Habit is the debut novel from Stephen McGeagh and is published by Salt Publishing. First novels can be a hit-or-miss affair sometimes (and are the subject of an excellent article by Nicholas Royle - who has himself had work published by Salt - which can be found here) but on the whole I've been impressed with recent (and not so recent, retrospective viewings of) examples I've come across. Notable examples have been Adam Nevill's Banquet For the Damned and Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box both of which I compare favourably with what I think is the best debut horror novel ever, Clive Barker's The Damnation Game.
I became aware of Habit by way of an online recommendation by Gary McMahon. If he was blown away by the darkness and bleakness of the book then it was one I certainly had to experience for myself, to see if I would be equally as impressed.
Impressed is an understatement. Habit is a short novel but it wasn't just the word count which made me read it in one sitting, the narrative and, more importantly, the writing itself meant I couldn't put it down until I'd finished the whole thing. Another favourite first novel of mine is Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and there are similarities between Habit and that novel in terms of the characters inhabiting them but they also share an amazing narrative voice (or voices in the case of Trainspotting...), both are written with great style and confidence, both have distinctive prose that makes them something very special indeed. Habit is a clever title, and fits the novel beautifully. It describes the existence of Michael, the first person narrator of the book whose life revolves around trips to collect benefit and the pub, the latter with his friend and sister. It's also an obvious reference to drug use and addiction, a theme the book moves into in its second half, although not in the way that might be expected.
Despite its brevity, Habit manages to cram a lot in. It's a post modern dream in that it blends genres, and does so seamlessly. From gritty, urban realism the story segues into horror, (and I mean proper horror) but it's testament to the skill of the writer that this transition in no way feels clunky, gimmicky or somehow tacked on. The events that unfold seem like an entirely natural progression from the narrative that preceded it. Habit is dark, bleak and uncompromising. There aren't many (or any...) likeable characters in it and many horrible things happen within its pages.
I loved it.
On the basis of this first novel, Stephen McGeagh is destined for great things. I for one am looking forward very much to his next publication. Habit will take you to places you really don't want to go to but trust me, stick with it, the journey is absolutely worth it.
Ah yes, Christmas, a time of giving, a time of goodwill to all men, a time of tradition... A dinner of turkey, the giving of presents, the blowing-off of porch roofs... (Okay, the last one may not be a tradition as such but it certainly played a big part in my festivities this time round). Tradition it was though to tell scary stories at this time of year, preferably around a roaring fire with a glass of brandy in hand, a practice whose motivations and origins are discussed by Johnny Mains in the introduction to the latest offering from Dark Musings' favourite publisher Spectral Press, the beautifully produced collection of stories that is The 13 Ghosts of Christmas.
It's a good title for a book (and which sits above a striking bit of cover artwork from Vincent Shaw-Morton which perfectly captures the essence of ghostly yuletide tales) but, if I'm being pedantic, isn't an entirely accurate description of the contents. There are thirteen stories here for sure, but they're not all about ghosts. Is this a problem? Of course not, only the worst of pedants so far up their own fundament would take issue with this. I actually think this a strength of the book, not too long ago I reacquainted myself with the collected stories of both Charles Dickens and M.R. James. I enjoyed the experience immensely but I have to admit that towards the end it was a case of oh, another ghost story... Variety is the spice of life and there's plenty of that in here, all of the highest quality.
The collection is book-ended by two stories that are actually about ghosts. John Costello's An Odd Number at Table opens the collection and ticks another box for the pedants being set, as it is, at Christmas. I liked the story, it's a strong opener for the book, but felt the revelation, when it came, wasn't that much of a revelation and the story's coda I found creepy, but not for the reasons you might expect...
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Lost Soldiers is the final story in the book and is an extremely atmospheric piece which makes good use of its Lincolnshire location (and weather). It's a good story but I felt the slightly jokey style of the narrator detracted a little from the overall scariness of the piece.
The spirit of M.R. James is most apparent in All that is Living by Nicholas Martin but the story felt a little disjointed, changing the character point of view midway through.
The story that most closely adheres to the tradition of the Christmas ghost story is William Meikle's Carnacki: A Cold Christmas in Chelsea. William was one of my "finds" of last year and I enjoyed this reincarnation of William Hope Hodgson's character as much as I did his Dark Melodies collection. It's an atmospheric story, well told, with a nice, traditional feel to it.
