inkspot publishing

(inkspotpublishing.com).

‘In parts of the city, the whole street system has disappeared. People who have lived here all their lives can no longer find their bearings. Huge piles of rubble, concrete and collapsed or derelict buildings are the new landmarks to be negotiated, where once stood houses and shops inhabited by industrious housewives and tired clerks, noisy children and grumbling grandparents. Winding cobbled lanes, with black and white half-timbered medieval houses which survived the Plague and the Black Death, have vanished forever. The delicately wrought stained glass windows, soaring roofs, and finely sculpted arches of ancient churches are now just piles of stones and blackened beams.’

It is the psychogeography of a derelict and broken Hamburg that represents the heart of this accomplished novel by Richard Vaughan Davies. The Second World War has left Hamburg shattered, a place of danger and despair, as the remaining residents attempt to navigate a city in suppressed turmoil, whilst they wrestle with the inevitable anger and guilt concerning Germany’s role as the defeated aggressor.

Vaughan Davies skilfully deploys four main characters as a means of exploring this landscape and the way that it in turn shapes its inhabitants. The novel’s main protagonist Adam, a young British military lawyer, is part of a legal team tasked with the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Adam is a necessarily problematic ‘hero’. Falling for Rose, a German prostitute, he fantasises about a life together whilst still exploiting the woman – and other women working in the same brothel. He is naive, but it is telling that as much as the defeat of Germany has left the previously wealthy and privileged Rose destitute, so Adam’s own actions place Rose in danger. As Rose rebuilds her life on her own terms, a future life with Adam becomes increasingly precluded; a clear signal that it is only in her own agency that Rose can trust.

Rose – Rosa von Schirm und Loewen – is the embodiment of the novel’s title Fireweed, a flower that is both beautiful and resilient, stubbornly emerging from the ruins of Hamburg. The manner in which she seeks to prevail suggests a future that is both free of the past and not dependent upon the good offices of those men who seek to exploit her.

However, the two other main protagonists – war criminal Henryk van Reen and the terminally ill Dr Ernst Mann – offer differing responses to the guilt associated with Germany’s actions before and during the Second World War. Van Reen is unrepentant, casually offering an ‘only-following-orders’ defence. Mann is tormented by guilt and the weight of history. Mann is troubled by a personal connection with Hitler, the only part of the novel that I felt was somewhat unconvincing and unnecessary. The much more resonant guilt that becomes apparent as we learn more about Mann’s role during the war should have been foregrounded and did not need the personal association with Hitler.

Indeed, the aspect of the novel I found most compelling was its consideration of the aftermath of a major conflict and the damage inflicted on the people and places transformed by that conflict. Whilst the damage to a city can be observed and ostensibly repaired, it also acts as a reminder that war leaves a bitter legacy for its survivors, both nominal winners and losers, a legacy not so readily repaired.

Lou Gilmond (lougilmond.com)

Fairlight Books (fairlightbooks.co.uk)

‘It’s me again. Percy Dvořáček. Do you know what I think, mmm? I think we’re all just stupid geese. Greedy. Waddling around pushing our stupid fat chests out, squawking across the House at one another, as if we mattered. As if we were important, but we’re not. None of us are. We’re too far behind. And we’re all dirty, aren’t we, hmm? … So what are we, eh? Just stupid, useless, dirty fucking geese. We don’t know anything, but they’re watching us, listening to us. And they’re inside my head, I tell you. And I don’t want them there.’

About his fictional private investigator, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler wrote, ‘down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.’ Lou Gilmond has given us a new man of honour, Harry Coleby. The ‘mean streets’ frequented by Harry are the corridors of power in Westminster’s Houses of Parliament, a place tarnished by greed, betrayal, mendacity, exploitation and innate corruption; a compelling if somewhat sceptical characterisation of the current state of British political life!

Following the suicide of the UK Minister for Personal Information, backbench MP Harry Coleby finds himself promoted to the Cabinet as the dead Minister’s replacement. Harry is immediately tasked with ensuring that his predecessor’s privacy bill makes it way through the parliamentary legislative process. However this will not be the first time that the proposed changes in law have been considered by the House of Commons. Shortly before his death, the previous minister appears to have tried to get the legislation passed as a private members bill, much to the consternation of the Prime Minister.

These events kick off a gripping political thriller, as Harry Coleby and Esme Kanha, the Government’s Chief Whip, are caught up in a miasma of intrigue, encountering Voter Services, a somewhat sinister organisation involved with their party’s electoral campaigning, using Alchemina, software that gets deep into voters’ minds.

