The Cormorant, by Stephen Gregory

9781912681693

Parthian Books, 2021

originally published 1986

160 pp

paperback (my e-copy sent by the publisher, to whom I owe my many and grateful  thanks)

Recently reissued by Welsh publisher  Parthian Books just last month, Stephen Gregory's The Cormorant (1986) is exactly the sort of dark fiction I look forward to reading, in which the weird makes its way into regular life making it difficult to decide whether there is something supernatural at play here or if it's something else altogether.  I first read this book seven years ago when it was published by Valancourt,  and that was the question I was left with at the time;  after finishing this time around, the ambiguity remains.  Added to the uncertainty is the fact that we have only the narrator's word to rely on for what happens here.  My kind of book indeed.  

Winter in Northern Wales provides the natural backdrop to this story that begins when a man is bequeathed a cottage in a Welsh village "nestled under the cloud-covered summit of Snowdon, on the road between Caernafon and Beddgelert."  He  and his wife Ann were able to quit their teaching jobs in the Midlands, affording him the opportunity to devote time to the history textbook he is writing. She has a job at a local pub and he tends to their eleven-month old child Harry while she works.   The cottage had belonged to his Uncle Ian whom the (unnamed) narrator had not known very well, and it comes with the "binding condition" that the cottage was theirs as long as they took care of the cormorant Uncle Ian had rescued some time earlier.   To the narrator, the bequest is a "thunderbolt of good fortune,"  and he wasn't too worried about taking care of the cormorant, but when the bird arrives and its crate is opened, the "some kind of placid, domestic fowl" they'd been expecting turned out to be anything but.   In the middle of a quiet, lovely, warm domestic sort of perfection, as he notes, 

"it came from its box as ugly and as poisonous as a vampire bat" 

spewing feces and urine everywhere and causing destruction to their otherwise cozy environs.  

Ann, who "shuddered at the sight of the cormorant's demonic arrogance," sees the bird (which the narrator calls Archie)  as menacing, while baby Harry seems to be enthralled with the thing.  The narrator works to exert dominance and control over the bird, mentioning more than once Archie's dependence on him for its survival; at the same time it's obvious that while he's completely obsessed with it,  he has a sort of love-hate relationship with this cormorant,  referring to it once as a "Heathcliff, a Rasputin, a Dracula."  In the meantime, Ann becomes further unsettled because of her husband's increasingly strange behavior and Harry's growing fascination with Archie.  Then there's the matter of the narrator's brief (hallucinatory?) encounters with someone who leaves behind cigar smoke -- is this some sort of haunting, some sort of possession, or is there more to it,  perhaps grounded in more earthly concerns?  

The flaws in the characters begin to appear early on, but then again, we're watching this story unravel from the point of view of the narrator, whose choices throughout the narrative are just mind boggling.  One of the highlights of this novel is Gregory's purposeful, highly-controlled and taut writing style which allows for him to  adeptly turn  up the volume little by little on the slow-building horror that fills this book,   and in my case at least, setting forth an eerie atmosphere from the moment the bird's crate is opened in the cozy living room, offering its entrance as a harbinger of dread and doom. 

I won't deny that there are some extremely disturbing scenes in this book (including one especially beyond-squirmworthy event that takes place in a bathtub which is mentioned in pretty much everyone's review of this novel and got a serious and out-loud WTF from me as well), but in a sick way they accord with the narrator's increasingly-disturbed state of mind, which is in my opinion is at the heart of this novel. 

I cannot for the life of me say why, but as disturbing and horrific as this book is, I absolutely loved it. I found, as the author says in the introduction to this novel, that  

"Like the bird, the book is beautiful and ugly, intriguing and upsetting, appealing and appalling, in its different, changing moods."

 The Cormorant is not only effective as a horror story, but as literary fiction with a weird bent as well. The ambiguity here left me thinking about it long after I'd finished, going through evidence in my head for both the psychological and supernatural.  Writing it down now, I'm still thinking about it.  I cannot recommend this novel highly enough, although on many levels it is a difficult read, so beware.  

Once again my many thanks to the very good people at Parthian.  

Wisteria Cottage, by Robert M. Coates

9781948405607
Valancourt Books, 2020
originally published 1948
189 pp

paperback

"I knew there was some way that they could be saved." 

It was the second day of Richard Baurie's three-day walking trip in the Long Island Sound area when he first came upon Wisteria Cottage, set among the dunes overlooking the beach below.  It was that moment when,  according to the small bit of the Psychiatrist's Report which opens this novel, "even though faintly," a  "criminal intention" first entered his brain.  There is no clue as to what his "criminal intention" may have been, nor as to why Richard even merits a psychiatrist's report, but it should be apparent at once that we're not dealing with someone psychologically sound here. I have to say up front that Wisteria Cottage is disturbing with a capital D, because from the very beginning the author places his readers into the mind of this young man whose sense of reality is seriously distorted, and keeps us there as Richard's  mind begins to slowly but steadily unravel and deteriorate over the course of the summer spent at Wisteria Cottage.

