Number 60 - The Heidelberg Cylinder - Jonathan Carro;ll

And number 60 for the year was this excellent novella from Jonathan Carroll.

This is a limited edition, signed by Carroll himself and Dave McKean - the artist responsible for that rather excellent cover. When I bought this, it was the second most expensive book I'd ever bought - and I'm glad to say that a google search shows it's held its value if not put some on.

The story is typical Jonathan Carroll.  A couple are making a drink for the two delivery men who've just dropped off a new fridge when there's a knock at the door.  At the door is what appears to be a pair of god-bothering evangelists.  But these are far from normal.  They claim to have the big answers to everything and say they can prove it, They offer $1000 to each of the four if they're not satisfied with the explanations.

That's when things get weird.  The story moves into the realms of the fantastic very rapidly from then on, magical powers, denizens of  Hell being relocated to small town USA, a guest appearance from Satan himself... This is a great fun little novella.  It's surreal and funny and packed with Carroll's always excellent prose and wit - with an underlying darkness and a complete up in the air ending.

Although I do think recent works by Carroll have kind of fizzled out rather than ending, this one has an almost perfect close.

A jolly good book to end the year on.

Number 59 - Bluebeard - Angela Carter

A cheat read by any other name.

I'm determined to do 60 books this year, and with slightly over a day left, this called for a very short book indeed.

This is a selection of fairy tales retold by Angela Carter. Her collection The Bloody Chamber is one of my favourite collections. Something about the prose in that and the Saints and Sinners collection (Saints and Sinners is also known as Black Venus with minor changes to a couple of the stories) almost makes me feel drunk if I read too much of it.

The stories in this are much more plainly written. they're almost completely straightfoward retellings of popular folk tales.

After her retelling of Bluebeard as the title story in The Bloody Chamber, this very very normal version seems almost a disappointment, although the little comic morals she inserts at the end of the story are witty and gave me a wry smile.

Similarly, the red Riding Hood version here pales compared to it's counterpoint - The Company of Wolves - in The Bloody Chamber collection.  It's nice that the ending isn't the usual happy ending we expect in this story though.

Puss in Boots - another story also told far differently in TBC - is retold here completely straight, although the amorality of the cat in tricking or threatening everyone he meets into doing his will is amusingly highlighted.

The sleeping beauty in the wood - the first half of this is the entirely traditional version we all know, but this then gives us the Prince's half ogre mother who decides she wants to eat Beauty and her two children while the handsome prince (now king) is away in battle.  Not the happy ever after we're used to.

Cinderella is a completely traditional telling with no surprises at all.  Cinders is sickly sweet and nice in this version. It's only the second moral appended to this that gives any kind of subversion.

Ricky with The Tuft - I confess to not knowing this particular fairy tale.  it's an interesting one, highlighting the diference between outer and inner beauty.  I felt very sorry for the plain but clever sister once the beautiful sister became clever.

The Foolish Wishes - the woodcutter who is granted three wishes and loses them all without gaining anything except a black pudding... this has always been a favourite story of mine and this is a funny enough retelling.

I wish this collection had more of Carter's trademark intensity in the prose but I ain't got any ancient gods popping by to grant me that one.

A fun diversion, and good choice for a cheat read.

Only one book left now to get 60 for the year.

Number 58 - 1933 Was a bad Year - John Fante

The last book I read was easily the worst thing I've read this year.  This book goes possibly to the opposite extreme.

A late contender for my book of the year.

I only picked this up in Waterstones last week because A - it was thin, B - the title was intriguing and C - the Bukowski quote on the cover.  I'd never heard of Fante before and that is entirely my loss. This guy could really write. Anyone that Bukowski quotes as inspiration, you expect a high standard. And I certainly wasn't disppointed.

Fante wrote with a clear and concise style, it's almost poetic in places.  It's funny in a very droll way, beautifully descriptive without ever leaving you feeling like there are wasted words on the page. I could see young Dom and his family.  I could almost smell the linament he obsessively uses on "the Arm". The sense of place in the tenement block where he shares a cramped three bedroom apartment with his parents, his Gran and his three younger siblings was amazing.

Dominic Molise is a 17 year old boy, son of an Italian immigrant bricklayer, gifted with the greatest southpaw pitching arm in the Midwest. He tells us it is at any rate.  So does his best friend Kenny, one of the rich kids from across town who he plays baseball with regularly. They have a plan to skip this dead end town and try out for the major leagues.

This is as perfect as writing gets. Humorous yet quietly devastating.  Every character is fleshed out and believable, the dialogue sparkles and the ending left me wanting more.  Sadly, as this very short novel was published posthumously, it strikes me that there probably isn't a follow up.

This book manages to encompass an examination of friendship, awkward coming of age, first crushes, familial love and sacrifice, comedy and tragedy in a mere 100 pages, which flowed past as is it was only 20 the prose is so lucid.

