This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)
Disappearances, Chesterton remarked, are harder to account for than manifestations. After all, the family ghost is merely keeping up appearances. In this story Mark Valentine interweaves two narratives, one of a chap called Crabbe, and the other of a friend who investigates (to the best of his ability) Crabbe's vanishing.
This is Machen territory, to some extent, with emphasis on the mysteries of landscape and deep, strange folklore. Crabbe has undoubtedly left our world - but did he end up in a better place? We read of 'voices in the garden. Lord serpent and the moss boy, iridescent...' It is a world of wonders, but is it safe? Crabbe seems to be losing his sense of identity. But is it really a loss? Or the laying down of an all-too-human burden?
In the end it is indeed the mystery that endures. The nameless friend resolves to follow the path Crabbe took, an apparently innocuous trail across an unremarkable part of England. We can be sure he will find something. Perhaps even the person he cares for. It is as much a story about friendship, of doing the best you can, as it is about other realms, other realities.
I'm enjoying this collection. It is relaxing to read to good prose, to encounter interesting ideas. I am writing this on election night. I hope to wake up in a new realm tomorrow.
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