Recent Reading

[Zaharoff]

Cohen, S - Her Friends

Bit of a change, this, and I purchased not knowing what to expect.
Porcelain expert, Johannes, and his Argentine bride, Katarina, visit her home in Buenos Ares.
Injured in a violent street demonstration, Katarina lies comatose and on life-support.
To learn more about her, her backstory, her unspoken past, Johannes decides to sleep with her friends.
A quartet of sexual escapades ensues.
This is not classic erotica, circa the Victorian “Pearl” magazine. This is not the lubricious smuttiness of 60s and 70s adult paperbacks. Nor is it the giggling jollies found decades later in books like The New Neighbor.
No, Johannes is more a prudish voyeur. The female “friends” are, by and large, agreeable, willing, Teutonic specimens. I pictured them as descendents of Mengele and others who fled to Argentina via the rat lines.
I must confess, my hopes raised when I began this. Because of the chapter openings detailing the history of Dresden porcelain, I thought this might compare with Docx’s exquisite and multi-layered The Calligrapher. If only that were so.
The book is well written, though I was dissatisfied with the female characterizations.

[In A Dark Light]

Colin Insole - The Rhododendron Boy:

When approaching Colin Insole’s latest novella, The Rhododendron Boy, the intrepid reader should be made aware that they are not merely embarking upon another all too brief foray into the ever burgeoning empire of weird fiction, for this is not so much a book as it is a portal. These are not merely the hardbacked boards of a book, but ebony gateways, filigreed with gold leaf and accented by the rouge coloured kiss of a single Rhododendron plucked from the verdant gardens of the ever-green realm of dreaming. Taking the proffered Rhododendron in hand, the reader steps through these ornate gates, traversing the permeable borderland which separates the waking world from the sphere of dreams, where they are first to be met with a trio of ageless children, their faces weathered far beyond their years, their clothes those of old men shrunken down to fit bodies emaciated by poverty.

These are not to be the readers guides through the curious narrative which follows, but are merely the gatekeepers, the merest suggestions of the denizens who dwell perpetually within the multi-layered tale which follows, figures at once familiar yet possessing of an uncanny air of malevolence.

Through these pages the reader is escorted through a dementia-riddled rumination upon nostalgia, the unreliable remembrances of a dream-addled narrator painting out the torments of the days of youth and reinterpreting their images as eccentric personas with which to befriend and becalm.

Colin Insole is a master symbolist, and through this magic lantern haunted narrative he has expertly mapped the ever-shifting terrain of dreaming. Within his residence amidst the Mount Abraxas range he has discovered the means by which to explore the deeper workings of his world-haunted characters. In The Rhododendron Boy he has invited the reader to join him on his most ethereal examination yet of what it means to be exposed to the cruelties of the world while still under the impressionable auspices of youth.

(Disclaimer – I very kindly received a complimentary copy of The Rhododendron Boy as a gift from Mount Abraxas Press.)

[Caliban]

Having finished the plays of Kit Marlowe I really enjoyed them. Edward II was my favourite by far. I find Stephen King a bit hit and miss to be honest but there was enough to enjoy in Just After Sunset. I also read Angela Carters The Bloody Chamber
because I finished the King book well before the plays. That was good as well even though I’m not hugely fond of the fairytale aesthetic.

So I’m moving onto reading The Man in the High Castle by PKD as my ongoing novel concurrent with The White Hands short fiction collection by Mark Samuels.

[MadsPLP]

Quote Originally Posted by In A Dark Light

Colin Insole - The Rhododendron Boy: When approaching Colin Insole’s latest novella, The Rhododendron Boy, the intrepid reader should be made aware that they are not merely embarking upon another all too brief foray into the ever burgeoning empire of weird fiction, for this is not so much a book as it is a portal. These are not merely the hardbacked boards of a book, but ebony gateways, filigreed with gold leaf and accented by the rouge coloured kiss of a single Rhododendron plucked from the verdant gardens of the ever-green realm of dreaming. Taking the proffered Rhododendron in hand, the reader steps through these ornate gates, traversing the permeable borderland which separates the waking world from the sphere of dreams, where they are first to be met with a trio of ageless children, their faces weathered far beyond their years, their clothes those of old men shrunken down to fit bodies emaciated by poverty. These are not to be the readers guides through the curious narrative which follows, but are merely the gatekeepers, the merest suggestions of the denizens who dwell perpetually within the multi-layered tale which follows, figures at once familiar yet possessing of an uncanny air of malevolence. Through these pages the reader is escorted through a dementia-riddled rumination upon nostalgia, the unreliable remembrances of a dream-addled narrator painting out the torments of the days of youth and reinterpreting their images as eccentric personas with which to befriend and becalm. Colin Insole is a master symbolist, and through this magic lantern haunted narrative he has expertly mapped the ever-shifting terrain of dreaming. Within his residence amidst the Mount Abraxas range he has discovered the means by which to explore the deeper workings of his world-haunted characters. In The Rhododendron Boy he has invited the reader to join him on his most ethereal examination yet of what it means to be exposed to the cruelties of the world while still under the impressionable auspices of youth. (Disclaimer – I very kindly received a complimentary copy of The Rhododendron Boy as a gift from Mount Abraxas Press.)

