This handsome collection of stories ranges quite widely through genres, with one tale venturing into X-Files territory, complete with aliens. However, the vast majority of the works collected here fall into the broad category of weird fiction - stories that, while they may not have an overtly supernatural content, do challenge the reader's conception of what is real.
First up is 'The Moor', originally published in ST #39. It is set in the author's home county of Yorkshire, which serves the same artistic purpose as the Welsh borders in the fiction of Arthur Machen. Here is an ancient landscape inhabited by superficially practical, down-to-earth people. But one only needs scratch the surface to find strangeness and mysticism, not to mention menace, beneath.
Some tales are light-hearted. In 'Village Life' some young incomers interview old inhabitants, and the latter invent a series of increasingly bizarre and disturbing tales of orgies and Black Masses in the chapel. As a way of making rural property more affordable, it certainly has its merits. 'Showtime' is also fairly frivolous, at first at least, as a shy author faces the discomfort of having to be outgoing during the inevitable round of signings and other personal appearances. It takes an unusual twist, to say the least.
At the more serious end of the spectrum is 'The Dreaming', in which a sensitive man leaves a mainstream career to become a kind of psychic consultant, or modern shaman. He helps people at the cost of his own well-being, facing a world from which the beauty has been leached out. But there is at least a hint of some mystical escape at the end.
In any collection by one of the co-founders of Tartarus Press you will find stories that ring the changes on classic themes. Thus 'Dear John' concerns some letters found in a drawer, recounting a series of what appear to be ghostly encounters that blight a couple's otherwise happy relationship. However, the ending offers an original take on the idea. A clever twist, that shows the author's great confidence as a writer. 'The Weeping Woman', likewise, takes the familiar notion of a surveyor going to examine a country house and discovering an apparent haunting. But here, too, the denouement is unexpected.
'Reality TV' is another love letter to the Yorkshire landscape, interweaving two people's affection for a show documentary rural life with the theme of bereavement and, perhaps, renewal. 'Cow City', also set in Yorkshire, is a good example of a story containing horror, but which is not strictly speaking a horror story. In its cool, detached approach to life and death, it is somewhat reminiscent of Ruth Rendell. The same can be said of 'Poacher Turned Gamekeeper'. A former online criminal, having served his time, sets up a computer consultancy. He enjoys success, at first, but then experiences a series of bizarre incidents that disconcert him. Is he going insane? Or is somebody out for revenge? A story with neat, clean lines that veers into the grotesque.
Mysticism is seldom far away, though, even when the grim injustices of modern Britain are the subject matter. 'Fever', about a homeless man sleeping rough in London in winter, offers us a Machenesque view of the city. Illness strikes and our character is helped by a character called Arthur. In general, though, Parker is not nearly so enchanted with the big city as Machen. In 'The Cinema' a woman is separated from her partner and encounters a series of unappealing metropolitan characters. Eventually, there is a reunion, albeit one that recalls some of the incidents in Aickman's strange stories.
Overall, then, a collection of stories in which the common thread is the presence of mystery, which sometimes leads to surprises - often unpleasant - but can sometimes be a kind of enlightenment in itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment