Lost Estates, by Mark Valentine

 

"There would be tokens and talismans of the true country ..." 

--- from "The House of Flame"

9781783800476

Swan River Press, 2024

198 pp

hardcover

It's no secret that Mark Valentine is one of my favorite writers and now, with Swan River's publication of Lost Estates, I've added another gem of a book to my collection of his works.  If you haven't yet bought a copy, go to Swan River Press  and get one now. Seriously. 

In an insightful and informative conversation between this author and writer John Kenny, Valentine pleads "not guilty" to labeling the stories in this collection as "folk horror."  He would rather use the term "borderland" or "otherworld" stories, which he 

"came upon in contemporary 1923 reviews of Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair and Visible and Invisible by E.F. Benson,"

saying that these were "terms then in use and understood for occult and supernatural fiction."   In Valentine's opinion, "they do convey better the sense that can sometimes be felt in certain places of being close to a different realm."    I like it.  

It's not long into the first story before this notion of "being close to a different realm" makes itself known.  "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" finds our narrator leaving the train at Abbotsbury, where he has come at the invitation of a Mr. Winterbourne, with whom he had been corresponding about Winterbourne's "house and its particular custom" as part of his research.   The train was only the first part of the journey; he still has a five-mile walk to make, which he doesn't mind.  It is as "the grey chalk of dust" was being drawn across the day" that he felt not only a "change come over the country" through which he was traveling, but also a gradual sense of passing "into a different sort of space, a pause in the usual order of things."  The feeling lasts for only a moment, but "the impression lingered..."  He eventually makes his way via the hand-drawn map he was given to an old and somewhat shabby Georgian house where he and the owner discuss the unusual "rent" on the place.  It seems that that his family holds this place "from the King in return for a service or duty."   The narrator offers his opinions about the history of this particular sort of "custom," but what he doesn't realize is that before his visit ends, the rent is about to come due.  This story is absolutely fascinating, not just for the weird elements and the lore, but for me it's much more about the historical components and especially the yews.    "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" happens to be one of my favorite tales, but it's  another longer story at the end, "The Fifth Moon," that takes my number one spot,  pondering the lost treasure of King John.  As part of the Hambledon's Mysteries of History series that explores "historical mysteries" that also features the local landscape, a writer takes on the disappearance of  the wagons and carts ("the baggage train") carrying treasures belonging to King John in 1612 that were traveling through The Wash, an estuary in the marshy area along the West Norfolk coast of the North Sea.  The story goes that John had arrived at King's Lynn (at the time known as Bishop's Lynn) where his entourage had divided into two groups. The King and one group took the safer but longer road around through Wisbech heading for their destination, while the other took a "short cut" heading for Sutton across the estuary in a spot that was "passable for a few hours at low tide," getting stuck and sinking "into the salty mire."  Taking along a photographer, and temporarily borrowing another friend's old houseboat that had been beached on the marshes as a base,  the writer makes his way to the area where he points out that "out there ... if the tales be true, lies the most fabulous hoard ever known." While investigating the landscape and the story for themselves, the plan is also for the two to interview a couple of local "experts" on the lost treasure for their opinions on the matter.  But it isn't long before another, much darker, diabolical account of the story crops up that is vastly different than any they've heard.  It is a stunner of a story, and I was so taken with it that right away on finishing it  I made an intense trip down the rabbit hole for anything connected to the lost treasure of King John and the area of the Wash itself.  Just as an FYI, by way of more explanation about Valentine's interest in the subject, check out this article written by Valentine for Wormwoodiana.   

from Meandering Through Time

Between these two outstanding tales, there are ten more, and while won't go into all of them, there are a few I'll highlight,  beginning with "Worse Things Than Serpents."  At a crossroads with a signpost offering "Church" one way and "Garden" the other, the narrator of this story examines the church first, since "Norfolk churches are usually worth stopping for," then afterwards decides to go on to the garden.  Turns out there is no garden, but once back on the road he sees a "homemade roadside notice" calling his attention to "Brazen Serpent Books."  He makes his way to the empty old shed that is the book store, no proprietor in sight.  Eventually making a selection, he leaves a note that he is "Happy to Pay What is Due."  Given his experiences in the store, the price might just be a bit on the high side. In "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire" there are actually two narrators, one from a man searching for his friend Crabbe, who "has vanished from his small house near the sea, and yet he is still here," and the other from Crabbe himself.   Here, landscape, history, lore and of course the other-worldly all come together, making for an eerie and quite honestly extraordinary piece of writing.   One of the darkest (at least for me) entries in this volume is "And maybe the parakeet was correct," involving a journalist hoping to come up with something different by exploring European football.  Traveling through a few countries, he ends up in Paris where in the back streets looking for "narrow passages where the enfants, shall we say not-quite-so-good, might be found, the sort that kick a ball around in the street" while treating strangers with "insolence and derision."  He gets his wish, watching "six or seven urchins" at the end of an alley, but realizes that what he is seeing is no ordinary game.  For "The Readers of the Sands," the best description I can offer is "haunting," which is actually an understatement now that I'm thinking about it again.  It begins as

 "three travellers headed by their different ways to a causeway leading them to the house called Driftwood End, which stood on a spur of land above a vast canvas of sand." 

The first is a guide through the hazardous sands of the estuary, the latest "holder of an ancient office" known as "Bishop's Sandman."  The next is a "seer" who employs sand along with the patterns in the sand in her profession, and the third a woman who creates "hour-glasses" and "egg-timers" from "sea-wood and blown glass." She has also discovered a somewhat strange ability she has which she keeps to herself, one which she will have opportunity to use at a particularly critical moment during the gathering.   Their host is a certain Phillip Crabbe (and I have to wonder if this is the same Crabbe who  vanished in "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire") who lives at Driftwood End, and he has brought them all there for a particular purpose.  The remaining stories, "The House of Flame," "The Seventh Card," "Laughter Ever After," "The Understanding of the Signs," the titular "Lost Estates" and "The End of Alpha Street," are all excellent as well but I'm running long here. 

The blurb for Lost Estates notes that these tales offer "antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters," as well as "mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history."   Valentine has an incredible abundance of knowledge about ancient customs, history and lore that inform his stories; the joy is in seeing the connections he forges between that knowledge and the characters who interact with the landscapes which he so expertly renders here, either rural or city.  The stories themselves  have a truly special quality that I appreciate, meaning that once I start one, I'm deep into it and the outside world just vanishes.  He makes me feel like I am right there with the characters as they approach that (as the dustjacket blurb states) "unusual terrain,"   making it  beyond  difficult to put this book down at any time during the reading.  And if you get a Machen vibe, well ...

Very highly recommended -- Lost Estates is most certainly one of the best collections by this author I've read.  

Strange Epiphanies, by Peter Bell

 

9781783807482

Swan River Press, 2021 (originally published 2012)

197 pp

paperback

I've been more than a bit depressed lately, coping with the recent death of one of my friends, and figured I needed to get off my can and do something other than simply sit and stare into space.  My go-to therapy is cleaning and organizing, and the target this time around was the bookshelves in our bedroom.  While going through each and every book in a "this stays, this goes" sort of mode, I came across quite a few unread volumes (including this one) that I had   haphazardly shelved  behind other books and promptly forgot about. Peter Bell's  Strange Epiphanies was one of these.  Off of its shelf space it came, and grabbing a cup of tea, I settled in to read, not putting it down until sadly and all too soon, it was over.  

From the first page onward (and as is the case with all of the stories I've read by this author so far),  what stands out is the author's stunning evocation of place.   In his introduction to Strange Epiphanies, Brian Showers, the founder of Swan River Press, notes that what Bell does here is to

"scratch beneath the top soil to unearth the true genius loci -- the unsettling spirit of place -- and show its effects on those who tread these exposed surfaces.  Landscapes, that with each turn, Peter skews and rearranges into something resembling nightmare."

Strongly allied with his emphasis on genius loci, Bell's work here also draws on history as well as local/ traditional folklore including (but not limited to) Beltane fire rites in the first story "Resurrection" -- the opening of which reminded me so very much of the beginning of Robert Aickman's "The Trains,"  selkies in "An American Writer's Cottage"  and even vampires in "A Midsummer Ramble in the Carpathians" which I'll discuss later.  Upping the eerieness, his stories are populated with characters with troubled, damaged psyches who, in the isolated settings in which they find themselves, are more than susceptible to the influences and strange pulls the genius loci seems to exert on them.  In this sense, I would argue, the landscape (with the inclusion of its spirit) can be viewed as a character present in each tale.  

