Enforced socialising; The Small Hand by Susan Hill

It's been an exhausting week. Still rather feeble after my bout of bronchitis, I've had a busy week at work, and one that culminated with me being apparently obliged to go for drinks with my colleagues. Now, call me antisocial - and believe me, many people do - but I am already forced to spend 40-plus hours a week with these people. Nice though they are, I find it impossible to understand why it would be desirable for any of us to continue this enforced association on a Friday night. After three bottles of Corona and something to eat, I abandoned the gathering as early as I felt polite and went home - apart from having run out of small talk, I had some writing I needed to do.

Not having been able to drink alcohol for about a year while I was ill means that it now goes straight to my head. I can only assume that this was why I consumed, upon arriving home, two bottles of Frijj chocolate milkshake.

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And now, my latest book review - and a rather suitable one, since it's Halloween tomorrow. 

Readers of Susan Hill's earlier works, in particular her modern classic, The Woman In Black, will know that she is a writer of beautifully-crafted ghost stories, full of all the subtleties and sensitive shifts in mood and atmosphere that all good ghost stories should have. The Small Hand doesn't disappoint on that score. As antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow becomes more and more affected by the 'small hand' of an invisible child that grips his as he explores the grounds of a dilapidated country house, the mood shifts gradually and insidiously as the small hand takes his more and more often and begins to reveal a more sinister purpose. 

The Small Hand really does have all the ingredients of a classic ghost story. A creepy old manor house, the unlocking of the secrets of the past, a steady building of tension, a truly unsettling scene with echoes of Miss Havisham, and a startling revelatory ending that suggests that maybe, Adam Snow has been closer to true horror all his life than he could ever have realised.

However, for me, the ending - while clever and utterly unexpected - is also the book's weakest point. Its revelation is shocking, but oddly perfunctory, and I wanted just a little more detail to exploit its nature to the full. I wanted just a little bit more from it - and when I say 'a little bit', I mean a little. Three or four lines could have accomplished it. But this is a small gripe; apart from that, The Small Hand was close to being a flawless English story in the tradition of MR James, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Three pieces accepted

I've been lucky enough to have three pieces accepted this week - all flash-fiction.

One, Magic, appears here, in Lit Up Magazine. The other two will be appearing in Luna Station Quarterly's special drabble issue on 1 December. No doubt I'll be posting a link to those when they appear. Thanks to Jennifer at Luna Station and Mikael at Lit Up supporting my work.

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"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."   - Oscar Wilde

This weekend, I looked out of my window, and although it wasn't cloudy, I couldn't see a single star. Too much light pollution, here in the inner city. That struck me as a horribly accurate metaphor for my life in general at present. I want to look at the stars from my gutter, I really do. I try. But sometimes, just sometimes, they're just not visible to me, obliterated by circumstance.

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In other news, I was highly amused to see someone terribly pompous on Yahoo Answers today announce that her favourite book by Charles Dickens was 'The God Delusion'.

 

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Competition time

Well, I've had a strange old time. After spending six weeks recuperating from surgery, I was back at work for precisely one week before being felled by a chest infection of such magnitude that I have been, quite literally, coughing up blood in the style of a dying Victorian heroine in a bad Gothic novel. Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine I am mostly now recovered, although I've still got the cough itself and my lungs sounds like milk being poured on Rice Krispies.

Among my feverish waking dreams was an alarming vision of Death standing the corner of my bedroom and pointing at me. Good job I'm not in the least bit superstitious, eh?

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And now on to better things. Firstly, my good friend RS Bohn is giving away a copy of her new chapbook, and all you have to do is comment on her blog. The chapbook's being published by Short, Fast & Deadly, where both RS Bohn and I have had pieces published before. Short, Fast & Deadly is an ezine for fiction of 420 characters - yes, characters - or less. That's the same length as a Facebook status. Think you can't tell a brilliant story in a mere 420 characters? Then head over to RS Bohn's blog and try to win her chapbook, and you'll soon be proven mistaken.

There are also prizes to be had at Killer Chicks. Check out this entry for a chance to win Amazon gift cards - you can enter just by following their blog or Twitter, but for the best chance at a prize, enter their flash fiction competition. 150 words maximum, three of which must be 'killer', 'chicks' and 'Halloween'.

Read my entry, Anthony, by scrolling through the comments. Mine's dated 19 October.

D'oh

I called my last post 'The Tooth Fairy and foxes'.

Did I remember to mention foxes? No.

I am a fucking idiot.

The Tooth Fairy and foxes

Today, while lying in a Radox bath trying to ease the ache at the back of my neck that re-appeared , after six weeks of respite, the day I returned to work, I finished The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce.

I'd actually picked up this novel and put it back on the bookshop shelves on several occasions before I finally decided to buy it last week. Why I put it back, I can't be sure - possibly I was put off  by the blurb on the back, which makes it sound like a trashy horror novel (the book is in the ever-diminishing Horror section in Waterstone's). I like horror; I dislike trashy horror. I'm glad, however, that I eventually caved in, because The Tooth Fairy was a thoroughly enjoyable and often touching read, part horror novel, part coming-of-age novel, part psychological thriller.

Sam Southall, aged seven at the start of the novel and living in the Midlands, loses a tooth. Debating the existence of the Tooth Fairy with his best friends, Terry and Clive, he agrees to the precocious Clive's plan: to find out once and for all whether the Tooth Fairy exists, he should put his tooth under the pillow without telling his parents. That night, Sam receives a visit from the reeking, androgynous, vicious Tooth Fairy - a Tooth Fairy who is dangerously furious that Sam can see it, and who comes to exert a dangerous influence over not just Sam, but his friends. Sometimes, the Tooth Fairy is threatening, even violent; frequently vindictive; sometimes, seductive; occasionally jealous and needy. Sometimes, it even professes to be helpful - but the Tooth Fairy's particular brand of 'help' is the most terrifying of all.