This combination of recognisable political intrigue and advanced AI driven technology is remarkably effective. The rather down-at-heel qualities of life as a British parliamentarian are thrown into sharp relief by the wealth and power exhibited by those developing this technology, dependent upon access to our most private information.

In the tradition of George Orwell and John le Carré, Dirty Geese plays with a number of our key anxieties, including the loss of confidence in the British political system and the apparently relentless erosion of privacy as identities are available for trade and we are subject to what feels like 24-hour surveillance. Lou Gilmond manages the tension between these two themes well, adding into the mix personal challenges for Esme and Harry, including the toxic state of Harry’s marriage. As a consequence, Dirty Geese is both compelling and unsettling from the outset.

It’s good to know that more novels featuring Harry and Esme are planned.

Thanks to TCK Publishing for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.

Please note that this review contains spoilers.

I should have relished The Devil’s Whispers. For an ardent Gothicist this novel appears to have it all: a creepy, labyrinthine castle, a monstrous villain, devilish females, body horror, mystery, possession, and frightening jeopardy. However, like a substandard tribute band, all the novel left me with was a desire to enjoy the real thing.

The Devil’s Whispers is an attempt at a recreation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, even down to its epistolary form. In Transylvania’s place we are presented with a Welsh castle near Cardiff. Lawyer Jonathan Harker… apologies, Gerard Woodward… has been summoned to the Castle to conduct legal business for the dying Lord Mathers. However, soon it becomes clear that all is not well and Woodward is imprisoned. On escaping his locked room he encounters the beautiful Lady Helena and her sinister doppelganger. Woodward is abused and traumatised, eventually only escaping the Castle with the help of a double-agent servant.

Meanwhile, all is not well in London. Whilst Woodward’s wife Mina… apologies Raelyn… frets about her husband, children are being kidnapped, animals mutilated, and a monstrous creature terrorises the city, much to the concern of Raelyn, her friend Lucy… apologies Jayda… and Professor Van Helsing… apologies Father Malcolm (by now I am sure you get the picture). There is even a zoophagous character riffing on Dracula‘s Renfield.

Sharing Mina Harker’s fate, Raelyn comes under the influence of the novel’s evil protagonists (the Xana) before she is saved by her friends. The Xana are nowhere near as well-developed as Stoker’s vampires although they share many of the same traits – there is an absence of rationale explaining their characteristics and their vulnerabilities.

Where The Devil’s Whispers does depart from Dracula it fails to convince. Cardiff is unrecognisable and never plausibly rendered as a stand-in for Transylvania. In an attempt to afford Raelyn Woodward more agency than Mina Harker, Hault makes Raelyn a medical doctor with her own practice. However, the remarkable nature of such an arrangement in 1903 is never addressed. The dialogue disconcertingly vacillates from turn-of-the-century to modern day idiom (‘Who the hell is Maria?’). The novel’s conclusion is rushed and perfunctory, with Raelyn and Gerard prevailing seemingly because that is what happened to their progenitors, Mina and Jonathan Harker.

All of this is not to say that the novel isn’t readable. This reader was carried along by the novel’s events. But, the bottom line is faced with a choice, read Dracula not The Devil’s Whispers. And if you have already read Dracula, read it again.

Publication: February 20th 2022
Publisher: TCK Publishing
Pages: 239 pages
Source: TCK Publishing
Genre: Fiction, Epistolary, Gothic, Horror
My Rating: ⛤⛤
Summary:

Famed British lawyer Gerard Woodward is summoned to an ancient Welsh castle to assist a dying lord in his final affairs. But as his host slips closer to death, Gerard begins to feel less like a guest and more like a prisoner. When he finds himself locked inside his room, he realizes he must escape.

After finding his way out of his room, Gerard begins to wonder if he was safer locked inside. The labyrinthine halls echo secrets. A terrible wail and the rattling of chains sets his nerves on end. Something sinister is happening within the walls of Mathers Castle, and when he descends into the dungeons, he discovers a horrible secret…

In nearby London, children vanish into the night, animals are horribly mutilated, and a savage creature stalks the shadows. When Gerard’s wife, Raelyn, becomes the creature’s next target, his need to escape reaches a fever pitch. He must get out alive so he can dispel the evil that threatens to destroy his beloved Raelyn… and the rest of us.

Introduction:

Enriquez, Marina, Things we lost in the fire, trans. by Megan McDowell (London: Portobello Books, 2017).