Sithean Mor, aka Angels Hill, Iona.  From Strange Outdoors

Each and every story included here is beyond brilliant, but I did have a few favorites which in my mind were all perfect in every sense of the word.   In "The Light of the World"  a man who has spent time since the death of his Rowena in "pursuit of exotic avenues of escape"  has decided it's time to "regain the simple pleaures."  Looking to find peace, he retreats to his "spiritual home" in village of Bleng in the Cumberland Mountains foothills, "beneath the spruce-clad heights of Blengdale Moor."  On this particular day, he is walking an old forest route along the edges of the moor, looking at "the light of the winter solstice," which "seemed to speak of something beyond the veil"  when an early twilight falls.  Already in a "melancholy mood," he knows the return journey will  be risky: a snowstorm threatened, trees were bending because of the wind, and he's unsure about cutting through the forest on an untested route.  Also on his mind is the strange couple he'd seen earlier that no one else recognized, but that he'd encountered years earlier elsewhere, "on the other side of Europe."  That is really about all I can say about this story, except that a) it begins with an epigraph by Arthur Machen which is a huge clue and b) it is one of the most eerie stories in this volume.  Next up is   "A Midsummer Ramble in the Carpathians," in which Julia P. Flint, a modern-day "dealer in antiquarian books and maps, specialist in topography" stumbles upon what the Leyburn book auction catalogue described as "Private journal. Handwritten. Travelogue. Carpathian Mountains. No date. Incomplete..."   Letting it sit for a few weeks, she finally decides to examine it, and can't believe her luck. It seems that she's acquired an unpublished travel account by Amelia Edwards, which turns out to be a "record of a journey through the Southern Carpathians."   As she reads through it, what emerges is an intensely-atmospheric account "that could have been taken from the pages of a Gothic novel..."  as Edwards and her companions make their way through remote "wilderlands,"  a journey Flint will soon replicate herself.  And finally, there's   "M.E.F.," a story narrated by a person grieving for his partner Alida, now gone three years and whom he misses with "a deep consuming passion."  M.E.F. (Marie Emily Fornario) was a woman who believed that she'd lived on the Hebridean island of Iona "in a previous life," and who, in 1929,  came seeking "spiritual calm."  Intending to stay only a few days, she "never left."  She was found dead on a night in November, her body left in a peat hollow.  Rumor had it that a cairn had been erected at the site where her body had been discovered.  There is, of course more to the story of M.E.F. revealed in this story, and our narrator admits to an "obsessive fascination" with her.  He has come to the island, about which he detects "a strange otherness,"  journeying there every November  since Alida's death, "on her anniversary," the two having originally found there way to Iona while exploring "the antiquarian sites of the West."  It was at that time they had originally discovered  M.E.F's grave; since then, our narrator has read more about M.E.F.,  leading him to undertake a search for M.E.F.'s cairn. No more about this story except to say that I read it twice and got a serious case of the shivers both times. There is also an excellent essay about the real M.E.F. at the end of this book, which should not be missed. 

Going back to this book's introduction, Brian Showers says that the stories in Strange Epiphanies are "stories of revelation," which may bring to mind "mystical enlightment or awe," but he warns readers that "we must always remember that not all revelations are welcome ones."  There is just something in the way that the author captures the sadness, loneliness and isolation of his characters throughout this book that truly speaks to me, especially now in my own life;  combining those very human traits with the resonances that in these stories seem to emanate from the landscape itself is a stroke of genius on his part.   Bell's work here is truly one of the best works to come from Swan River Press, and it is a story collection I know I will read again in the future.  

So very highly recommended -- I can't even begin to express how very much I loved this book.  

The Sea Change & Other Stories, by Helen Grant

 978095665877

Swan River Press, 2013

144 pp

hardcover

We've just returned from a three-day early start to the  4th of July weekend,  staying in a place with neither internet nor television, which equates to many happy long and guilt-free reading hours.  I really haven't felt like reading much this year because it seems like in my house, when it rains it pours, and it's been doing so since the end of January with the latest event  the loss of my sweet little dog of thirteen years.  With The Sea Change & Other Stories, I couldn't have chosen a better book to get myself back into my reading groove.  I picked it up and did not put it down until the very last page.  