This is easily the best volume in the field I've read in recent years. Truly superb.

[bendk]

Colin Insole - The Rhododendron Boy

Is this book available anywhere?

Thanks

[In A Dark Light]

Quote Originally Posted by bendk

Colin Insole - The Rhododendron Boy Is this book available anywhere? Thanks

I'm afraid it's very probably sold out at this point. It might still be worth emailing Mount Abraxas Press just in case they do still have the odd copy available, but the volumes they put out tend to sell out in days rather than weeks.

[Zaharoff]

Sloan, Robert - Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

High concept fantasy adventure, guised in modern dress, set between a shadowy, downtown bookshop and the gleaming tech campus of Google.
The stakes? Immortality and the meaning of life.
New employee, Clay (name is symbolic - almost all the names have other meanings) gets a job as midnight clerk at 24 hour bookstore.
The setting in in San Francisco, and the store seems more Borderlands than City Lights.
Customers are few and far between, yet most are regulars and they seem to be chasing after specific books in a pattern.
Clay works out part of that pattern and realizes the shelves mask a design - a network - of extraordinary significance.
For fantasy aficionados, Clay is a classic rogue type.
An inventive and entertaining book for readers and coders alike.
The book is deep and shallow, thought provoking and insipid, a cliffhanger - with cheats.
It held my interest throughout, though the Epilogue was needless and silly.

[cannibal cop]

It is exactly what it says on the tin. Nothing new, a selection of mostly lukewarm leftovers from the "dubious myths and unlikely urban legends" bargain bins, but easy enough to digest in small bites.

[Zaharoff]

Black, Andy (editor) - Necronomicon I: The Journal of Horror and Erotic Cinema

Early publication from the now disreputable Creation Press.
Series of erudite essays about several Horror films, with emphasis on the less traveled.
Multiple authors, some insightful, some enjoyable, some pretentious.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, equating it with classic fairy tales, was a colossal bore.
Book presupposes the reader will have more than passing familiarity with Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, adaptations of Lovecraft, Italian cinema (Argento, Fulca ... ). Hammer barely mentioned - separate book for them.
Definitely worth a look for hardcore Horror fans, if you can track down an affordable copy.

[Patrick G.P]

Copsford by Walter J.C. Murray

“I was of the country. I could not dip my pen in the life-blood of the city streets. I needed the very song of the shadow-dappled brook to write, with the sounds of wild wings in my ears and the scent of wild flowers in my nostrils.”

Copsford is the autobiographical narrative of Walter J.C. Murray who in 1920, moved away from London to live by himself in a small, derelict cottage in the English countryside. His goal was to get back to the environment of the country which he dearly loved and gather herbs to sell and sustain himself. The book outlines his joys, his struggles against the looming loneliness, his hopes and dreams and observations on the local wildlife and flora while living in the broken-down cottage for a year along with his faithful dog Floss.

The book has several wonderful moments in it, and a lot of lovely stories concerning chance encounters with the local farmers, wildlife and the elements themselves, but it is perhaps the smallest moments of the book that makes it so special, Murray’s complete wonderment at seeing two partridges emerging from the grass, the interplay of sunbeams through the boughs of a mighty tree, and his thoughts on the strange properties of the herbs he gathers. Occasions where nature’s beauty and mystery astounds him to the point that he almost has trouble conveying his thoughts and feelings.

Here is the novel’s biggest strength as it draws on the same naturalistic mysticism and anti-materialism that both Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood tried to convey in many of their stories. Murray’s narrative is filled with awe at the inner workings of nature, from flora to fauna, and he manages to capture his enthusiasm and his reverence for it in his prose. There is also something slightly sinister in the way Murray describes the loneliness and isolation in the book as if it’s a physical presence within Copsford he has to chase out. In the pages of Copsford, we glean the mystique and the indescribable beauty of nature seen through the eyes of a man who reveres it almost to the point of religion. Throughout the book, there are also several excellent photographs of wildlife, scenery, and herbs taken by Murray in the 1940s to illustrate the manuscript.

The book is a truly delightful read, and it’s hard not to get caught up in Murray’s wild enthusiasm, be it for the herbs he gathers or the wonderful sights that nature shows him around the cottage. Partly an autobiographical account of a man’s year in isolation in nature, and partly his remembrance of how he communed with the mysticism of the English countryside.

“In late April, when wind-flowers carpet the woodlands, and a haze of dainty green veils the bare limbs of hornbeam and beech, what sound so magical is there as the response of the trees to the young wind?”

Included in the Tartarus Press edition is the short, but quite wonderful chapter “Voices of Trees” from an earlier book by Murray, where tries to outline some strange, hidden language that can be heard when the wind blows through the boughs of trees and its meaning to wildlife and the elements. Also, in this edition is an excellent foreword by R.B. Russell which sheds some light on Murray’s life both during his stay at Copsford and after his year there had come to an end.