All the stories in this collection are of a high quality, there's no filler here - I enjoyed all of them. I fear Richard Farren Barber's Where The Stones Lie may have suffered somewhat by my having just read the latest Spectral chapbook The Way of the Leaves which arrived alongside my copy of 13 Ghosts as there are similarities between the stories. It's a cracking tale though, atmospheric, scary and moving.
The stand-out stories for me were firstly Thana Niveau's And May All your Christmases, a story whose premise is profoundly scary (although non-ghostly!) and which contains a curious typo which somehow escaped the ominous squint of Mr Marshall Jones.
Gary McMahon's Ritualism is another great piece of writing from the ever-consistent King of Bleak. Again, it's not a ghost story but is deeply scary nonetheless, creating a new urban myth and confirming everyone's worst fears about gangs of kids hanging around on street corners.
My favourite story in the collection though is Martin Roberts' Now and Then. It's also the shortest story in there but is stylishly written and structured, sad and scary. It worked for me. The 13 Ghosts of Christmas is yet another impressive addition to the Spectral back catalogue. Kudos to Simon Marshall Jones for reanimating this tradition (here's hoping bear-baiting and witch hunts aren't next on his list) and I wish him every success with future editions, hopefully it'll be a tradition that continues long into the future.
With a couple of exceptions I've enjoyed everything I've read this year so it wasn't a straightforward decision working out which were my favourite works of fiction of 2012. The bulk of my reading was short stories so it seems appropriate to start with that format for this review.
Choosing the single best story I read this year was the most difficult decision considering the size of the field of competitors. Before proclaiming the "winner" (there are no awards associated with this, simply my undying appreciation) there are a couple of honourable mentions to be made, two of which come from the pen of Gary McMahon, a great writer who has proven over the last few years that quantity and quality are not necessarily inversely proportional to each other, in his case quite the opposite applies. The first is in his collection Tales of The Weak and The Wounded and is Diving Deep, the second from the recently released To Usher, The Dead and is The Good, Light People - both stories transcended the words on the page, addressed profound issues in a way that left me breathless, moved in a way that I couldn't quite put my finger on, absolutely the best way to be moved. Stephen Bacon's Daddy Giggles was a superbly written story that addressed its dark subject matter in a non-expoitative way and which brought home the tragedy and horror in a suupremely effective way. My favourite individual story of the year though has to be Ray Cluley's Night Fishing from Shadows and Tall Trees 3. I waxed lyrical about the story in an earlier review here and can say that I'm still as impressed by the story now as I was then.
With respect to single author collections, kudos again to Gary McMahon's Tales of The Weak and The Wounded which I think is his best collection since How To Make Monsters, and a nod of appreciation to Conrad Williams' Born With Teeth, an astounding collection of literary horror stories where I gained as much pleasure from the writing itself as the plots and narratives. My favourite collection however -and the single most enjoyable reading experience of the year, has to be Stephen Bacon's stunning debut collection Peel Back The Sky. My full review is here and I once more urge you to buy this book which displays the considerable talents of a writer who is destined for great things. Visions Fading Fast was edited by Gary McMahon and was a collection of novellas that displayed how effective a medium it can be. Standout for me was Nathan Ballingrud's Wild Acre, another story where the tone and writing transcended the words on the page. Spectral Press goes from strength to strength, their line of Spectral Visions novellas have so far been of the highest quality and until very recently, John Llewellyn Probert's The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine was top of the list for my favourite novella of 2012.
That was until a week or so ago when Mike O'Driscoll's TTA Press novella Eyepennies came through the letterbox. This is an outstanding piece of writing. To describe it as a contemplation of life, death and music kinda works but this is so much more. It's beautifully written and the non-linear structure reflects perfectly the confusion within the narrator's mind. It's as near perfect a piece of writing I've read, intensely disturbing and yet somehow moving. Read it if you possibly can.
The decision on my favourite novel was a close run thing too. That man McMahon crops up yet again but I'm sneakily disqualifying his two Concrete Grove novels as they're part of a trilogy that kicked off in 2011. That said, Silent Voices and Beyond Here Lies Nothing are wonderful books, excellent on their own merits but the trilogy as a whole truly deserves to be called a classic. Runner up for best novel - though only just - is Adam Nevill's Last Days. This is quite possibly the scariest book I've ever read. Hardened as I am to horror stories (or so I like to think) after 30 odd years of reading them, this book still manged to scare the shit out of me. My review is here. (Pigs will fly, I thought, before a book manages to scare me again).
The best novel of the year in my opinion however, is Simon Bestwick's tour de force of horror The Faceless. This book pressed so many of my buttons it was scary. Actually it was scary, bloody scary. Great writing, great story. My review is here.