Out of the seven phenomenal stories in this collection, there are two that I found to be absolutely striking:  "Alberic de Mauléon" and my bottom-line favorite,  "The Calvary at Banská Bystrica."    The first, as the author says in the "Story Notes" section of the book, was her entry for a story competition in M.R. James Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter.  The challenge was to "write a prequel or sequel to an MRJ story." I unfortunately don't have a copy of the first volume of The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows (Sarob, 2012) where this story was published along with those of the eleven other contest winners, but you can find a list of them here.  By the way, and I mean this quite seriously, if anyone has a copy of that volume to sell, please let me know. I've been looking for a while.  "Alberic de Mauléon" is on the prequel side of the fence, in this case, to James'  "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book."  Highly original and very nicely done,  I won't say more about it, except to say that the creep factor from the original is definitely here as well.    Two friends talking together begins "The Calvary at Banská Bystrica," as the narrator details his search for his missing brother last seen in Slovakia.   The brother, Robert Montague , had been "travelling around the Continent" until any word from him just stopped.   The last time the narrator had heard from him was in the spring via "some letters and a card" from Banská Bystrica.  Although they were not very close, the narrator reveals that his brother had written to tell him he was going to be married to a girl who had "some sort of job relating to tourism in the town."   That was pretty much it for communications between the two, but when no one else had heard from him by that summer,  the narrator decides that he needs to go look for him at the last place he'd mentioned.  I will keep mum on the action here, but the rest of the story is a stunning and absolutely chilling account of what happens as he begins his search. 

the Calvary at Banska Bystrica from The Slovak Spectator

As for the five remaining stories in The Sea Change, there is another tale based on a story by M.R. James, one that he had left unfinished -- "The Game of Bear."  Without moving into the pastiche arena, the author does a great job with her completed version of that story, which starts out over the Christmas holidays with the elderly narrator explaining why the game of Bear the children in the house are playing at the time sets his nerves on edge.   I won't go into details here, but "The Game of Bear"  has all of the elements one expects to find in an M.R. James story, most especially a foray into the dark arts and something unseen that has entered into a house.    Moving on,  it came as no surprise to me that Lovecraft popped right into my head while reading the title story, "The Sea Change."  Two divers' discovery of a previously-unknown shipwreck turns to a consuming obsession for one of them and outright horror for the other.   They both go down to explore, and while one of the two men immediately senses something not right about it, the other is fascinated. Somehow he manages to stretch out his dive times to clearly-impossible intervals, and there will be a cost.   While there are no clear answers to the "why" and the "how" of it all, there is certainly plenty of horror in terms of what is left unseen and unknown.    "Grauer Hans" opens this collection, reminding readers that old folk beliefs exist for good reason, here serving as a sort of shield against something that lures young children to be let into the house at night.  God forbid the old wisdom is forgotten ...  "Self Catering" adds a needed touch of comic relief to this book.   A man by the name of Larkin whose colleague Watson has a personality that rubs him completely the wrong way finds himself backed "into a corner" about booking a weekend holiday.  He searches for something different, and after some unsatisfying offers, happens upon a travel agency run by a certain Cornelius von Teufel, who offers him an incredible experience.  With that name, Larkin should have been clued in a bit more.  Finally, in "Nathair Dhubh, "on a bright, clear day two young men decide to tackle the difficult and challenging peak of Nathair Dhubh (which translates to black snake)  in Scotland.  While roped together, a mist arises that separates the two, "a real pea-souper" that causes one of them to lose sight of the other.  Now in his eighties and looking back on the incident, one of the pair reveals why that was his last attempt. 

from Sea Museum

  Without the story notes (which you should definitely save until the end) and the acknowledgments, the reader is left with 136 pages in which the author delivers these seven brilliant and uncanny stories, no small feat in such a short amount of space.  It is a gifted writer who can pull this off, but there's more.  As the author writes at the Scottish Book Trust website, she often includes "elements of folklore, snippets of real history and atmospheric real life locations" in her work. She's done this in The Sea Change & Other Stories to great effect, imbuing her tales with a sense of place that amplifies the eerie  atmosphere and growing sense of dread she builds slowly in each story.  

I've never been disappointed with an offering from Swan River Press, and this book is no exception.  I definitely and very highly recommend it to readers of the strange and the weird.  

The Death Spancel and Others, by Katharine Tynan

 

9781783807543

Swan River Press, 2020

221 pp

paperback

 "There's few could look on the boorwaugh washa, the death spancel, without terror."  

For me there is no greater comfort than to make a pot of tea, grab my favorite blanket and crawl into my favorite comfy chair with a book of older ghost stories in hand.   Let's just say that it is much more comforting than even my favorite comfort food (a grilled cheese sandwich with some fresh homemade tomato soup  - a childhood holdover), and that the pleasure is augmented when what I'm reading is written by an author whose work I have not previously read.  Imagine my pleasure in finding this book (thanks to one of my like-minded goodreads friends)  -- but I did have to ask myself the following question:  

what the hell is a spancel?

