The Old Knowledge by Rosalie Parker, The Swan River Press

A deceptive simplicity of language harbours the road to the unforeseeable twist in this reissue of Rosalie Parker's first collection, originally published by Swan River in 2010.  
  In 'The Rain,' we are with the seemingly innocent protaganist Geraldine all the way, as her city girl ways are frowned upon by rain-drenched, surly yokels of whom she asks assistance and gains little sympathy. Until an encroaching callousness on her part not only questions our allegiance to her but her own perception of what is real.
  In 'Spirit Solutions' ( a tale considered unique enough for immediate entry into Wordsworth Editions 'The Black Veil' anthology back in 2008) a daughter's journal records the last days at the family residence after the death of their father. Holed-up in their sold, snowbound home, with the food running out and computer sole link to the outside world, a website offers salvation from the poltergeist that's long plagued them. But is the true cause of its presence closer to home than any of them realise? Again, we have only the diarist's word as to the facts. This is an extraordinary tale, so ambiguous in protaganist motive that it bears several
re-readings.
  'In The Garden' begins as so innoucuous - a woman talking to someone of her love of gardening - that you doubt any eventual denouement at all, until the final paragraph reveals the very black object of her attention and intent. (Evoking those Amicus horror anthology films of the Seventies').
  Further intimations of madness arise by the end of 'Chanctonbury Ring' where a benign archeologist-cum-geologist has a ghostly encounter with one who reaches to him from the past, for a particular sanctuary he has little choice but provide.
  'The Supply Teacher' of the title has a dubious provenance, engaging her class - in her last lesson - in procuring what they know about the "circulatory system" and the life force that drives it. By class's end, we discover just who it is being supplied. A slight tale with a well-worn theme, but welcome for its wry humour for all that.
  The title tale returns us to the rural, folksy-type settings of 'The Rain' and 'Chanctonbury Ring' where a disturbance of the past (the levelling of a ceremonial burial mound in this case) is undermind by a protector with a particularly unforeseeable motive.
  'The Cook's Story' finds a young woman, (not unlike Geraldine of 'The Rain'), seeking solace after separation in a contrasting remote setting. In this case, a huge Tudor house run by a wealthy, slightly estranged, but kind married couple. An undercurrent of possible unconsumation is beautifully realised throughout with a last desparate action - intended or otherwise - that changes everything. A minor classic.
  Lastly, is 'The Picture'; a traditional-style horror, redolent of early Blackwood, Stoker et al, with a modern setting, as an antique collector buys a portrait of "a dark haired, curiously androgynous figure, half-draped in a voluminous white garment, gaz(ing) adoringly, imploringly, in profile at some unseen entity above." That the seller tells her he had sold it before, tells you he'll most likely be seeing it again as life threatens to imitate art.
  If not breaking new ground with every tale, what's striking in all eight is their perfect pitch. It is clear Parker already knows the rules of the uncanny (of what to hide, what to reveal, and when) and how, ideally, to express them. One of the sub-genre's hardest sleight-of-hands to achieve, but it is with these she reveals her strength.
　
　
　

Natural and Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal from the Earliest Times to 1914 by Brian Inglis, White Crow Books