It's been a good year for horror. Although it may still be struggling for acceptance in the "mainstream" the quality of the writing produced by the many small (and medium-sized) presses is second to none. Despite the onslaught of e-books, many publishers are still producing high quality products (hard copies if you will), notably Pendragon Press and the aforementioned Spectral Press. The chapbook is making a bit of a comeback, another pleasing development. (My personal favourite of 2012 being Mark West's What Gets Left Behind - Mark's another writer I hope is destined for great things next year).
Here's to an even better 2013.
Merry Christmas!
To Usher, The Dead is a beautifully produced book from Pendragon Press and is a collection of stories from Gary McMahon featuring his character Thomas Usher, the conflicted hero of the novels Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things.
The stories, fourteen in all, take place prior to the events that unfold in the two novels, a kind of "Usher, the early years" if you will, and provide a back-story for the character, tracing his development and charting the changes he undergoes as his psychic abilities uncover the dark truths hidden behind the veneer of reality. It's true abyss-staring stuff here and yes, as the stories progress, the abyss does a lot of staring back...
The opening story Late Runners is really quite benign, especially when compared with some of the stories that follow, a gentle story that is sad yet touching and introduces Usher's abilities as a benign force.
There are some traditional ghost stories in here, Reflections, for example that deals with a mirror that may, or may not be haunted, and there's a welcome nod to the Banshee in Even The Wind Fears but as the book progresses the darker elements begin to appear and as it draws to a conclusion it's obvious that Usher regards his gift as more of a curse than a blessing.
There's an absolute belter of a story in this very strong collection. The Good, Light People is one of those stories that leave me with goosebumps when I've finished reading them. It wasn't till I'd finished the book that I saw that there were notes on each of the stories and that Gary himself thinks this is the best story he's ever written. It could well be. It's profound and disturbing, addressing the issue of faith in a thought-provoking and utterly terrifying way. It's a turning point too in Usher's progression, ending on an epiphany of sorts, one which will define his life from here on in. To Usher, The Dead is another fine collection of stories from Gary McMahon. I loved the two novels, put them on a par with the Concrete Grove trilogy, and these stories are a wonderful addition to those two books, adding to the character of Usher and introducing the themes and ideas that are brought to fruition in the novels.
A few typos aside (and a TOC that seems to gone somewhat awry with its page numbers) this is a beautifully produced book (I particularly like the black page marker). The stories date back to 2005 but this collection as a whole reinforces the fact that Gary McMahon is consistently one of the best, if not the best writers of contemporary horror fiction around.
Absolutely, thoroughly recommended.
Proberty a. horror writing in the style of grand guignol, with a rich vein of dark humour.
There's no such word as proberty of course, but there should be. John Llewellyn Probert has carved out a niche for himself in contemporary horror writing that surely makes him worthy of his own adjective. (The campaign starts here...) Ward 19 is the latest offering from the master of the finely crafted horror story and is another thoroughly enjoyable trip to the darkside.
It's the first of what I'm hoping will be a series featuring CID coroner Parva Corcoran. It's set in St Margaret's Hospital and concerns the activities of a serial killer whose M.O. involves removing strips of skin from his victims. It's a novella and as such involves packing a lot into a short running time, necessitating the use of much exposition and it's to John's credit that he manages to achieve this without it coming across as clunky and annoying.
The medical terminology rings absolutely true and I had to smile when I read about the white sheets draped over the boxes used to transport bodies to the mortuary in an attempt to disguise them, the same thing is done in the hospital I work in and no, nobody is fooled...
The plot rattles along at a cracking pace (although, it has to be said, doesn't involve a great deal of investigation) and is just gruesome enough without being simply gross. The killer is suitably deranged as are their motives and there's plenty information given on Parva's back story to intrigue the reader.
The "cover" of the novella is a joy to behold, (part of me wishes hospitals really did look like this instead of the bland shopping malls the PFI culture has created - if they did it would certainly reduce the number of malingerers...) so it's a shame the story's only available electronically (here) as it would make an impressive addition to anyone's bookshelf.
Ward 19 was a joy to read and I look forward to more adventures for Parva. For a long time to come...
Issue 4 of Shadows & Tall Trees from Michael Kelly's Undertow Books is now available. I came late to this impressive series of publications with Issue 3 being my first but was so impressed with it that I had no hesitation in taking out a subscription for future editions, anticipating more high quality tales of "quiet" horror.