I was wiping a few tears away in the closing pages of this book.  One of the most moving pieces of literature I've read in many years.

Easy 9/10 - should have been longer.

Number 57 - Christmas Slaughter by Mark Grant

I read this book so you don't have to.

I really must learn. I thought this would be a good trashtastic quick read for Christmas.

Trash is a definite.  It's really not as good as that cover seems to suggest it might be. And I know that's a piss poor cover.

I think this book is aiming at some type of satire and isn't meant to be serious.  I really hope it's not meant to be serious - the rebel organisation is called Free American Revoltianry troops for crying out loud.  However, there is the very slight problem that it's just not bloody funny either.

Apparently Mark Grant was a pseudonym shared out between authors by Avon books in the late 80s/early 90s.  The series this book belongs to was started off by David Bischoff - actually a name I've heard of, and someone whose name I've seen on a few well regarded novelisations of popular movies. Mid-series on the Mutant Amok books (this is apparently number 5 in that series) he handed the reins over to Bruce King - who is clearly guilty of this piece of crap writing.

To read this book is an act of unalloyed, conscious  masochism.  In fact, even the old Baron De Masoch would probably have balked at being asked to complete this book. It starts badly, and disintegrates as it moves on.  Every weapon the characters use is described in intimate detail, as is the ammunition, and range and damage it can inflict. True weapon porn.  When it moves into actual sex porn in later chapters it's unutterably bad and possibly the least erotic fiction I've read ever in my life.

 There truly is no level on which this book actually works. As a thriller, it's not thrilling. As a comedy, it's not funny. As sci-fi it fails. As horror it's just not the least scary. As gore, it's not even that gory and as literature it scores in the negatives.

I only know of one writer worse than this. At least Mr Bruce King has a basic grasp of grammar and a rudimentary knowledge of basic plotting. the best thing that can be said about this book is that it has a beginning a middle and an end.  Not a good beginning, middle and end, but they are there. And I was so glad to reach the end of this.

a clear 0/10 for this.  I'm guessing this will be the worst book this year.

Number 56 - The 39 Steps - John Buchan

Only a few days left till the end of the year, and I figure I can hit 60 if I stick to thin books like this one.

This is of course the basis for teh Afred Hitchcock film of the same name.  Published in 1915, it's credited as inventing the entire genre of the spy novel.Therefore it's an important, if rather slim, volume.

I'd love to say that I think it's better than the film and everyone should rush out and read it but I can't. It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination but does it deserve the classic status?

It's well paced, the story moves at a fast clip but the action rarely takes off.  The big action set pieces we associate with this story seem to be unique to the filmed versions, especially the Big Ben finale.  In fact the eponymous steps barely make an appearance in the book.  They're mentioned briefly about halfway through, but don't reappear as a plot point until very late on.

There isn't really much in the way of action, there's lots of running and hiding, and a few disguises but precious little in the way of actually trying to solve his problems - at least until the closing chapters, where the biggest problem, the dead man in his apartment and him as lead suspect, has solved itself in any case. He's a very reactive, rather than a proactive, protagonist (a retagoinist?) 

Some bits of the story have aged very badly, several mentions of the Jew conspiracy for example.  As a cardr carrying member of the Labour Party I''d be unable to recommend this book unreservedly purely for the antisemitism on display from the good guys.

Considering the book was published a year into WWI and set the same year, the story seems to be ignorant of the history of the period, and the world war hasn't yet started... I can only assume it was written a couple of years earlier and took time to get published.

It was still a solid enough read, as long as you could allow for when it was written.  It's certainly a product of its time.

6/10

Number 55 - Glorious Beasts by Gary McMahon

I was very priveleged to be asked to beta read the new novella by Gary McMahon.  Since it's not seen publication yet (although it certainly will early in the new year) there is currently no cover photo to post - so here is a picture of the glorious beast who wrote the novella himself.

Glorious beasts is a post apocalyptic weird western monster story.  A mishmash of genres like that can be a disaster in the wrong hands. But McMahon is a fine writer at the best of times and this is one of my favourites of his stories to date.

There are shades of Cormac McCarthy in the central relationship between the lead character Cable and his son Walker  as they take on a quest to search for a missing baby. The baby was stolen from its mother in the middle of the night, I don't want to even hint at the reasons for the abduction as I've promised to not leave any spoilers on this.

In a very small number of pages, McMahon gives us a mystical journey through a bizzarre and thoroughly real feeling world into a true nightmare. Despite the fanatastical elements (of which there are many) the world building McMahon has achieved is convincing throughout.  The flawed and damaged Cable is an unusual hero ands the future world seen through his eyes is a bleak place indeed with very few avenues for hope.The end of the quest is horror purified and refined and spat in our faces with full force. 

This story has lots to say about father/son relationships, and the reasons that people carry on despite everything. All this in a mere 56 pages (including title pages on the word document).

When this is published, I will ensure I edit this to include the location where you and I can buy it from.