Richard, who writes poetry and has a part-time job at a bookstore in New York City, has inveigled his way into the lives of  Florence Hackett and her adult daughters Louisa and Elinor.  He'd met Florence at a grocery store, and it didn't take long until he'd "come to have the run of the apartment."   It was on the night before his three-day trip that Florence had happened to mention to Richard that while he was away he might look for  a "nice place" for them to rent for a month or so, offering Richard the opportunity to spend summer weekends with them.   Having discovered Wisteria Cottage, Richard feels that now

"all he wanted in the world, at this moment, was to have them rent the place for the summer, and for him to spend the summer there with them.  It was the right thing, the perfect thing; more than that it was the just thing for them to do."

Being with the Hacketts at the cottage, he believes, would "straighten them out, quell the evil forces that were working among them."

What he views as these "evil forces working among them" I won't divulge and nor will I say anything more about the plot.  I will only add that in his self-appointed quest to "save" these women,  the "summer of pleasant companionship and fun" the Hacketts are expecting will turn out to be anything but as "their relaxing summer holiday will soon turn into a terrifying nightmare."

from Buckingham Books

In her informative introduction which should not be missed but read after finishing this book, Professor Mathilde Roza states that the most "memorable aspect" of Wisteria Cottage is the "approach" taken by the author:  "never hysterical but always low-key," and quotes Commonweal's remark that in this book

"No tiled asylums, no mental bedlams are employed to wring the reader's emotions"

 and once I'd read the intro,  I realized that yes, this sentence describes to a tee why I found this book so disturbing.   I've read plenty of fiction that hones in on the disintegration of an individual's psyche, but Richard Baurie's case so unnerved me to the point that I had to make this a daytime-only read.    Professor Roza  also explains how the novel reflects concerns extant in post-World War II America, including "popular culture's deepening interest in psychiatry and psychoanalysis," which is very much apparent throughout the story.

  Very highly recommended, but beware -- it took everything I had and several days after reading Wisteria Cottage to get it out from under my skin.  As I said -- disturbing with a capital D.

******

from Film Noir of the Week

I also watched the film based on this novel, Edge of Fury (1958), and whoever chose Michael Higgens to play the role of Richard totally nailed it.    It's available on youtube.  

Just published and well worth every damn second: The Grip of It, by Jac Jemc

978037453916
FSG Originals 2017
288 pp

paperback/arc -- my thanks to the good people at Powell's.

"It's like a closed circuit."

                                                                      
Jac Jemc certainly gets major points for ingenuity here in her newest novel, The Grip of It, and coming from me, Ms. picky-pants, that says a lot.  The official blurb calls it "a literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home," which is definitely the case, but it is not at all your standard haunted house fare.

The Grip of It is related via alternating viewpoints between Julie and James, the couple who have bought the old Victorian house at the end of Stillwater. They'd left the city to take James away from his "old haunts" because his wife felt they'd needed a change after he'd gambled away all of the money in his bank account. His gambling problem had put him into therapy, but she thinks that it's time for a "fresh start".  They buy a house that's been on the market for quite some time, and it isn't too long after they've moved in that they discover a number of things that need fixing. There's also something very off kilter here, and weirdness sets in almost from the moment they begin unpacking to start their new life.  Because creepy moments need to be experienced on one's own, I'm not going to go into detail as to what's going on, but things quickly begin to spiral out of control for this young couple to the point where it becomes difficult to separate what is and isn't real.

The ingenuity here is not so much in the haunted house horror story per se -- when all is said and done, the tropes that the author uses here have most certainly been done elsewhere, and the truth is that there are some things that are left unanswered.    What is original here, and what is in my opinion the thing that makes this book very much worth reading, is in the way the author mirrors the couple's search to try to get to the root of what's ailing this house (what's actually haunting it) with what's actually ailing/haunting this couple -- complete with "undercurrents," gaps, walls, and as James reveals, the "buried, fetid stories" which have "bubbled to the surface."  As Julie notes at one point,

"This house is sapping us, pulling out our cores"

and as the novel progresses, the reader comes to understand that the "grip" the house has come to have on this couple is far more menacing than either one of them could have ever realized.

There are so many things going on in this book that make it worthwhile. As just one example, there are several scenes that bring out the idea of   "alternative versions" of ourselves that we reveal to everyone, even those closest to us, and the idea of others'  unacceptability of "the wilderness of the mind," where people "will always wonder what to believe," since they "expect the mind's voice to unstitch only when alone."  The Grip of It  is also another fine example of a writer using the horror genre in a most original way well beyond the norm as a vehicle for exploration into the human psyche.