As anyone might do, I googled it and discovered that it's something that "hobbles" or "tethers," with the original usage having to do with cattle.  It's definitely not put to bovine use here though, as I discovered, in not one, but two stories: first, the titular story "The Death Spancel"  and a bit later in the book,  "The Spancel of Death."  In simplest form, it is  skin cut from a corpse from head to heel in one swoop, much like one might do with an apple.  From the second story we learn that the cutting of the skin is done with "ceremonies so awful that it would make this story too ghastly reading to detail them."  In his introduction, Peter Bell notes that it is a "grim artifact of Irish lore;"  William Gregory Wood-martin goes a step further in his description in volume one of his Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Handbook of Irish pre-Christian Traditions, calling it a "love charm of most gruesome character."  (Just as an FYI, that link goes to Google Books where you can download the book for free; mine is a paperback copy from Alpha Editions.) In the first story, it "dangles" from the "dusty rafters of Aughagree Chapel," a "devil's charm" of "such power that no man born of woman can resist it, save by the power of the Cross."   This story, which begins with remembrances of a priest fighting "with the demons" over the soul of Mauryheen Holion, has a most gothic atmosphere to it, as evidenced by passages like this one:

"...the servants in Rossatorc Castle said that as the priest lay exhausted from his vain supplications, and the rattle was in Dark Mauryeen's throat, there were cries of mocking laughter in the air above the castle, and a strange screaming and flapping of great wings, like to, but incomparably greater than, the screaming and flapping of the eagle over Slieve League."

The "devil-may-care" Sir Robert Molyneux and the lovely Lady Eva are to be wed in just two weeks' time, but it seems he can't help himself when it comes to the women "of a class below his own."  Even though "the germ of good in him" knows that this is wrong, and even though he  promises himself that he'll never do it again, from the moment he catches "sight of a girl's dark handsome face on the staircase" his fate is sealed. In the other story using this device, "The Spancel of Death," the girl doing the binding is an "Eastern beauty in the wilds of Mayo," Sabina Doheny,  who was once a "lonely, fierce, haunted child" and "pagan at heart" but now  "protegée"  and maid of the daughter of the local Marquis.  Lady Kathaleen's fiancé is Sir Harry Massey, and once again, as in the case of  Sir Robert Molyneux, once Sabina's eyes lit upon his face, her "heart had awakened with a madness and a violence beyond expressing."  Given that Sabina had once lived in a hut with Mag Holon, the local witch, she knows exactly where to go and what to ask for.  Be warned, old Mag reminds her,  "There's few could look on the boorwaugh washa, the death spancel, without terror."  

While those two stories alone were well worth the price of this book, there are plenty of other topnotch tales included here.  I have to say that I have read more than a few volumes of ghostly/strange tales, some of which are so predictable that they're hardly worth reading, but that is not the case here. Take for example   "A Sentence of Death," which I thought was going to be a sort of rehash of Benson's "The Bus Conductor" from 1906, when something similar happens and a driver offers the main character "Room for one more, madame." But I was pleasantly surprised with what Tynan did with this story, since (as described in the introduction, which should be left until last), the focus was much more on the poor woman as she undergoes a great internal turmoil. It seems that while "Life at the Manor House flowed by in its old, delightful way," Marion Desborough finds no joy either in her upcoming wedding, nor in life itself, as her memory of an event takes a toll on her mental health and she waits for her death which she believes has been sent by portent.  Her loved ones try to convince her it was all a dream, but, well, Marion seems to know better.  And then there's "The Dream House," in which Reggie Champneys is cut off without a penny because of his marriage to a dancehall girl and even worse, Champneys, the family home he loves,  goes to another relative.  His wife, Kitty, is told about the "Champneys ghost," but this is no ordinary haunted house story whatsoever.  

Two stories sort of jumped out in the "most disturbing" category,  "A Night in a Cathedral" and "The Picture on the Wall."  In the first a young officer becomes "obsessed" with a young woman who lives with her father near his regiment's barracks to the point that he follows her every evening as she enters a "gothic" cathedral for Evensong. He does this for months on end, hiding in the shadows to prevent being observed.  One night, not feeling well while "inhaling one knew not what foul vapours" he faints, only to find himself completely alone, locked inside the the cathedral, and realizes he must stay there until the morning, in the dark with no light. It's then that he notices the waters rising over the floors ...  "The Picture on the Wall" begins as a young woman refuses to give the man who loves her a specific wedding date, for reasons she will not reveal.  Eventually though she takes him home to meet her father, who not only seems hostile towards him but also puts him in a certain room of the house for his stay.  This is another one where I thought I could guess the ending, but I was (happy to be) very, very mistaken.    