Easily 8/10 for me.

Number 54 - Fevre Dream by George RR Martin

Some people may notice a link between this and the last two books I read.  Three books, effectively the same title - as different as bright pink chalk and a moldy gorgonzola.  This has been an extremely rewarding themed read.

Fifteen years before A Song of Ice and Fire was published, George RR Martin published this - a story of bloodsuckinmg fiends on the riverboats of the southern states of America.

It's been languishing in my collection for many years and I kept meaning to pick it up and read it but never quite did.  I loved his collection of short stories, Songs the Dead Men Sing, and couldn't quite get into The Armageddon Rag when I tried it.  After reading this, I will have to try again.

We are introduced to Captain Abner Marsh, a riverboat captain down on his luck.  Most of his boats have just been destroyed by poor weather and his one remaining ship isn't something he can easily turn a dollar on.  He needs a break.  That's when he meets the mysterious Joshua York, a stranger who offers to go into partnership with him and who will build him the finest steamboat the river has ever seen.

There are some caveats to the deal, including not asking any questions about York or his behaviour, nut Marsh goes along with it. Of course he lives to regret the decision.

This book builds the tension from the first page.  The cover kind of tells us what York's big secret is, but there's much more to it than that. I found myself consistrently wrong-footed by the story.  It never quite went down the alley I expected.  The vampires are different from the ones we're used to from the many many Dracula variants on the bloodsuckers myth.  I laughed out loud when York made the point that Vlad Tepes (aka the impaler) was certainly NOT a vampire.

The historical detail feels real and well researched without ever bogging the story down. The period is very well realised and the characters are all truly convincing.

I wish I'd read this book many years ago.  It's now right up at the top of my favourite vampire novels, along with SP Somtow's Vampire Junction, and TM Wright's The Last Vampire.  A truly original take on a hoary old cliched subject.

Number 53 - Fever Dream - Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch

The observant people might spot a link between this book and number 52...

This is a short story collection featuring 6 Robert Bloch tales and 4 by Ray Bradbury. As a sign of how long this has been on my shelves, I bought it for 5p in a second-hand shop. At least it has 5p written on the first page of the book.

Just take a moment to appreciate that cover art.  They certainly don't make them like that any more.

It opens with The Shadow from the Steeple - a Bloch story. This is Bloch in full blown copying Lovecraft mode.  This story is actually a sequel of sorts to Lovecraft's The Haunter in tthe Dark - this is explicitly referenced in the text, complete with a run down of the plot for those who haven't read it.  I'm not 100% certain if this is a pastiche or if it's supposed to be serious. It does blow apart the plot hole at the end of the story it follows from. Our central character goes looking for the survivor of the HPL tale and things don't go amazingly well for him. It opens with a lovely introduction to a taxi driver, which lasts about a page and a half, but then he's never seen again and we're told he was the last person to see his passenger (a mr Fiske) alive, followed by a flashback to the original tale and Fisque's quest to find Dr Dexter and the eventual meeting.It's entertaining but too slavish to HPL and feels very dated indeed.

Next up - The Watchers - Ray Bradbury - A classic story featuring a man convinced that insects are spying on him and out to kill him because he thinks he knows their plan.  There is a fairly gruesome twist at the end of this one.  This one also wears a HPL influence proudly on its sleeve and also feels dated, though far less so than the preceding story. I don't know how much of an influence this was of Stephen King's Creepshow segment regarding a very similar phobic lead character.

Back to Bloch with The Grinning Ghoul - I might have enjoyed this story more 30 years ago.  Another one that feels horribly dated.  It hasn't aged well at all, a very predictable story about a psychiatrist whose latest patient's tale of subterrenean beasties turns out to be all too real.  there are some nicely creepy sections but the structure of the story is not great and half the story could have been cut.  The shock ending is barely worthy of the name.

Sticking with Bloch - Mannikins of Horror - the best of the Bloch stories so far.  I think this was the basis for one of the segments in the Amicus portmanteau film Asylum (also written by Bloch so fairly likely) although the Amicus version doesn't have entrly the same plot as this one.  An inmate in an asylum has been making incredibly realistic clay models, so realistic they start moving. This is good, gruesome and fairly original. Some of the imagery is still stuck in my head 4 days after reading it, always a good sign.

The title story, Fever Dream by Bradbury.  This has long been one of my favourite Ray Bradbury stories. As many times as I've read it, the sense of creeping nightmare never fails.  This is a possession tale like no other.  A sick boy lying in bed feels bits of him suddenly stop belonging to himself. This one sends shivers down my spine every time.  As long as it's still my spine, I suppose I should be happy. The ending is well nigh perfect.