‘These grotesque visions of bodily trauma from Argentina reflect a country still coming to terms with decades of violent dictatorship.’[1]

Summary:

 This collection of short stories, all but one told from a female perspective, reflects upon the precarious nature of lives of women and other vulnerable groups in post-dictatorship Argentina.

The collection’s central theme is bodily trauma, often self-inflicted.  In ‘End of Term’ a schoolgirl removes her fingernails with her teeth in response to ‘what the man with slicked-back hair made her do.’[2]  In ‘Adela’s House’ a boy jumps in front of a train and is obliterated so thoroughly that only his left arm remains between the tracks: ‘It seemed like someone had carried that arm to the middle of the tracks to display it like a greeting or a message.’[3] In the collection’s title story, ‘Things we lost in the fire’, women begin to set fire to themselves in response to male violence.

Analysis:

Mariana Enriquez has commented that ‘the dictatorship in Argentina was incredibly violent but in a very secret way. Thousands were tortured and killed, yes, but this was very successfully hidden from the population.’[4]  It is this combination of violence and secrecy that makes the Gothic the natural literary genre with which to engage with the precarity of the lives of Argentina’s most vulnerable citizens, a precarity that has been caused by an oppressive and abusive political regime.

Most of the stories turn on the familiar made unfamiliar, directly evoking Freud’s concept of the ‘uncanny’.  As Ona Russell notes ‘all is normal, relatively speaking, until X occurs.’[5]  Thus the reader is unsettled by a dirty handshake, a girl pulling off her fingernails with her teeth, and an amputee coddles her stump.  In addition, moments of personal epiphany are punctuated with supernatural incidents. The terrors conveyed are therefore both real and metaphorical.

Again evoking Freud’s reflections on the uncanny, Enriquez’s stories accentuate the importance of place.  In particular houses and homes are made prisons rather than havens, in Freud’s terms the heimlichis made unheimlich.

Thus Enriquez is unequivocally using Gothic devices to reflect on the precarity of life for many still affected by widespread political violence of Argentina’s recent past, a past which Enriquez has said ‘leaves scars, like a national PTSD.’[6]  This evokes Judith Butler’s proposition that ‘injurability and aggression [represent] two points of departure for political life’[7]as she engages with Emmanuel Levinas’s ‘conception of the precariousness of life, one that begins with the precarious life of the Other.’[8]For Enriquez the repression of Argentina’s dictatorship past remains, haunting the present day in the enduring damage done to the most vulnerable in Argentinian society.  It is in response to this that ‘the stories in Things We Lost in the Fireshine a light on those scars.  Haunted houses, deformed bodies, polluted rivers, all point to the “horrifying history of state terror”, to quote [Enriquez’s] English translator, Megan McDowell.’[9]

Notwithstanding the collection’s undoubted power, the stories’ relentless grotesquerie runs the risk of numbing the reader to the plight of those whose precarity of life is exposed.  This highlights a central question regarding Gothic fiction’s capacity to offer a means with which to engage with the plight of those othered by systemic injury and aggression.  Whilst Gothic fiction’s delight in the transgressive ensures that it is the natural genre for telling these stories, its ambivalent response to oppressive authority arguably compromises its capacity to convey the much-needed counter narratives of those whose lives have been made precarious by such oppression.

[1]John Self, ‘Things we lost in the fireby Mariana Enríquez review – gruesome short stories’, The Guardian [online] (2 November 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/02/things-we-lost-in-the-fire-by-mariana-enriquez-review[accessed 12 March 2019] (para 1 of 4)

[2]Mariana Enriquez, Things we lost in the fire, trans. by Megan McDowell (London: Portobello Books, 2017), p. 124.

[3]Enriquez, p. 69.

[4]Bongani Kona, ‘”Dark history is good for literature”—Bongani Kona chats to Argentine author Mariana Enriquez about her English debut, Things We Lost in the Fire’, The Johannesburg Review of Books[online] (2 July 2018) https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/07/02/dark-history-is-good-for-literature-bongani-kona-chats-to-argentine-author-mariana-enriquez-about-her-english-debut-things-we-lost-in-the-fire/[accessed on 12 March 2019] (para 5 of 25).

[5]Ona Russell, ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’,Americas Quarterly[online] (Young Entrepreneurs Issue, 2017) https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/things-we-lost-fire[accessed on 13 March 2019] (para 2 of 6).

[6]Kona, (para 6 of 25).