There are still another half dozen or so stories remaining in this volume , along with a number of poems; the final section of the book includes other short writings, including a "weird tale," by the author, a "chat" with Tynan, and a brief anecdote about fantasy author Lord Dunsany.  All in all it's a fine and engrossing collection; and while not unexpectedly some stories worked better for me than others, it was still a great pleasure to read and to lose myself in this author's strange tales.  Leave it until the end, but do not miss the great introduction by Peter Bell.  I'll happily recommend this book to others who enjoy finding new (old) authors, women writers whose work has sadly sank into obscurity,  and to those readers who are fans of older Irish fiction and folklore as well. And it's from Swan River Press, which has provided me with hours and hours of great reading time over the last few years, so you know it's going to be good.  

Ghosts, by R.B. Russell

 

9781783807475

Swan River Press, 2021

189 pp

paperback

The other night I grabbed this book on my way up to bed, promising myself to read only three stories before turning off the light and calling it a day.  I should have limited myself to two -- when I finished the third one, "In Hiding,"  my first thought was "did I just read what I thought I read?" so I had to go through it again. By that point I was wide awake, so it was "just one more," and before I knew it I'd gone through all six stories.  Who needs sleep anyway?

The spotlight in this collection shines on its players.  As Mark Valentine in his excellent introduction notes, Russell's people are "often rather gauche, hesitant interlopers in a contemporary world that does not quite work for them."  They are also "already ill at ease with themselves, with others, with the world before any hint of the inexplicable comes on the scene."   This idea makes itself manifest from the very beginning, but I'll go straight to my favorite story first,  the above-mentioned "In Hiding."  Here a disgraced MP, The Right Honourable David Barrett, decides to get away from it all and takes refuge in the small Greek fishing village of Arkos.  It's only day two when he is recognized, by Taylor,  a fellow countryman, who owns and has been living on a small island named Elga,  just off the coast.  He too had left England "under a cloud," and invites Barrett to visit the following day.  Barrett is met early next morning by Simon, who also lives on Elga and who takes Barrett there by boat; it's what happens next that throws everything off kilter, and not just solely for  the reader.   I believe this is one of the finest short stories I've ever read; it was also nominated in 2010 for a World Fantasy Award.  As I said earlier, don't be surprised if you read it and want to right away read it again. 

   Moving back to table-of-contents order, the collection opens with "Putting the Pieces in Place."  When he was about fourteen, out taking a walk in the summer sun,  Neil Porter hears "yearning, longing music" floating in the air, and looking for its source, comes across a party of people "like in Le Grand Meaulnes" just in time to hear the music stop. As he watches, he sees a young woman in a "white flowing dress" pick up her violin and began playing again. It was a moment in time he'll always remember, and since then he has become obsessed, hoping to recreate that moment somehow by collecting her music, her instruments, and even her house, but there's one thing of Emily Butler he doesn't yet have.  He does, however, know a way to get it.   Mark Valentine notes about this story that it is a "subtle meditation on our tendency to enshrine the past instead of engaging with the present."  In  many ways, this story also sets the tone for the rest of what follows.   Moving on, "There's Nothing I Wouldn't Do" follows a young PhD student in Odessa where she had decided to study the work of a famous architect there.  International travels on her own are nothing new for this woman, and she has taken her time learning about and working in her chosen profession before moving on for the doctorate.    After leaving Ukraine and returning home for Christmas, she reveals to a friend that she was somewhat nervous about going back; her story as given  begins  when she meets another student studying English who falls in love with her.  She, however, toys with him, leading to a very one-sided  affair that will, when all is said and done, have major (and completely unexpected)  consequences.   Trust me when I say that this story is a serious jaw-dropper.  