The Druidic Doom - Bloch again on another slavish HPL impersonation.  This starts by telling us our central character - the unlikelily named Sir Charles Hovoco, new owner of the Nedwick estates -  is going to die and then spends many many pages giving us the back story for the new landowner's land, and in particular about the old altar he finds on one of his walks before finishing him off.  In 20 pages, Sir Charles, our alleged lead character appears on maybe 5, mostly in the early part of the story, just to ask about a part of his land. Again, not a great story,

The Dead Man - Ray Bradbury - I'm sure I must have read this one before (I have literally every Ray Bradbury collection available except for Dark carnival), but I couldn't remember it at all.  This is a quirky little gem of a story.  I'm still not entirely convinced that farmers in small town America go to see a manicurist at their local barber shop, but it may have been a tradition at some point, I don't know.  That minor point apart, this story of Odd Martin who believes he's dead and takes to lying in the street for hours on end is beautifully done.  We get very little from his point of view, the vast majority of this story is through the eyes of the townspeople watching him and his odd behaviour and his unlikely finding of love. In just 21 pages Bradbury manages to paint the town and several of it's people in loving detail, and provides a hell of a good ending too, creepy and moving all at the same time.

A Question of Etiquette - Bloch - the new best Bloch story in the collection.  This one has barely dated.  A census taker knocks on the door of the latest house on his rounds and meets a captivating stranger who - erm - takes him captive through witchcraftery means and takes him to a meeting with the devil.  This is so well done, it restored my faith in Bloch as a writer.  Told in crisp prose, free of the HPL type embelishmets, this story twists and turns its way through to the ending it deserves.

The Handler - Bradbury - One of Bradury's more gruesome horror stories.  A mortician likes to take his revenge on the inhabitants of his town after their deaths.  Lucky for him there are very few open casket burials in his hown.Unluckily for him, revenge can come from any source in a Bradbury story.  I seem to recall reading somewhere that Bradbury disowned some of his early work for being too unpleasant, and this was one of those.  However it's another old favourite of mine with delightful poetic justice dished out to pretty much anyone alive or dead in the story.

The Man who Cried Wolf! - Bloch - A man decides to convince his wife she's mad with the assistance of a local lady werewolf.  A fine story to end on, even though there is an irritating plot hole in the final couple of pages.

Overall this is a very good collection indeed.  If you're a fan of Lovecraft imitations, you will probably get more mileage from a few of the Bloch tales than I did.

Number 52 - Fever Dream - Samanta Schweblin

This was my latest cheat read to get the numbers up.  Found it in Waterstones, thought it sounded interesting and it was dead short.

But is it any good?

The title sums it up very nicely indeed - although the original title in Spanish was The Rescue Distance (the spanish equivalent of that obviously). I'm not sure which title is better.  The Spanish title suits the book very well - possibly more appropriate than the English title - but only really makes sense as a title when you've read the book, whereas Fever Dream wwas a title that caught my attention (for various reasons)  The rescue distance is the distance Amamnda keeps between herself and her daughter Nina at all times.

This is a book that deserves to be read in one sitting.  It takes the form of a conversation between Amanda and David.  Amanda is apparently in a hospital bed with David sitting by her side, trying to get her to talk about some unspecified happening, the thing that brought them here to the emergency clinic.

The tension ratchets up and up with no letting go from the beginning.  It's a shame I had to go back to work and concentrate on other things repeattedly in the last couple of days while I was reading this.  I will be setting aside a free few hours at some point for a reread of this, to get the full effect.

The translation is excellent. The atmosphere is about as claustrophobic as I can remember a book this short ever being. The hints and foreshadowing are masterfully done with a nice level of ambiguity  as well. The layers of the story buid and overlap, painting a genuine fever dream. I get the feeling this will terrify most parents of young children.

It's very difficult to put down.  We need to know what the event was, what is it about the worms or the things very much like worms. What is it David wants to know, and does Amanda actually know better than him?

Highly recommended.

Number 51 - Kissing the Bee - Kathe Koja

My second Kathe Koja of the year.

I made a few comments in the blog about the last Koja novel I read to the effect that romance is my least favourite genre. But goddammit I loved Kink even though that is ostensibly the book's main genre if you had to pigeonhole it.

I wish she'd stop doing this to me.  This book is a young adult novel about two best friends at high school, Dana and Avra.  Dana, the narrator, is madly in love with Avra's boyfriend, Emil, but doesn't want to admit it.Truly the  stuff of the most normal of soap operas.  This is not the type of stuff I normally like to read.

However, because of Kathe Koja's writing, I fully symapathised with Dana, wondered why she wanted to hang with Avra in any case (despite undertanding exactly why)  and really wanted to know where the story was going. The will-they-won't-they was actually important to me while I read this book.

It isn't written in the normal stream of consiousness that the last few Koja novels I've read have been.  The prose is much plainer and grammatical, but still just as compelling and emotional. The relationships between the three central characters are etched razor sharp on the page. Dana makes for a genuinely likeable protagonist.

As an extra layer to the story, we have segments from the project Dana is writing about bees for her Bio class. These serve to highlight and mirror the emotional story, as well as providing some interesting informaion about our buzzing little friends.