[7]Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence(London & New York: Verso, 2006), p. xii

[8]Butler, pp. xvii-xviii.

[9]Kona, (para 6 0f 25).

‘[T]his channelling of dark desires is a skill we humans have been trying to perfect for millennia.’

Peter Laws makes a compelling case for the societal good that comes from literature and art of terror and horror. Rather than seeing such works as deviant or corrupting Laws deftly argues that they play an important role in affording us a safe way of dealing with our darkest fears, experiences and desires.

This is an engaging and highly readable discussion of this important subject. At times Laws’ personable and colloquial approach belies the fundamental importance of his argument, but nevertheless he comprehensively covers the main aspects of the art of horror and deploys a sound evidence based methodology.

As a child I read. I read and read. In fact my memory does not extend far enough back to remember a time when I couldn’t read.

In my early years I read Enid Blyton, from the Magic Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair to the Famous Five and the Five Finder-Outers.  I read those books over and over and over again. I then graduated to the oh-so-grown-up Doctor Who target novels, giving me a chance to enjoy Doctor Who stories broadcast before I was born or from a time that I could not remember (my earliest TV memory is the moon landing – I think.  My earliest Doctor Who memory is the Sea Devils emerging from the sea – again, I think).  Again I read those novels over and over and over again.

There was a time when I stopped reading Enid Blyton.  I have never stopped reading Doctor Who novels! But in my early teens my reading exploded: Lord of the Rings, the science-fiction stories of Isaac Asimov, Stephen King’s horror novels, the Fontana Books of Great Ghost Stories (can you detect the roots of an obsession with the Gothic?).  And of course Jane Eyre.  My love affair with the Brontës began as a thirteen year-old school boy and I have never lost that particular passion.

‘O’ Level English Literature was a joy: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre… ‘A’ Level English Literature even more so: Seamus Heaney, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, The Go-Between, Othello, Richard II, Songs of Innocence and Experience, Waiting for Godot, and, of course, Wuthering Heights.  I loved every one.  Sometimes some texts more in retrospect.  It took me a while to understand Heaney.  Some texts I adored immediately.  LP Hartley’s The Go-Between and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights remain amongst my favourite  novels to this day.

So you can picture the scene as I turned up for my meeting with my tertiary college’s career advisor to discuss my choice of university subjects.  What choice? It was obvious.  I was going to read English.  It turns out this was a poor choice!  Apparently I would stand more chance of redeeming Heathcliff than getting a job with a degree in English. Crestfallen I applied to Durham University to read History and Politics (much more career friendly) and spent three, admittedly happy years, choosing modules that would get me as close to literature as possible, immersing myself in student politics, and graduating with a disappointing 2:II.

In the end it was my student political activities that secured me a place on the NHS graduate scheme.  My choice of degree subject was irrelevant.  Who knew? Certainly not my careers advisor.  There began a tumultuous but rewarding career in senior management in the NHS and healthcare more broadly.

Of course I continued to read avidly.  Crime fiction, literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy.  It has never left me.  The desire to visit other times and places simply through the power of the written word.  To enjoy the power of language alone.

And yet I remained disconcerted.  I had an abiding sense of ‘unfinished business.’ I knew I had it in me to excel academically and I was consumed by a desire to return to the formal study of English.

Therefore on being made redundant in 2011 the opportunity presented itself.  Could I take a part-time Open University degree in English Literature and work freelance part-time?  Well, the second ‘part-time’ never materialised.  I worked as a freelance management consultant for three and a half years but nearly always full-time plus.  But I did take an OU degree in English Literature, securing a First in every module that counted towards the final classification.  Those modules were glorious: Reading and Studying English Literature (including Wuthering Heights!), The Nineteenth-Century Novel (my favourite, a chance to academically revisit Jane Eyre, and an opportunity to study George Eliot’s Middlemarch – the greatest novel ever written). Twentieth-Century English Literature, and Children’s Literature.  I loved every one.  It was like being given new, much more powerful spectacles.  My understanding of literature, its importance and its power grew and grew.  I will always be grateful to the Open University.

A year before I was due to complete my OU degree I decided to take another career break.  I held a senior position in NHS England. I had rejoined in 2015 but was struggling with the politics of it all so resigned without a job to go to.  I was determined to make the most of this time and, in addition to completing my OU degree, decided to take a Masters in English Studies at the University of Lincoln.  Oh, the sheer joy of it: Twenty-First century poetry, drama and novels, the Nineteenth-Century Woman Writer (Brontës again – this time the wonderful Anne!), Contemporary American Fiction and a dissertation that looked at Gothic fiction’s response to Trump’s election and presidency.  The staff and students made the year a sublime experience.  One that will stay with me always.  I finished with a Distinction.  One of the proudest achievements of my life, second only to the pride and pleasure I take in my two, amazing daughters.