Moving on to story number four, "Eleanor" is the name of a character in a book created by David Planer twenty years earlier; since then she's gone through a few iterations ever since via television, graphic novels and computer games in the hands of people who had "explored sides of her personality" the author had "not even dreamed of."   The original Eleanor was never meant to be a science fiction character, but now at the sci-fi convention where David is speaking,  it's not so out of place to see someone dressed as Eleanor.  David, however, believes that this is his Eleanor, a belief that persists despite his assistant's assurances otherwise.   A truly gorgeous and most poignant story, it captures, as Valentine notes, the mind's "pride in its one creation," that the creator clings to until the end.   I realize that this trope in some form has been done many times, but certainly not as it is written here.   On the more depressingly sad side of things is "Disposessed," in which a young woman's rather empty life has been a series of things going very wrong, punctuated each time by the idea that "It had happened again."  But one  more thing finally materializes when she becomes trapped in an untenable situation, and that's all I will say, except that the ending of this one is a shocker.  

"Bloody Baudelaire," which closes this collection,  is novella length and I swear, there came a point at which I couldn't help but think of The Picture of Dorian Gray while reading it.  Lucian Miller and his girlfriend Elizabeth come to Cliffe House as a getaway before they both go on to University, invited to stay by Lucian's school friend Adrian. Lucian loves the atmosphere of the house, its "decay and grandeur."   The house actually belongs to Miranda, Adrian's sister, and her partner Gerald, a painter with a beyond-pretentious attitude who has an annoying habit of quoting "bloody Baudelaire," which ticks off Miranda to no end.  As this very long and rather boozy night goes on, Lucian becomes involved in a bizarre card game with Gerald; an argument ensues between his hosts, and the next day Elizabeth leaves before Lucian wakes up and Gerald has disappeared altogether, leaving Lucian and Miranda alone.  What happens next borders on the dark stuff of nightmares, and I won't go there.  A brilliant story, one of my favorites in this book.

The description of this book in part says that the stories in Ghosts make for a "disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts."  This collection of strange tales  is my introduction to the shorter fiction of Ray Russell, and I have to say that I am absolutely in awe of the talent this man displays here, not just in the writing (which is excellent)  but also in the depths he reaches in his characters, allowing their often-troubled souls to surface.  As the blurb notes,  "you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are," a promise made and kept.  

very highly recommended.  Many thanks to Brian at Swan River Press as well. 

Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women, eds. Maria Giakaniki and Brian Showers

9781783800254
Swan River Press, 2019
205 pp

hardcover

I must confess that I read this book some time ago, but am just now getting to posting about it after giving it a second read.

At the end of their introduction to this volume, the editors Maria Giakaniki and Brian Showers wave a beckoning hand in my direction:

"...we hope Bending to Earth stands as an invitation to the curious; that these strange stories of ghosts and witches, of cryptids and madmen, will serve as a lighted candle for those who wish to further illuminate the darker corners of Irish literature."

"... the curious" -- check -- that's me.   "...those who wish to further illuminate the darker corners of Irish literature" -- check again. Boxes ticked.

If you read the subtitle of this book, it tells you all you need to know about what you'll find inside.  The dozen stories in this excellent collection definitely fall on the strange side, and in their selection, the editors have brought together a mix of tales written by women who, as they tell us, were not

 "considered during their lifetimes to be chiefly writers of fantastical fiction. Yet they each at some point in their careers wandered into more speculative realms -- some only briefly, others for more lengthier stays."  

 What matters here is not how long their wanderings "into more speculative realms" lasted, but rather that these women left behind these stories, most of them now fallen into the void of obscurity,  to be enjoyed well over a century later.

Bending to Earth is a mix of superb, uncanny tales featuring (among other things) wandering spirits, tortured souls of  both the earthly and ethereal sort, dream-like visions,  and Irish ghost lore I can imagine listening to while seated beside a fire in an otherwise darkened and quiet room while outside a storm is raging and the wind is howling like the proverbial banshee.   There is one story, "The Blanket Fiend," set in the wilds of New Guinea that stands apart from the others, moving away from what's come before and what comes after. It is different enough that it was a bit of a jolt,  actually reading  more along the lines of early pulp fiction,  but the editors address this issue in their most excellent and informative introduction (which you should most certainly save for last if you want no hints at all as to what's to come in any of these tales).  There is also, in the back of the book and on the website for Swan River Press  a brief biographical portrait of author Beatrice Grimshaw (and the other writers) which helps to understand her inspiration for this story.