I'm happy to say that my expectations have been more than met by issue 4 which contains eight more examples of top notch writing.
It's another beautifully produced book with another stunning cover, this time courtesy of Sarolta Ban - a cover that definitely resonates with me as I live in a fairly rural part of the country and am currently surrounded by literally thousands of crows and jackdaws as they flock together to roost in the fields that surround my house. Fortunately they're not as big as the ones depicted on the cover but I do feel like I've wandered onto the set of Hitchcock's The Birds every time I go out.
This is a fine collection of stories and all are classic examples of how subtlety and suggestion can be as terrifying - if not more so - than all out, in your face shock and gore. Metaphors and imagery are used to excellent effect within these pages, particularly so in Robert Shearman's Bedtime Stories for Yasmin which confronts a deadly serious topic in a story that reads like a fable and in one of the stand-outs of the issue Senbazuru by V.H. Leslie, a beautifully written tale set in Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. A tale of isolation and despair, the recurrent themes and imagery that run through the story are incredibly effective, the first person narrative adding to the ambiguity of what may or may not actually be happening.
The other stand-out story for me is the first in the collection, What We Mean When We Talk About The Dead by Gary McMahon. This is probably the "quietest" horror I've read from Gary but it's an extremely effective piece of writing. It tells of the visit of social worker Liz to the Everley household and the discovery of something quite unexpected. There's a downbeat, melancholic tone to the piece which absolutely suits its subject matter. It's scary, undoubtedly, but it's also thought-provoking, raising questions as to what exactly does happen when we die, how confusing that could be... Most of all, I found it incredibly sad, which shows the power and skill of the writing.
Michael Kelly has once again assembled a stunning collection of stories. Anyone seeking out high quality, thought-provoking, literary horror need look no further than Shadows & Tall Trees.
I'm often asked "why do you like horror?" Actually, I'm not. Even within my massive circle of friends, neither of them has ever asked me. However, if anyone did ask, I could confidently answer that it's all my grandmother's fault for it was she who introduced me to the world of horror when she bought me, as a Christmas present, Denis Gifford's A Pictorial History of Horror Movies. Quite why she thought this was a suitable gift for a ten year old I'll never know but I'm so glad she made that slightly controversial choice of gift as it did indeed open up a whole new world for me, one I've lived in for the near-on 40 years since. It's a great book and, being a pictorial history, planted many images in my subconscious that have remained there ever since. The book obviously had a similar effect on John Llewellyn Probert - he mentions it in his notes which accompany the hardback edition of the latest Spectral Visions novella from the consistently reliable and impressive Spectral Press. John mentions too the BBC2 horror double bills, another formative experience I share with him, one which introduced me to one of my favourite films of all time Night of the Demon and also one of the worst films I've ever seen, Night of the Lepus - a terrifying tale of giant rabbits that's every bit as crap as it sounds.
All this inane rambling is by way of introduction to the novella itself, which is a loving homage to those glory days of horror when incredibly complicated, highly contrived on-screen deaths were, well, entertaining rather than just gross and exploitative like today's Saw and Final Destination franchises. (Dear God, I feel so old...)
Having read many of John's short stories previously, The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine appears to me the perfect book for him to have written, an ideal means of displaying the obvious affection he has for a type of horror that has (sadly, I guess) become relegated to little more than nostalgia. The plot - which cracks along at a fair old pace - revolves around a series of murders in Bristol, investigated by the world-weary DI Jeffery Longdon, a brilliantly drawn character who has all the best lines in a book crammed full of dark humour and who provides just the right amount of grounding for the frankly bizarre events described in the book. The tone of the writing is pitch-perfect, it would have been easy to write a pastiche, take the mickey out of the whole thing (a trap I felt Christoper Fowler's Hell Train, enjoyable as it was,fell in to), but John avoids this with consumate ease. His love of the genre shines through the writing and the whole thing is played "straight" as were the original films, this isn't a post-modern revision. I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed the films that inspired it. The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine is another fine addition to the Spectral back catalogue, maintaining absolutely the high standards already set by its other publications. It's the most enjoyable thing I've read in some time. Horror can be fun, there's no shame in admitting that, and if proof were needed of that statement then look no further than this page-turner of a novella. As with all the best stories about deranged killers carrying out incredibly complicated and bizarre murders, the scene is well and truly set for a sequel. Dr Phibes rose again and managed to do so in a way that was more entertaining than his first outing. Here's hoping that Dr Valentine is similarly inclined...