We live in an era when combative atheist polemics by Richard Dawkins
('The God Delusion') and the late Christopher Hitchens ('The Portable
Atheist') finally managed to write what others of us long harboured
but only when safe amongst acquaintances had the nerve to express;
that there is no 'might' about it; there is no 'perhaps.'
Circumstantial evidence of a vision, ghostly appearance, or precognition,
based on hearsay or a holy book of unstated provenance, however
profuse in the former and strictly followed in the latter, does not and
cannot constitute proof as to the existence of 'a higher being.'
  Which begs the question; if evidence is no longer valid as a means to
justify a world view - any world view - then must we now consider
evidence in all other fields equally discredited as means of proof? -
sourceable evidence alone being no longer enough? If so, there are an
awfully large number of academic essays that'll require re-writing by
theorists who'll now need to reproduce, for the examiner, their own
experience in life. Think of it - criminologists becoming perpetrators;
students profiling the rise in neo-Nazism having to practice what
they preach.
  Of course, this is exaggerating and a possibly too literal approach even
for Professor Dawkins. At least, we are not there yet which is what
makes this reissue from 1978 by the late broadcaster and journalist
Brian Inglis all the more timely.
  Split into ten sub-headings, 'Natural and Supernatural' chronologically
charts the growth of paranormal belief and practice, its many
manifestations around the globe, and, its wide and various conflicts
with the Church's prescriptive teachings. From shamanism in the Old
Testament to Establishment attempts at more committed psychical
research just before the First World War, it remains a consistent and
level-headed account of claimed experience countering assumed belief.
  More sadly consistent, (and the book's cumulative effect writ large
throughout), is the unending, two-thousand year-long refusal of the
Church to come to terms with that which it cannot accept - whatever
is manifested before it. Especially hypocritical considering the
mircales and visions claimed amid the Bible's pages.
Alchemy and witchcraft perhaps deserved short shrift. But seeing
what we've since observed of precognition, hypnotism and the
elusive but undeniable sixth sense, public open-mindedness on such
topics hasn't travelled very far.
  From the outset, Inglis highlights his case by taking the line how a
significant quantity of evidence that supports an account of a
paranormal event occurring should lend that account real credence.
But I wonder. I can hear - and have heard - Dawkins refute such
thinking with the' once-Man-believed-the-world-was-flat' argument.
But Inglis's position is one with an open mind, and he is equal to
demolishing, rather than excusing, other less plausible contemporary
claims.
  A new biographical Foreword by Inglis's son Neil states how the
raison d'etre for the book was to act as a "counterpunch against the
emerging sceptical backlash." Perhaps that should read as 're-
emerging' since the paranormal's lack of acceptance before and since
has meant it has never really gone away. This is as good a place to
start as any to discover why.
　
　


　

Strange Epiphanies by Peter Bell / Old Albert - An Epilogue by Brian J. Showers, The Swan River Press

There is a very familiar landscape evoked through its variants
in this seven story collection.  Uncanny, rural settings, long
ago delineated by the hand of Blackwood or Buchan (the latter
actually namechecked during one tale, 'M.E.F.'), are found
resurrected here, larded with appropriately modern references.
('Nostalgia, Death and Melancholy' for one - described at the
back as 'substantially revised' since first published in 2007  -
takes a pleasing, if unexpected, dig at the bankers).
  Such settings demand an unreliable narrator; usually a lone
explorer with issues; and perceptions, perhaps, skewed by a
dependancy or obsession.  The whole gamut is so represented
although alcohol encroaches with its less-than-benign influence
through most, and 'An American Writer's Cottage' in particular.
  While the depictions and situations feel very familiar, they
are often approached from an unexpected angle.
The clearest example here is 'A Midsummer Ramble in the
Carpathians.'  You read the last word of this title and assume
you'll know what you'll get.  But Bell's historical knowledge
lends an outsider's credence to the researcher-protaganist and
her ultimate fate.
  This is what avoids the usual shameless poncing-off of other
authors work, so prevalent in current transatlantic fantasy;
the authenticity of the voice.  Clearly, Bell knows his subject
through personal exploration, as much as, say, M.R. James
knew his.  The back flyleaf confirms his Northern Briton bard
status:  'He is a historian, a native of Liverpool, an inhabitant
of York, and likes to wander the hidden places of Scotland...'
  You leave his Afterword - a historical note on one of the
earlier tales - feeling there may be more psychologically
autobiographical than is stated, almost making Bell one of his
own characters.  You also leave recalling what enticed you to
such tales in the first place.

