels with his wife Patricia to a gallery in the wilds of North Yorkshire, where some of her paintings are set to form part of an outdoor art trail. Peter has little time for art, or the arty types with whom his wife now associates; but he indulges Patricia’s hobby as something he’s sure she’ll soon get over – and anyway, Peter has his mistress to keep him occupied. Whilst following the art trail, Peter loses his way, and comes across some strange and macabre installations which hit closer to home than he could ever have anticipated.

The key weakness of Abolisher of Roses, I think, is that it could do with a bit more subtlety. Peter is portrayed in quite broad terms as a callous and uncaring businessman who’s contemptuous of his wife; it feels as though Gary Fry is signposting rather too heavily what we’re supposed to think of Peter. I appreciate the elegance of the story’s conceit, that Peter’s begrudging examination of art turns into a searching examination of himself; but I feel that the telling lets it down somewhat.

Link
Gary Fry’s website

Christopher Wakling, What I Did (2011)

Chris Wakling’s latest novel is narrated by six-year-old Billy Wright, who runs off one day while he’s out with his dad Jim. Eventually catching up with Billy as he runs out into a busy road, an exasperated Jim smacks the boy; a passing woman sees this, intervenes, and reports Jim to social services – and so the Wrights’ ordinary family life begins to unravel.

Billy’s narrative voice is a mixture of rambling, malapropisms, and references to the natural world (he loves watching David Attenborough programmes). For example:

I also have to warn you that nobody is bad or good here, or rather everyone is a bit bad and a bit good and the bad and good moluscules get mixed up against each other and produce chemical reactions.

Did you know cheetahs cannot retract their claws? (p. 2)

Over the course of a whole novel, this can be endearing and infuriating by turns; but it works both as a means of establishing Billy’s character, and as a screen between us and the real action of the story. Through that screen, we see that Jim is a loving father, but also that he can have a quick temper, without necessarily even realising. It’s a combination of these factors which makes the situation so difficult for Jim, because as far as he’s concerned, he has done nothing wrong; but it’s not easy for him to see how to present himself in a way that will convince the authorities of that. In its own way, the social-care system which Jim encounters seems just as opaque to him as the adult world is to Billy. What I Did is an effective portrait of innocently-intended actions spiralling out of control, and the difficulties of responding to that.

Links
Christopher Wakling’s website
Some other reviews of What I Did: Just William’s Luck; Isabel Costello; Random Things Through My Letterbox.

Angela Slatter, ‘The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter’ (2011)

8th October 2011 / / 2 Comments

Quieter in tone than the previous three, Angela Slatter‘s story concerns Hepsibah Ballantyne, a coffin-maker who arrives at the D’Aguillar household to deal with the recently-deceased father, and takes rather a shine to young Lucette D’Aguillar while she’s there. The coffin-maker’s trade is particularly important in this fictional world: get the rituals wrong, and the spirits of the dead will remain behind — as Hepsibah herself knows, because her own dead father, Hector, never leaves her side. The atmosphere of this story builds up quite nicely — Slatter evokes Hepsibah’s burgeoning attraction towards Lucette particularly well — and the  complexities of Heispibah’s character are revealed gradually and effectively.

Rating: ***½

Peter Crowther, ‘Ghosts with Teeth’ (2011)

5th October 2011 / / 1 Comment

Hugh and Angie Ritter return home to Tuboise, Maine (popn. 41), to find that something’s not right — people keep disappearing suddenly, or are in places they cannot possibly be. It’s Hallowe’en, and something is about to come trick-or-treating… Peter Crowther‘s story builds its atmosphere slowly, using commonplace things — a radio in the background, a phone call from a familiar voice — that turn abruptly sinister. The ending is also effective, making good use of the fact that, in a community as small as Tuboise, everyone knows each other — something that could have good consequences or bad.

Rating: ***½

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