It's only a short book and a very fast read and well recommended despite being in my least favourite genre.  I can't even say this one comes close to psychological horror the way that Kink did.

A solid 7/10

Number 50 - If Cats Disappeared From the World - Genki Kawamura

Anyone who knows me will know exactly why this book practically threw itself off the shelves at me in Waterstones at the weekend.  Look at that cute lickle kitty!!!

It doesn't really show in the picture but the writing and the circles round its eyes are reflective so they glint in the light.  I think it's almost as purpose built as a cover could be to catch my eye.

Anyway, I'd never heard of Genki Kawamura before but the storyline seemed interesting and it's really quite short - two points in its favour.

The story concerns our narrator, a young unnamed postman in an unnamed town in Japan.  He's told he has an inoperable brain tumour and only weeks to live at the very most. He gets home from the hospital to find the devil waiting for him with an offer.  He can have an extra day of life if he agrees to let something else disappear from the world.

So begins a week of Faustian bargains with different things being taken each day in payment for his next.  As it says on the back cover though, he never thought the bargains might affect his cat - Cabbage.

Whereas Gilead tried to be deep and meaningful but forgot to put a story in to weave the philosophical musings around, this manages the deep and meaningful without letting go of the storyline, and manages to keep the tone of the story breezy and fresh regardless of how potentially depressing it could be. 

It's a very funny book, as well as being a deeply moving and enjoyable meditation of what it is that actually makes our lives worth living. I was genuinely wiping away a tear or two by the end of the book.  Although the prose isn't as accomplished as Gilead (possibly due to the translation), it's a much easier and lighter read without the sense of self importance that pervaded Marilynne Robinson's alleged masterpiece.

Thematically it covers a lot of the same subjects - parent/child relationships are front and centre in this story.  As well as feline/human servant relationships.  It's even written in the form of an extended letter, just like Gilead was. The story bounces through the narrator's memories, building a powerful and real picture of his life.

Even the supporting characters are well drawn.  If I was to make any negative criticism of this book, it's that the things he removes are guaranteed to impact harder on his close friends and family members, but this is an issue that's never really touched on.

I will definitely be reading more by this author, and looking for a copy of the film I just found out exists.

an easy 8.5/10

Number 49 Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

This was this month's book group book.  I'd never heard of Marilynne Robinson before this was named for this month's read.

Apparently this took 24 years to write and won her the Pulitzer - the book starts with three pages of ecstatic reviews of this book. It must be the masterpiece the Sunday times claims it to be on the front cover then...

There certainly is a lot to admire about this book.  The prose is genuinely good.  It flows smoothly and reads easily. The characterisation of our narrator is excellent and totally believable.

However, and this is a huge however, it's not a particularly fun book to read.  There is no real story.  The lead character is an elderly pastor in small town America.  He's only apparently left the town of Gilead twice, once with his father to fnd his Grandfather's grave in the depths of Kansas (one of the most interesting segments of the book) and his time in seminary. Now he's old and close to death and writing a letter to his young son to read after his death.

Ninety percent of this book is his philosophical musings on the nature of god and the meaning of life and why are we here and is this young man (his Godson) who has recently returned to town after a twenty year absence getting too friendly with his wife?

I have no objection to books where very little happens.  Jon McGregor writes these all the time and I love them.  Jon McGregor can make the mundane seem like the most important thing in the world.  He manages to discuss the bigger questions in his books by concentrating on the small.  Marilynne Robinson goes straight for the big stuff for most of the book and IMHO the book suffers as a consequence.

There are good bits, any time he's telling stories about his grandfather, the interest quotient increases exponentially. There are occasional flashes of humour - nothing laugh out loud funny, but a few wry smiles.  And, as mentioned, the writing is good.  She can tell a good story if she wants to.  So why doesn't she?

There are hints of a wider plot, of things happening that the narrator is building up to telling us, but he never does. Is John Ames Boughton actually his biological son.  He might be.  But there's no clarity given on the issue.  Is John Ames Boughton too close to the clergyman's wife.  He might be.  But there's no clarity given on the matter.  Did he know the clergyman's wife before she came to town?  He might have done, but....

The lack of clarity becomes extremely frustrating for this particular reader.  The lack of anything resembling an actual storyline is particularly frustrating.  We get a very nice insight into the life of this man in his tiny outpost in a practical ghost town. It's all very worthy.  There are some bon-mots to be found.  But no frigging story.

I was glad I finished this book, there was one section when we heard JAB's backstory where it looked like something particularly interesting might happen.  but it didn't.  Our narrator simply rethought his feelings about JAB and all was good with the town of Gilead - well all was good in the narrator's head at any rate and all was forgiven.

A disappointing 6/10 - for the prose alone,

Number 48 - And Cannot come Again - Simon Bestwick

I seem to be only reading books with great covers recently.

This one is the new short story collection by an ex-local writer to me - the rare talent that is Mr Simon Bestwick.