Is the Tooth Fairy real, or simply a manifestation of Sam's own negative emotions - his guilt, his shyness, the sexual frustrations of his adolescence and his sense of inadequacy? Sam's psychiatrist, muttering about paranoia and smelling of Johnnie Walker, thinks the Tooth Fairy will disappear when Sam meets 'a girl'. But if that's the case, how can Sam explain the accidents and misfortune that occasionally befall people who betray him?

Personally, I wouldn't have shelved The Tooth Fairy in the Horror section: it's so much more than that. The evocation of a suburban childhood in England in the 60s is full of well-chosen details, and the story of Sam, Terry and Clive, as well as the seemingly sophisticated Alice (whose 'relationship' with her 'boyfriend' suggests that she is actually the most vulnerable of them all), is perfectly realised. 

My only issue with the story was perhaps the end - a bit too easy, perhaps, a bit of a cop-out? Otherwise, though, a chilling, intelligent, ambiguous read.

Yesterday I finished reading Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason, originally published in the UK as 'Tainted Blood'.

Yes, yes, I know - another Nordic writer. I've reviewed a lot of them lately. But I thoroughly enjoyed Jar City, which is a dark murder mystery set in Iceland and with an incredibly gloomy hero in Erlendur, a Reykjavik police inspector who spends most of his evenings reading true-life stories of the many people who have died of exposure in Iceland's mountain winters until he falls asleep in his chair. Erlendur's almost relentless pessimism could have made him a rather unsympathetic, depressing lead character, but Indriðason (or Arnaldur, as I should call him, as Icelandic people are always known by their first names and not their patronymic surnames) cleverly balances Erlendur's old-school weariness by giving him two bright, efficient younger colleagues, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg, who provide an excellent counterpoint to their boss. The mysterious Marion Briem, Erlendur's former colleague and mentor whose gender is never revealed (and which Erlendur claims not to know himself) is a fascinating and immensely original supporting character.

Arnaldur has said that when he writes, he always keeps in mind the Norse sagas, and their remarkable economy with words. Arnaldur, I think, certainly succeeds in that respect - his prose is spare and well-paced, very clear, very matter-of-fact, and extremely effective. Not a word is wasted. The conclusion of the mystery is bleak, almost fatalistic, and is well-suited to Arnaldur's style. The plot, in fact, is fairly straightforward - the mystery unfolds, gradually, and is solved - but the atmosphere, the 'feel', of this novel is, I think, unique among crime novels and peculiarly Icelandic. The plot relies partly on the small size of Iceland's population, and the notoriously wet, grim autumn weather, the stoicism of the people and the rapid changes Iceland has undergone as a nation over the last 50 years are all equally important, despite a (deliberate?) lack of local colour. The Iceland of Jar City is a long way from the Iceland of the tourist brochures, and yet, it still has a uniquely Icelandic atmosphere that pervades the novel from start to finish.

For those who like a dark, desolate and utterly unwhimsical (but still strangely wistful) crime novel, Jar City is highly recommended. I will certainly be seeking out more of Arnaldur Indriðason's Erlendur books. Jar City has also been filmed in Iceland, by the way - I've moved it straight to the top of my LoveFilm rental list.

I really do believe that Nordic and British crime writers are by far the best in the world, and I've no idea why that is. Perhaps it's because we share a tendency to extreme pragmatism and an innate pessimism... either that, or writing mysteries just gives us something do when it's pitch-black by 4pm during winter.

I've now moved on to The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce, a gleefully creepy horror story about Sam, who sees the Tooth Fairy - the rank, fanged, foul-mouthed, vicious Tooth Fairy - as a little boy and whose life is changed forever as a result. Only a few chapters in but enjoying it so far.

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In other news, I got new glasses today, a procedure always accompanied by the slight sense of panic that comes with knowing I am about to commit to spending a lot of money on something which I will have to wear every single day for a whole year, and on my face to boot, and which I might hate after a week. So far, I like them. Give it time, though. I could hate them by mid-October.

I remember very well getting my first ever pair of glasses. Others tell me that they recently had to get glasses and that they know they must be getting old; I point out that I had to get glasses at 15 and they shut up. My sister and brother, who are ten years and six years older than me, have both got perfect vision, and my parents only need off-the-peg reading glasses in their sixties.  

I'm also the only one who went to university. How's that for spectacle-wearer stereotyping come to life?

Anyway. One day we had routine eye tests at school, the first one I'd had since I was a small child. A week later, a mysterious letter arrived for my parents, informing that I needed to be taken to an optician. As soon as possible. The optician asked me several times whether I had noticed any problems with my vision. I said yes, I had noticed, but didn't think it was something worth mentioning. He estimated that I must have needed glasses for at least three or four years. Imagine. I could have blinded myself with my own stoicism.

After that my world sprung sharply into focus and my maths teacher, who had been telling me I was lazy for the past four years, was revealed to be not only wrinklier than I had thought but also more of a twat; she had mistaken my inability to read her tiny, cramped writing on the blackboard for wilful insolence rather than, you know, the fact that I couldn't bloody see anything.

I've also got astigmatism, and it's fairly pronounced, which means that when I put my glasses on things spring weirdly into a slightly different shape. Since when I haven't got my glasses on, I never notice that the shapes are wrong, it's a bit disconcerting. I always feel like I've been somewhat tricked.