The twelve stories in this book are as follows:

"The Dark Lady", by Anna Maria Hall

"The Child's Dream," by Lady Jane Wilde (yes, that Wilde -- mother to Oscar)

"The Unquiet Dead," by Lady Augusta Gregory

"The Woman With the Hood," by LT Meade

 "The Wee Gray Woman," by Ethna Carbery

"The Blanket Fiend," by Beatrice Grimshaw

"The First Wife," by Katherine Tynan

"Transmigration," by Dora Sigerson Shorter

"Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time," by Rosa Mulholland

"The Red Woolen Necktie," by B.M. Croker,

"The De Grabooke Monument," by Charlotte Riddell,  

and last, but certainly by no means least, 

"A Vanished Hand," by Clothilde Graves

As someone who has developed a passion not only for ghost stories and strange tales of yesteryear, but for ghost stories and strange tales of yesteryear written by women whose work has been largely forgotten or neglected, Bending to Earth is a much-treasured volume in my home library, and I am once again the cheer squad for the small presses that put out such gems, here represented by Swan River Press.

Maria Giakaniki and Brian Showers note that

"These twelve strange stories by Irish women are our choices, and represent only a small selection from a much broader range of possibilities." 

Hopefully (please!!),  they have enough strange stories left over after what they've chosen to include in this volume to fill another.  I'll be buying that one too.

book #3: Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu, (eds.) Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers

9781783800032
Swan River Press, 2014
194 pp

hardcover

In 2014, had he lived,  J.S. Le Fanu would have been two hundred years old, and Dreams of Shadow and Smoke is an anthology in celebration of that anniversary.  It is dedicated to Le Fanu

"and those who have read his work with fondness."

That's me -- one of those who have read and loved Le Fanu's work, so when I discovered the existence of this book, I knew I had to have it.  It  has made me want to go back and reread Le Fanu -- so it works on two levels. If you haven't read this genius author's work, reading this collection will certainly arouse a desire to do so; it will also most definitely appeal to those who've already enjoyed his writing.  It is a huge win-win, even more so because these stories never devolve down to a pastiche level -- the modern writers who fill these pages use their space to offer their own more modern takes on Le Fanu's already well-established themes.  That's bookspeak -- in reader-ese, I was simply blown away at how brilliant this collection is, and I have no qualms at all about telling anyone and everyone to read this book.

Without going into detail -- there are definitely writeups of this book out there already done by real reviewers -- there are ten stories in this book written by ten wonderful writers.  Two of them, Sarah LeFanu (note the spelling difference) and Emma Darwin have some sort of family connection; several are from people whose work I've read previously and I've discovered new ones to seek out.  Here's the Table of Contents:

"Seaweed Tea," by Mark Valentine

"Let the Words Take You," by Angela Slatter

"Some Houses -- A Rumination," by Brian J. Showers

"Echoes," by Martin Hayes

"Alicia Harker's Story," by Sarah LeFanu

"Three Tales from a Townland," by Derek John

"The Corner Lot," by Lynda Rucker

"Rite of Possession," by Gavin Selerie

"A Cold Vehicle for the Marvellous," by Emma Darwin

"Princess of the Highway," by Peter Bell

All of these tales are delightfully dark and done with such a degree of finesse that makes the book sheer joy to lose yourself in.   There are also "story notes" at the end of the book, where each author talks about his or her work in this volume and how Le Fanu has influenced them in their own writings. 

For me what sealed the deal with this book was not just the stories themselves, but the focus on the combination of landscape & history and how it melds with the already somewhat-disturbed psyche. This concept is played out time and again -- in Peter Bell's "Princess of the Highway" for example  the view from a holiday cottage in the remote Irish countryside ventures

"across the rain-drenched moorland, the peat-hags, the black bogs and the solitary lough, beneath the louring clouds which, down here in the depression, seemed to suffocate, eloquently earning the land's repute as the most haunted region of Ireland." 

It is an "eerie landscape... eloquent of darker legends, and a history as bloody as it was bleak".  But Ireland isn't the only setting.  Angela Slatter uses her native Australia "because it taps into that idea of hills and fairy mounds, yet it's part of a wild landscape that's very different to Ireland." And in "Seaweed Tea," the coast of England reveals a spot where "the sea seemed to obey different rules," where "black stones ... hold the secret ... of the other tide, the dark tide... invisible to us..."

The concept is just brilliant, the stories are very well written,  and as one reviewer from "Totally Dublin" sees  it,

"It's a relief to see no fear of what drier shites call 'floweriness.' The long sentences are lithely living, with nocturne's mist hanging on every comma."

And when he also says that

"...this literary parlour game in Sheridan's honour yields happy fruits -- his shade would smile."

I  have to say that I couldn't think of higher praise for this entire book.  If I was as eloquent, I would say the very same thing.  

Outstanding.