Due to issues with the publishing house - just google ChiZine Publications if you want an idea of what those problems are - this book may not be particularly easy to get hold of for a while. Simon has asked for people not to buy the ChiZine edition because of the issues - and he is seeking a new home for the collection.

I hope he finds one soon, or that ChiZine can clean their house sufficiently to be trusted, because this is a fantastically good collection of stories that deserves a much larger readership.

It opens with an introduction by one of Simon's greatest influences and mentor - the one and only Ramsey Campbell - who offers his own insight into the stories without any spoilers - something I hope to emulate.

You may have noticed the front cover reads "Tales of Childhood, regret. and innocence lost. And these are themes that recur throughout the 15 stories in this book. It's not an upbeat selection of tales by any stretch of the imagination although it's certainly not without a smattering of humour where needed (usually almost as black as humour can be before it's indistinguishable from something entirely different). A couple of stories feature plot twists that, in lesser hands, would have seem trite and cliched, but in the assured hands of Mr Bestwick they work.  They scare us, move us  and disturb us.

On to the stories then...

Dermot - this story is one of the sickest openings to a collection I've seen in a long long time. The locations are drawn perfectly.  I know the bus stop where the story begins very well. We're introduced to our title character, sitting, first waiting for and then on, the bus to his destination. Something about him makes people queasy and dirty.  The first couple of pages left me wanting to wash my hands, or my brain. The scene then shifts to a strange unit at the local police station, the officers are waiting for a visitor with some information. The end of this story is pretty much the definition of horror.

Beneath the Sun - A boy grieving the loss of his mother has a strange encounter with something not human on the moors near his home.Again the landscape is fantastically well realised, distorted through the boy's grief as it is. This is one of the shortest tales in the book but is just as effective as any of the longer ones.  The ending is poignant and shocking.

The Moraine - In this one, the landscape IS the bad thing.  Our unlucky bickering couple are lost on the moors when they hear a dog barking in the mist. From that point on the terror is unstoppable.  This one is so tense that my fingers almost left gouge marks on the cover.  A variant on Tremors (although we never know exactly what is under there) that works brilliantly well

Comfort your dead - a moving story of love that can't be allowed to happen.  as this story moves on we feel glimmers of hope for the narrator - but this is a Simon Bestwick story and the ending pulls the rug out from under our feet.

The School House -  the longest story so far. A nightmare that flits between a mental hospital where a junior member of staff reluctantly agrees to help with a new guest - an ex schoolfriend - and flashbacks to the school they both attended.  Both locations are equally horrific and the gradual reveal of the plot is excellent. This is by turns moving and difficult to read (for all the right reasons) and downright scary.

Left Behind - A young man is offered a chance to leave the neighbourhood he grew up in, but what will he need to sacrifice to leave this place behind? The answer was... unpredictable. This one completely blindsided me.

Hushabye - I do have an issue with this story.  The geography of Salford is wrong.  You can't turn off Langworthy road directly onto Brindleheath. Other than the geographical error, this is a strong tale of a man who stumbles across a weird creature that's been attacking local children, and his subsequent hunt to catch it and save any other children.

A Small Cold Hand - a deeply emotional story of grief and how it haunts people. I can't say much more in case of spoilers, but this is one of my favourites in the collection.

The Proving ground - proving that less is more, this tells more in the gaps in the narrative than in the details we're given.  Extremely unpleasant and disturbing - which as usual - that's a good thing here. 

Angels of the Silences - a pair of dead girls roaming the streets of Manchester watching out for and protecting the gang they hung with before they were murdered. The two ghost girls are great company to ride along with in this novella.  The story does follow a fairly predictable route but is no less fun for that.  We feel happy and sad and whatever else that arch-manipulator Simon wants us to feel on behalf of the two goth ghost girls.

And Dream of Avalon - A man goes on a trip down memory lane - not the right thing to do in a Bestwick story, even if the memories are, remarkably, fairly positive in this one. This is one of those stories that demonstrates that fresh talent can breathe life into an overused trope.

Winters end - A heartwarming love story, except for the strange things that haunt the narrator's beloved and throw possibly insurmountable barriers into the relationship. This features the central character from Hushabye, having slightly more fun than he had in his first outing - well at the start of the story at least.

They Wait - the terror of growing old and the terror of disenfranchised youth meet in this story.  Another powerful and moving tale.

The children of Moloch - A truly nasty story, set in another horrific public school.  Two children turn to the supernaatural for help to escape their tormentors. The misery inflicted human to human in this story is easily as shocking as any supernatural revenge that gets dished out.

And Cannot Come Again  - our title story has all the trappings of a ghost/supernatural monster story. A man is called back to the town where he spent his summers as a child to face the repercussions of his actions twenty years earlier.  Again this story uses a fractured timeline between the events of the past and modern day. Again the gradual reveal of the story is masterful. The use of foreshadowing and backshadowing (is that a thing?) is a real pleasure to read, and the ending is as emotional as it is scary.