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Back in the Pan Review (dated 5th July 2012) I briefly reviewed
John Shire's 'An Antique Land.'  This slender little paperback
was put together to represent an incomplete tale patched
throughout by serendipitous little deviations to contemporary
quotes and illustrations.  This purposefully gave that modest
piece an air of mystery, exoticism and scope it might otherwise
have lacked if penned as complete.
  Such is the case with Brian J. Shower's latest, also just out by
Swan River.  Like Shire's title, it sells itself as the spawn of an
accummulation of arcane research from a secondhand source,
where the lines of fact and apochrophal hearsay are wilfully
blurred in the service of presenting an intriguing tale. 
(What might be deemed a stranger, less mainstream version of
Kate Summerscale's semi-fictional biographies).
  A stuffed skylark, sent by a friend, its curious provenance from
a seemingly cursed house named Larkhill, Rathmines, in the old
sector of Dublin, and its original amateur taxidermical owner,
(the hermetic, bird-like figure of Ellis Grimwood), all trigger the
initial investigation.
  Parallel to this journey is 'Old Albert' "himself," the name
derived from an obscure Dublin nursery rhyme that seems
strangely to evoke a sense of deja-vu in the exploratory life of its
narrator.  What opens as exposition almost too dry, soon flowers
into a beautiful mystery of hidden motive and intimating curse as
Larkhill's unconnected, but oddly like-minded, new owners take
over the property and pay their own price. 
  Realising how this sounds, still we are most definitely not in
Stephen King territory - thank God.  The prose is excellently
concise and the mood appropriately ominous, with no
irrelevant domestic intrusions to disturb the narrative flow.
At under sixty pages its economy is also admirable, being
closer to a long short story than novella. 
  An afterword by Adam Golaski stretches the antique,
ectoplasmic finger of 'Old Albert' to the present day with an
equally intriguing, if less economic, 'anecdote.'
Both these Swan River titles come recommended.

Slippery Souls (First Book in the Sunray Bay Series) by Rachael H. Dixon, Amazon Kindle

Fun isn't a word with much cache. It intimates surface pleasure only;
a kind of flip, take-or-leave banality viewed by someone unsure what
true pleasure really is. In literature, it's almost sacreligious.
Consider even the increasingly outdated term, 'good fun.' What is
good fun as opposed to bad? In fact, when it comes to books, isn't bad
fun much more likely to tease an initial interest than good?
  The only exception to this rule is, perhaps, in the field of music;
specifically, its alleged 'fun' side; those dubious novelty records we
grew up with. A bad novelty record enticed us to destroy the radio
and 'hang the DJ.' (This was particularly the case when the notorious
Radio One playlist demanded the latest was played on the hour
alongside every other current single).
  Whereas a 'good' at least held a certain more tolerable charm that
avoided inspiring negative hate. But these always were rare little
beasts. It's pleasing then that Rachael Dixon's first short novel -
described as the first in a series - represents the high end of what good
fun can achieve.
  Libby Hood and her small dog Rufus awake to another normal day
that fatally shifts gear when they inadvertently step into the path of a
speeding car. On 're-awakening' they find themselves on a tourist-
crowded beach called Sunray Bay in high summer. So far, the surface
fun. They also find themselves being followed by a strange donkey-
ride man who will ultimately lead Libby, and us, into a closer set of
relationships she had spent most of this journey of self-discovery
in understandable denial. For the incredulous girl discovers there are
only two kinds of being in this not so benign Purgatory; and both
are monsters. So, she has to be one of them - doesn't she?
  To her credit, Dixon's likely influences are by no means obvious.
The objectification of Libby's soul transposed into her pet might evoke
Pullman's 'His Dark Materials,' while the sadistic, prison-style
governance and its rebel gangleaders roaming the holiday camp
atmosphere harbour a distant echo of Burgess's 'A Clockwork
Orange.' Except 'Slippery Souls' strives to be kinder, more teenage,
and the backstories of the nastier characters play out to reveal they
are more misunderstood than we might, at first, have given them
credit.
  There is a playful naivete in the prose style, to the extent I wished
some of the jokey exchanges between Libby and Rufus (who, in
this realm, can now talk) were a little less obviously worded and
rather more cutting. Today's younger readers could almost certainly
take it.
  Yet I admired Dixon's understanding of the need to accumulate pace
alongside the gradually revealed elements of the plot; never an easy
thing to achieve for a first novel. By pulling this off, I was
increasingly gripped right up to the climax.
  'Slippery Souls' is a fantasy not as deep, profound or multi-layered
as most releases reviewed here. But this is not the audience.
Instead, this is a crowd-pleaser for the kind of setting this ebook
represents. It is a cherry-topped, glazed sundae of a late summer read.
　
　

