Christopher Harman's work has been appearing in ST for quite a while. This new collection of nine stories contains three that I had the pleasure of getting first dibs on. Those tales - 'Cold Air from the East', 'The Abbey Hoard', and 'Black Water' - are all excellent, I need hardly add. Rereading them confirms how well Harman builds his tales. He is, to coin a phrase, an architectural writer, creating a strange edifice that we can explore and inhabit for a while. And yet he is also a writer of the great outdoors with a very British love of the countryside, the coast, the long hike in the rain.
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| Cover by Paul Lowe for 'Wet Jenny' |
Harman is arguably a folk horror writer, at least for some of the time. 'Wet Jenny' is certainly in that category, with its variation on the regional bogeyperson that is Jenny Greenteeth. 'Cold Air...' is a remarkable take on a Russian folk tale. And 'A True Yorkshireman' is a wry, somewhat hallucinatory account of a very familiar entity, the troll under the bridge.
Harman pays tribute to the early stars of the genre. The gradual piecing together of details in most of these stories is very M.R. Jamesian. But also echoes Machen in, say, 'The Inmost Light' or 'The Black Seal'. The difference is that those early authors gave their characters a way out, or even had them function simply as observers, men never truly in peril. Harman's protagonists, by contrast, are up to the necks in the weirdness from the start, often without even realising.
And here again, Britishness comes to the fore. That very British impulse to minimise a problem, evade serious issues, cloak things in irony and sarcasm, and never quite speak one's mind. In Harman's world, this often leads to disaster, the failure to communicate properly not merely hampering understanding but leading to death (or something arguably worse).
'Windsheer', the opening story, sees a character poking about in local history and personal tragedy, only to discover that the apparently innocuous - in this case, an odd incident at a kite festival - merely camouflages something far worse. In 'Laughing Matter' a man decides he can handle an interview with a clown who terrified his younger self (not one for the coulrophobes). It's a story that gives a whole new meaning to putting yourself in someone else's shoes. 'Apple Pie and Sulphur' warns us that hearty home-cooked food can have its dark side, while offering a take on rural public transport that's even more harrowing than the real thing.
The latter story is also an example of something Harman does so well it might not be perceived by some readers - humour. The apple pie produces a weird kind of flatulence. There are a surprising number of outright jokes or innuendoes in this and other stories. Dark humour, certainly, but psychologically right, as characters struggle to maintain their mental stability when faced with bizarre threats. This humour, coupled with a style that verges on stream of consciousness, gives a near-slapstick feel to some scenes.
Here are some of the most interesting and well-developed ideas in modern weird fiction, presented to the reader in classic, slow-burn fashion. If you haven't tried Harman yet, try to obtain one of his collections or (ahem) maybe buy a back issue or two of ST.
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