The writing is clear and concise throughout,  and occasionally deeply metaphorical but without ever risking alienating a casual reader. These stories often feature deeper resonances and layers of meaning without ever bogging down the surface stories. That takes real talent.

I really hope that the issues behind this publication can be sorted out.  This is a fantastic collection without a single weak story.  A Small Cold Hand and They Wait were the standouts for me from a very good collection indeed.

Number 47 - The Reddening - Adam Nevill

First of all, check out that cover.  This book is an object of dark beauty, as are the other books from the Ritual Ltd range.  The binding and the even the paper used is of top quality on this hardback edition. For a book lover, this really is the sort of quality workmanship I love to see and feel. Books like this are the reason that kindles can never be good enough.

On to the story.  Is it as good as the cover promises?

I first became aware of Adam Nevill a few years ago through his novel The Ritual (you may have seen the film last year if you haven’t read the book). I immediately placed that book in my top ten horror reads of all time.  Nevill displayed he could capture perfectly the horror of being chased by an unseen thing, and, in the second half of the book, of being held captive.  I quickly sought out and read his back catalogue. Since then it’s a frustrating wait between books.  He doesn’t churn out three per year like Stephen King.  These books are honed to perfection.

I’ve never been less than impressed with any of his work.  This one is no exception.

It starts with something I’ve never seen in any of Adam’s books before – in the first three chapters we have a selection of Shreddies. I’m not sure if that’s official terminology in the publishing world or not but a Shreddie (in my world) is a character who appears for one chapter and exists for no other reason than to be killed horribly by the bad thing. This being an Adam Nevill book, these aren’t your typical shreddies and their deaths do have repercussions, helping draw the attention of the central characters to what’s going on.  

The story begins at a slow burn after the initial bouts of violence (and indeed even those bouts of violence are set years apart).  We’re introduced first to Kat and her boyfriend Steve, a journalist at a local magazine and a photographer, looking at a cave system recently uncovered by a rockfall where gruesome discoveries from history have been made.

Next we’re introduced to Helene, whose brother has also gone missing in the ominous countryside surrounding the towns of Redstone and Divilmouth.  He’d recorded some weird noises in the caves and quarries in the area shortly before his death.

The characters meet and their fates become inextricably entwined as they get pulled one by one into the conspiracy surrounding the caves and the local towns. The net closes around the three of them, and hope is slowly but surely extinguished as the scale of the forces around them becomes clear.

Around the halfway mark we see one of the most nightmarish scenes yet in a Nevill book (and that is truly an achievement) followed by a gear shift into a fast paced and gruesome thriller.  The hope so cruelly denied in the first half is teasingly offered, but is it for real?  The Red Folk have a long reach, and what are those creatures beneath the ground?

This book is a shining example of why I read horror fiction.  Adam Nevill builds atmosphere better than any other writer that springs to mind immediately and in this book proves he can ladle in the gore with the best of them as well.

Easy 9/10

This book is available via Amazon or through the Ritual Ltd website. 

/https://www.adamlgnevill.com/ritual-limited-shop/

 

Number 46 - TV Snorted my Brain - Bradley Sands

With a cover as batshit crazy insane as this one, how could I refuse when I found it in my favourite second hand book shop for only a fiver.

Let's face it, this cover fucking rules.

The book opens with a long list of things that fucking rule - including anarchy, riots and peewee girls  football, and riots at pee wee girls football.

Our narrator is Artie Pendragon, a young man who epitomises teenage angst and anger.  A well he might.  His little sister is literally the epitome of evil, and the daughter of his uncle - thanks to a swingers party we're informed about, said uncle is now his step-dad after marrying his mom less than three months after his dad died in a riot at a pee-wee schoolgirl's football game.

As we're informed of this point Artie also tells us that crying isn't very anarchist and actually riots at pee wee schoolgirl's football matches fucking suck.  they don't fucking rule.

Thus ends chapter one.

Back home, the tv remote control - the excalibur 3000 doesn't work. Not that Artie has tried it, TV isn't anarchist.  When he tries to rob the batteries out of it to help make a pipe bomb to blow up his school and all the kids that pick on him on a daily basis, he accidentally pushes a button and is sucked into the TV set along with his mum and uncle/new dad and his sister.

Merlin informs him that he is the king of TV land as the only person who can operate the Excalibur 3000. from then on in, things get weird.  I would have been disappointed if they hadn't - with that cover on the book.

After his Uncle usurps his throne and his beautiful new wife, he has to go on a quest to find the holy grail in order to learn how to properly use the remote.

It's written in very short and snappy sentences for the whole novella. This does wear a bit thin in places.  The repeated lines throughout the story just about stay as a fun stylistic thing and avoids tipping over into being an irritating feature.

I raced through this in a few hours. It's weird and bizarre fun. I will be ordering his other works as they look to be great litte cheat reads. Hardly great literature, but certainly great fun.