Requiems & Nightmares: Selected Short Fiction Of Guido Gozzano, Translated by Brendan and Anna Connell, Hieroglyphic Press

'A direct, unadorned style to express nostalgic memories' is the neat
English-translated line Britannica Online uses to describe Gozzano's
approach and one I wouldn't challenge.
  Born in Turin in 1883, his delicate constitution from birth ensured a too
short life of thirty-two subsequent years.  Perhaps harbouring a sense of
mortality throughout compelled him - paradoxically - to display a
physical amateur prowess across several sports.  At heart, however, he
was a poet, which the bulk of his writings prove.
  He had the advantages for doing so. Born to bourgeois, upper-middle
class parents, he initially studied law but soon found himself tempted
away by the irresistible, burgeoning love of literature and a course run by
tutor Arturo Graf, described in Brendan Connell's Introduction as 'an
exponent of rather dark, fantastic themes.'
  (Oh, to have had such a master...).
  In his sideline short fiction at least, it is this brought to the fore larding
romantic and psychological tales based around his well-healed Turin circle.
Of the eleven chosen here, my favourite is undoubtedly the last;
'A Dream.'  A totally convincing evocation of the kind of nightmare
that numbs out all external sensation during only the deepest of sleeps.
Gozzano adds to the fear - the reader's as well as the main character's -
by manifesting a pernicious controller of one or another's making.
  The prose style elsewhere  is as beautiful as I'd hoped, if, on occasion, a
mite self-conscious.  What avoids the dreaded purple passage
is Govanno's successful adherence to that 'direct, unadorned style'
throughout.
  There is stylised gossip between characters and fables reinterpreted
for a - then - modern audience.  Intriguingly, while the subject matter
may be deemed very late 19th Century, his interpretation has the
economy of language, alongside present tenses, clearly engaging with
the early 20th.
  Another of the eleven tales and one of the 'Requiems' - 'Pamela Films' -
features an embittered, nay-saying ageing sister of a successful, film
company-owning younger brother from whose fate she inadvertently
benefits.  If not the very first short story about a film company, it is surely
from an Italian Symbolist. Gozzano's young manhood was bestriding the
cusp of changing times.  It is also a comment upon the unbridgable gap
between generations.
  In 1911, Ambrosio Films released a picture directed by his cousin,
Roberto Omegna, entitled, in English, 'The Life Of Butterflies.'
Connell states; '...it seems Gozzano collaborated on it in some manner,
though he received no credit.'   For the company five years later, he is
working on a script on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.  He dies of TB,
leaving it unfinished.
  Had he lived, might he have become a great Symbolist director himself? -
anticipating, and being feted by, the young Dali or Bunel?
  It is another of those classic, unanswerable "what if?" scenarios.

On The Hill Of Roses by Stefan Grabinski, Translated by Miroslaw Lipinski, Hieroglyphic Press

One of four initial releases from this new independent, their decision to translate the uncanny works of neglected Eastern European writers for a Western audience is admirable indeed.
 This collection, originally published in 1918, was Grabinski's second (though first under his own name) leading to his press-inspired, if misinterpreting, moniker of 'the Polish Poe.' For Grabinski's tone of cool introspection pre-empts that of western authors who'd follow in his understated trail.   On each occasion, the senses are assailed and conflicted.
  "I  knew how to arrange the disorderly chaos of stimulants by tracing each one back to its source," claims the narrator in the title tale.  So is the case with the other six; each relater emerging from some undefined psychological trauma for a supposed period of convalescence to face, perhaps intentionally, that which they most fear.
  One wonders - who are they kidding?  Away from the overstated Gothicism of the previous century, Freud's theories now show their influence.  Grabinski's characters purposely question and analyse their own 'madness' from a position of self-induced isolation.  Here, they study themselves.  The sense of dread communicated is thus sourced from the kind of manic depression we recognise today; something internal turning against the self rather than the cliche of the ghostly external force.  The spirits are therefore inside us and so our own.  
  Possession is another linking motif; the father of 'The Frenzied Farmhouse,' the sado-masochist companion of 'Strabismus' and the wish-fulling architect of 'Projections.'  'At The Villa By The Sea' is a personal favourite.  A man's harboured familial guilt finally revealing itself in an idyllic setting in which he'd appeared master, seems to pre-empt Aickman.  A wonderfully subtle and mature tale for its time.  
  Allied to short, spare sentence structure, all these tales, in fact, feel especially modern.  It would make this collection one closer to the Horror genre, except, as translator Lipinski points out in the Intro;
  "(Grabinski was) not interested in just providing a moment of shock or gore...for their own sake...(but the) intricate dynamics of the human mind."
  The translations themselves are sound, revealing the economic, intelligent beauty noted in the originals. In the first two stories, these are ever-so-slightly undermined by a few technical 'typos,' but, from this new committed publisher, such teethings will surely be corrected.
  If the uncanny of Eastern Europe has yet to come under your radar, this is as good a place as any to start.  Grabinski, at least, was one ahead of the game.