This journey is not over.  In fact it will now never end.  On the 7th December I was offered a part-time place on the University of Lincoln’s English Studies PhD programme.  I begin on the 6th February.

I feel so blessed.  Thanks to a supportive family and the help of so many dedicated teachers and academics I find myself with the continued chance to study a subject I love with all my heart.

The messages:

1. Ignore careers advice.  Study the subjects you love.  Jobs will come regardless of the subject you choose;
2. Never give up.  Never, ever give up;
3. Always keep a place in your life for the Brontë sisters – they’ll never fail you;
4. Oh – and good luck!

NB: This review contains some minor plot spoilers.

‘The blindfold hurts. His inexperience shows in the knot. It’s tight but crude, and has captured a hank of my hair.’[1]

Erin Kelly’s latest novel Stone Mothers, to be published in April 2019, explores incarceration in many of its forms. Consequently Kelly expertly deploys Gothic motifs, themes and devices that were present in the earliest examples of Gothic fiction.

As Alice Cresswell states;

[i]mprisonment and the feeling of isolation is a theme in many gothic texts. In [The Castle of] Otranto, the prison-like nature of the castle is an example of this. Particularly when Isabella tries to escape Manfred; she can never escape the castle and instead must trawl through its winding corridors and underbelly. The fact she cannot escape adds heavily to the suspense filled nature of the novel as we are sure she will be caught.[2]

In Stone Mothers the novel’s unsettling qualities are drawn from the characters’ own physical, mental and emotional imprisonment and feelings of isolation.

The most obvious, physical representation of incarceration is the Nazareth Hospital itself. Earlier known as The East Anglia Pauper Lunatic Asylum, readers encounter Nazareth initially as Park Royal Manor, a newly refurbished residential development in 2018, then a closed and crumbling Mental Hospital in the 1980s, and then finally as an operational mental hospital in the 1950s. Kelly’s narrative, progressing backwards chronologically, peels away the building’s layers, exposing its catastrophic impact upon the lives of those who were bound up with the fate of that institution.

The symbolic nature of Nazareth Hospital is inescapable. It represents a physical manifestation of the many ways in which we are incarcerated as a consequence of societal attitudes, physical and mental ill-health, and the secrets of a past that constantly threatens to resurface. Initial protagonists Marianne Thackeray and Jesse Brame are entrapped by the secrets of their youth, secrets that irresistibly return with the most catastrophic consequences. As Nazareth Hospital’s past is hidden by its refurbishment into Park Royal Manor, Marianne Smy’s impoverished and disadvantaged past identity is hidden by her reinvention as Dr Thackeray, art historian. However, as Nazareth’s past is always just beneath the surface, Marianne’s personal past is never far away. Her Suffolk accent is occasionally evident, a reminder that the secrets of her past are always with her.

Similarly Baroness Helen Greenlaw’s past continues to hold power over her. Her own incarceration in Nazareth in the 1950s as a pregnant, unmarried teenager evokes the imprisonment and isolation that befalls those who lack influence in any given society and at the same time fall foul of contemporary societal norms. The only means of escape available to Helen is to swap the abusive constraints of Nazareth Hospital with the alternative incarceration of marriage to man she doesn’t love or respect.

In many ways all of the novel’s characters are imprisoned and isolated. In the present day Debbie, Marianne’s mother is isolated and incarcerated by her worsening dementia. Jesse Brame is a prisoner of both his disadvantaged background and his obsession with the past. Marianne’s daughter, Honor, is threatened by her mother’s secrets and is constrained by her own mental ill-health.

It is this consistent and powerful engagement with these themes that ensures that Stone Mothers offers both a compelling narrative and an intelligent, coherent use of Gothic devices in order to address the durability of those societal forces that would incarcerate us all.

[1] Erin Kelly, Stone Mothers (London: Hodder & Stroughton, 2019), p. 3.

[2] Alice Cresswell, ‘Gothic Literary Devices’, The Castle of Otranto website edited by Alice Cresswell. Available at https://castleofotranto.wordpress.com/contextual-mini-essays/gothic-literary-devices/ [accessed 15 December 2018], para 3 of 5.