Number 45 - My Best Friend's Exorcism - Grady Hendrix

My choice of book group book for Halloween.  Also my first Grady Hendrix novel.

You could accuse it of being a bandwagon chaser, following on from the success of the 80's nostalgia boom in horror at the moment, epitomised by the recent It chapter 1 movie and Stranger Things, but if it is, it's still damned good. And, looking at the copyright date, it was actually published in 2016, which means written the year before, so theaccusation doesn't hold water in any case.

I'm clearly late to the party on this one and this book could well have been one of the instigators of the current craze.

That cover is a thing of beauty and perfectly captures the spirit of the book. It's a glorious tribute to all the old teen horrors of the 80s.  A great coming of age story, centered on a likeable if occasionally bitchy group of friends at the top of the school's popularity charts.

Of course it's a posh school and our central character (Abby) is only there on a scholarship, her best friend of the title (Gretchen)  is one of the richest kids in the school, with extremely overprotective parents but still a bit of a rebel. With two more friends, Margaret and Glee, to round out the quartet of school queens, the scene is set.

After a disasterous experiment with some stolen drugs, Gretchen vanishes for the night.  When she's found in the morning she's not quite herself. And things get a lot worse before they get better. Gretchen complains of things touching her all the time and voices following her. It's so bad she can't bring herself to change her clothes or shower because of the invisble things touching her.  Then suddenly, she's better. She seems to recover and indeed is hotter and more confident than ever before. That's when the evil really hits top gear.


There's little to no real gore in this book, but a revelation regarding milkshakes was truly repulsive in an excellent way.  it's a while since a book has grossed me out quite as much as on of the chapters here.

Every chapter heading is the title of a classic 80s tune and the whole thing has the atmosphere of those old movies captured to the t.

This is deeper than it sounds, and amidst the mayhem and the betrayals, there's a moving examination on friendship, how it forms and how far will you go for friends? Particularly when they're doing the things happening in this book.

I genuinely wiped a tear or two away when I finished this. It could well be a contender for book of the year. I will certaily be tracking down evrything I can find by mr Hendrix. This is right up there with the best of Stephen King.

Number 41 - A Prescription for Murder- Norman Robbins

OK, so this is the play I was just involved in.  It probably counts as books forty one through seventy something considering how often I've read it in the past six weeks or so.

The story follows Barbara Forth,  a doctor's wife in a quiet village in the south of England. She's been constantly ill since the wedding although all experts say there's nothing wrong with her.  One day a stranger pops in for a visit (this was my character) wanting to speak to his ex fiance who he believes is married to Dr Forth. Except his ex fiance was called Grace Walker and no one in the house has heard of her.  He assumes he found the wrong Dr Forth and leaves, very embarassed. The good doctor also claims never to have heard of  Grace and is angry at the insinuation.

So why does Barbara then find a book on their shelves with an inscription that reads "To my darling Richard, lots of love Grace"?

That's the starting point for an entertaining enough story in which Barbara becomes more and more convinced that her husband is a bluebeard type character, leaving strings of dead women in his wake and collecting the insurances or just emptying their bank accounts. Is she his next victim?

The story is interesting and has some difficult to spot twists and turns. It is rather too wordy in several places though which makes it rather more difficult to learn than many plays I've been involved with.

Some examples of over-wordiness - when Dr Forth is telling his potential lover/stalker/(red herring?) about Barbara's illnesses and all the tests she's been through, instead of saying, "I've had every expert I know check her out, from Hospital A, Hospital B and even hospital C", the doctor lists six different doctors along with the hospital that they each work at - making for a long speech with a ton of totally irrelevant information in it.

In my first scene, I had to repeat the same information twice in a sequence of fairly long and quite similar speeches but just different enough that getting them mixed in my head was an issue.

When Eric returns the day after his embaressment, he tells of a misadventure the previous night where a car nearly hit him and drove off. In response to this, instead of saying "Oh well, at least you weren't hurt. I'll just go make the tea", Barbara gives a whole Daiily Mail editorial about the way the state treats criminals too lightly before going to the kitchen.

In fact pretty much every character in the show has at least one Daily mail editorial that they spout randomly at some point. I think the author's own politics may well be on show in this play and not subtly.

In the final scene, the village gossip comes in and gives information to the housekeeper.  After she leaves, the same information is repeated to Barbara by the housekeeper.  It felt like padding and the scene would have been so much tighter if both characters were told by the gossip at the same time. The housekeeper also goes from being suspicious of the doctor while the gossip is talking to her, to defending the doctor's name when Barbara repeats the same suspicions a few minutes later. It felt like clumsy writing and out of character for the housekeeper.  Fortunately, the actresses in the roles were convincing enough I don't think the audience will have shared those concerns and I'm probably just overanalysing the scene.

Overall it's not the strongest piece of writing, but a talented cast can (and did) make it work.