Back Burning and Other Stories by Sylvia Petter, Interactive Press

Back-burning is the term used when man-made fires are deliberately started in a desperate bid to swamp other, out-of-control, brushfires and steer them away from habitation as damage limitation. Here, fire is used throughout as a metaphor in differing situations amongst different characters. Collectively, this might be summed-up in the title story.

A daughter accompanying her mother from her second husband's funeral challenges her allegiance: '"Why didn't you leave Dad...if you loved Ralph so?" "There was you." "Then why didn't you let Ralph go?"(Her mother) sighed. "You know what happens when the brush fires come. You can't escape them when the wind hits and the bush starts to burn."' Petter should know. Born in Vienna and a graduate from the University of New South Wales, she has divided her literary education between these alliterative nations. Such a fate takes a hand in the following twenty-seven titles - each an easily digestible two - six pages - where subjective perceptions are suddenly subverted - and diverted - by circumstance.

In 'The Colour Of Haze' I am reminded of another Sylvia P. with Austrian roots. A German couple are bringing up their daughter, Anna, born in post-war Australia where they now live. One day, Anna returns home from school in tears having been accused by a classmate of being a Nazi; a word she's never heard. Her mother comforts her, but the cold receipt of the news of the death of her father's brother - innocently brought to the kitchen table by Anna - reveals his allegiance. I also wonder if Anna is Petter herself.

The following tale - 'The Past Present' - continues the theme, dealing again with Austrian emigres in Australia. The now middle-aged husband, down on his luck, is encouraged by his wife to teach the old language. But it is one he'd been trying to forget, considering the rest of his past it would inevitably bring up. But a brief contact from a grateful Polish mother of two students builds a touching, unforeseen bridge. The final story builds another bridge; back to the first tale. Only by now the perception has darkened. A seemingly innocent relationship between a daughter and her mother's boyfriend has tragic consequences. Again, the daughter figure narrates, to whom, again, the author seems to relate. Though not obviously 'uncanny,' these tales - making up Petter's second collection - pleasingly twist into shadow as much as light. While there is a faith in human nature that, assuredly, embraces both.


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An Antique Land: A Cryptic Caprice Collected & Edited by John Shire, Invocations Press

A slender pocket book running to just 56 pages, you will find, concieved within, a little esoteric patchwork of past meditations on travel; specifically, two metaphysical journeys intercut with mystical woodcuts of vague or unknown provenance. Its contents - piecemeal and incomplete - are inspired not so much 'found' formations as disparately 'sent' submissions, the point of their acquisition long forgotten by the equally long forgotten editor who first advertised for them more than a century ago.  

In his letter accompanying this copy for review, John Shire - Invocations Press founder - admitted to a lack of any grand vision. "I'm still making it up as I go along." What he described to me as "a small love letter to books, disguised as an experiment in cheap publishing..." pulls you in with moments of 'Boys Own' high drama, suddenly interrupted with the seemingly unrelated woodcuts and scenes from a second tale of haunting melancholy. Each is incomplete and the source of nearly all, anonymous. But there is no frustration in this. Rather, such brief glimpses into worlds that never were only serve to whet the pallet for further metaphysical glimpses. On this evidence, I hope what Shire considers a lack of clear direction sustains him further. Then, perhaps this was because I was in transit myself at the time - on a number 31 bus.


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A last word on another great new £2.99 release from Wordsworth Edition's 'Mystery & the Supernatural' range. 'Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson' fills a gaping void with tales out-of-print for the last twenty years. Credit to Derek Wright, David Stuart Davies and their colleagues for the additional research, bulking out the seminal collection with further uncovered titles, clocking in this release at an extraordinary 702 pages.