Readers who go into this novel expecting the standard haunted house fare may be somewhat disappointed, since, as I said, this story, when all is said and done, actually moves further beyond, well into the literary zone where the focus is more on people.   My only real issue is that sometimes what the author has her characters thinking is more authorial than real-world speak, which for me came across a bit overblown at times, but hey -- that's a minor thing compared with what she's done here.  I hope this book does well and that people will come to realize that horror can convey so much more than the content of  much-overdone tales of zombie apocalypses or vampire plagues and that when done right, it can move into the realm of the literary.

Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah: From the Notes of Dr. Renard de Montpensier, by Louis Levy

9781939663283
Wakefield Press, 2017
originally published as Menneskeløget Kzradock, den vaarfriske Methusalem: Af Dr. Renard Montpensiers Optegneiser, 1910
translated by W.C. Bamberger
137 pp

softcover

"What is the truth, and what are the lies in this damned business?" --95

Well, that certainly is the question at the heart of this book, which our narrator tells us is a

"dreadful and bloody mystery, one that is still not entirely understood by the author."  

The word "mystery" here is certainly in line with the back-cover blurb which calls this book "a fevered pulp novel," but really, it is anything but.  There are certainly a number of pulp elements found here that make for fun reading; on the other hand, the true mystery it presents is deadly serious.

When Dr. Renard de Montpensier first took on Kzradock's case, he soon realized that Kzradock was not "really insane," but that he'd "been made insane" because he holds the solution to a heinous crime, one which had been "encased" inside his psyche by a certain Lady Florence. As the novel opens, we are made privy to what the good doctor calls a "séance" -- in truth a session of hypnosis -- where he's attempting to unlock the dark secrets that are the source of Kzradock's  ongoing torment. The only way to help him, thinks de Montpensier, is to "investigate the crimes forming the basis of Kzradock's state," and using his own "science," he hopes to "send him back into society."    Okay -- so far so good, sounds right up my alley, but then, after a crazy night out at a theater where the crime itself is the movie,  and a wild scene that greets him on his return to the Paris asylum where Kzradock is a patient, everything shifts as the doctor finds himself  "At the edge of the abyss between madness and reason."  From this point on, things become surreal (and I don't use the term lightly) as de Montpensier tries to get to the root of the secrets buried deeply in Kzradock's soul.

The back-cover blurb says that this book combines "elements of the serial film" (check), "detective story" (check), and "gothic horror novel" (check), but what it doesn't say is that ultimately it is a nightmarish journey into "the sufferings of a sick soul."   Reading this book felt like standing in  constantly shifting sands where I was trying to gain some sort of foothold on solid ground but couldn't. As quickly as some sort of rational explanation for it all would come to mind, things would change so I just gave up trying to go the rational route and let the book speak for itself, which is a good way to approach this story.   This book is not your usual narrative sort of thing but rather a gigantic puzzle that doesn't yield up its secrets until the very end, and to say that I was gobsmacked is an understatement.  It is the epitome of cryptic, and obviously this post doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this novel, but there's a good reason for that which is all explained at the book's conclusion.

Wakefield is publishing some incredible books, and I certainly loved this one and enjoyed the journey although there were times I had to walk away because it was so intense.  I mean, there is horror, and then there is horror, and to me the most horrific things often have their roots in the human psyche.  As de Montpensier says at one point,

"... a strained soul creates an entire world within the skin that surrounds it..." 

and truer words have never been spoken.

fiction from Denmark

hb#8, and the last of the designated Halloween reads, The Case Against Satan, by Ray Russell

9780143107279

Penguin Classics, 2015

140 pp

paperback

I've been perusing reader reviews of this novel, and for the most part, I'm finding a lot of posts that downplay this book because it's "outdated" and some that say that readers might better be served by reading something more along the lines of Blatty's The Exorcist or Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts.  

Well, everyone to his or her own of course, but at the very beginning of this book we are specifically told  that  "a priest of the Roman Catholic Church was put on trial one harrowing weekend in the second half of the twentieth century."  Why and how he's "put on trial" is the focal point of this novel,  and yet somehow, the draw for a lot of readers seems to be only the expectations of the exorcism that takes place here.  And that's a shame, really, since there is a lot going on here otherwise. 

In a nutshell, without going into too much detail and spoiling things for future readers, the novel begins with an outgoing priest, Father Halloran, confiding in his replacement, Father Gregory Sargent, about some of the people in the parish, mentioning a particular family he's worried about. This is the Garth family, young sixteen year-old Susan and her father.  According to Halloran, Susan is motherless, is "very disturbed," and she has "fits."  He's counseled her father to take Susan to see a psychiatrist, and as Gregory finds out in his own discussion with Mr. Garth about her problem behaviors,  dad has refused to do so.  Susan, it seems, has been wanting to see a shrink, but Garth continues to insist that she's "not crazy."  It's obvious that Susan is starting to trust Gregory but things take a strange turn when she is questioned privately by Gregory's superior, Bishop Crimmings, and reacts in an unexpected way.  

Forward-thinking Gregory believes that Susan's behavior may be based on "an unpleasant childhood experience connected in her mind with the church, or something she has done that makes her feel unclean, unworthy...," in short, a psychological explanation; Crimmings, on the other hand, makes no bones about the fact that the girl is possessed, "literally and actually."  And thus ensues a struggle between science-based reason and superstition-based faith, as Crimmings insists that Gregory perform an exorcism, while Gregory questions why he should "Drive out a medieval Devil" he has "trouble believing in." The Bishop believes he must do it, because it is the "only thing" that can save him -- it seems that Gregory's faith is to be tried, since by admitting he doesn't believe in the Devil, he could be seen as a heretic, because 

"If God existed, logically his Adversary existed." 

As I said earlier, there's way more in this novel than just the exorcism itself -- I found several things of interest here, among them the similarities between sexual and religious ecstasy, the nature of trauma, and hysteria spread by and grounded in ignorance.  There's also a wonderful scene here where Gregory is dreaming and finds himself in the last scene of Macbeth, and Beaudelaire's lovely story "The Generous Gambler" even finds its way to relevance here, since one of the main questions brought up here is the existence of the devil.  Beaudelaire's comment in his tale, if you haven't read it, is yes, but perhaps not quite in the way we imagine.  And of course, the decision as to whether Susan is possessed is left purposefully ambiguous, so that readers are able to make up their own minds as to what's actually going on here.

The last chapter of the book just put me off completely, but despite its ending, I thought this book was very well done.  And my suggestion would be to look past the expectations of a head-spinning, pea-soup launching exorcism, since there's much more here than meets the eye, and in my opinion, continues to have relevance. If you're looking for something with grossout power, this isn't the book you want. However,   I would certainly recommend it to readers who are looking to discover exactly what sort of evil exists in the course of ordinary human lives.

still playing catchup from June with I'm Thinking of Ending Things, by Iain Reid

9781501126925
Scout Press/Simon and Schuster, 2016
210 pp

hardcover

Before I even start talking about this novel, I have to say up front that while giving a book a one-star review is certainly any reader's prerogative, Iain Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things  absolutely does not deserve the nasty, vehement comments that were given to it by some of the Amazon "reviewers"  who afforded it a single star.   Quite frankly, screw that crap.   Far from a logical, rational explanation as to why these people didn't like the book, I was actually taken aback by the level of sheer hateful negativity coming out of these people.  There weren't as many venomous two-star reviews, but even those readers weren't offering any sort of cohesive argument as to why they didn't care for the book.  Shame on you people -- a) go take a basic English 101 course at your local community college and learn how to more logically present a written argument and b) if you're completely flummoxed by the content of this novel, well, seriously ... while you're relearning your writing skills, sign up for a basic course in Jungian psychology.  The author pretty much clues us in as to how to read this book right up front -- it's certainly not his fault that people don't read closely enough to listen.  And if I had any balls, I'd say so on Amazon, but the fact is that I'm completely thin skinned, fairly emotional,  and I just couldn't take the resulting shitstorm. Oh my, my  language is REALLY awful today, apologies,  -- but frankly, I'm just getting downright sick of  how people seem to believe it's their god-given right to unleash their nastiness anywhere they see fit nowadays.

Personally speaking, I thought it was a good, not great, book on the nature of self, the nature of identity, and an interesting take on the darkness of human nature. It's definitely dark, and it is precisely that darkness that appeals to me.  However, what killed it for me is that I figured it all out very early on, so I don't quite understand why so many people were left so confused with this novel, because the author basically gives the reader more than enough clues as to what's going on that it should have been pretty easy to put together and to understand.  While it may have something to do with my long tenure as a mystery/crime reader where I'm used to picking up on certain things that tend to stick in my head, what I really think is that the author made things way too easy here. And in fact, that is my biggest complaint about this book. Having an inkling of what was coming sort of made the big wow not as big for me as it may have been at the end.

On the other hand, despite the fact that  I sort of knew how things were going to play out, my guts still churned moving toward the last page. Frankly, I think Mr. Reid is a writer with much potential, and considering that this is his first novel, I think he's done a pretty good job here, and I will look forward to his future work.