by Andy Cox
Written in a collage style and predominantly told in the form of dialogue extracts, this is a daringly different exercise in storytelling, keeping the reader in a state of perpetual uncertainty as all the members of the dramatis personae chip in with their own versions of the truth, and enough alarums and excursions, footnotes and personal asides, to give Shakespeare a run for his money. It is very much a product of its time, turning the sound bite of celebrity culture and commercial excess into an art form and forcing the media to eat the message in an orgy of cannibalistic frenzy. There’s also a golem, or at least a passable substitute. Underneath the surface vim it clinically and wittily exposes the mercenary nature of the Hollywood dream factory, holding our values up to a harsh light and questioning the things we have been taught to hold dear. At bottom it is about the relationship between the movie makers and their audience, the ways in which the latter will chew up and spit out the former, the needs and expectations we place on our stars, the creation of a new pantheon in an age of cynicism when all our deities must tread softly on feet of clay. For insight into the character of the great whore that is Hollywood and sheer verve of execution it reads like the offspring of a pity fuck Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge gave to Theodore Roszak’s Flicker in a back alley on a night when the stars were perfectly aligned and James Ellroy gazed down on them from a flophouse window. I loved it.
GHOSTS AND MERMAIDS
Angela Slatter’s chapbook HOME AND HEARTH (Spectral Press chapbook, 25pp, £4.50), the latest offering from Spectral Press, is grounded in the modern world rather than one of the fantasy settings where much, if not most, of her work is set. Caroline’s son Simon has just returned home, after being on trial for the murder of another young boy, the son of a Traveller. But though found innocent, largely owing to his mother providing an alibi, Simon’s presence unsettles her, feelings that are crystallised by a visit to the Traveller site and a meeting with the dead boy’s mother.
Home and Hearth is a beautifully rendered tale, with little touches of incidental detail, such as the sensation of cold sweat on the palms and the feeling that people are always watching, aware of what has happened and accusing. Also strongly conveyed is Caroline’s growing fear as she realises that her son is a stranger and the sense of alienation from other people that she feels. At the heart of the tale is a moral dilemma, the conflict between a mother’s desire to protect her child, an instinct that most would argue is hardwired into the species, and awareness of the menace to others that he represents, and as far as that goes there are echoes of Jack Ketchum’s story ‘The Rifle’, though Slatter’s take on the theme has a more societal dimension to it. On the down side, Spectral chapbooks concentrate “on the ghostly/supernatural end of the literary spectrum”, and while there is a ghost in this story, that of the murdered child, it felt very much like an unnecessary intrusion or plot convenience, an element latterly grafted on to a tale of purely human evil to fit the publisher’s brief. That quibble aside, this is an excellent story. As always with Slatter the writing is powerful and evocative, and the understated ending was just right.
The first person narrator of THE ELVIS ROOM (This Is Horror chapbook, 32pp, £5.99) by Stephen Graham Jones is a discredited experimental psychologist who is given a second chance when he discovers the secret of the Elvis Room, the room in hotels that is always kept empty, ostensibly just in case a major celebrity should turn up, though the real reason is somewhat more off the wall. He also discovers that when the room is occupied by a paying guest, someone always dies in the hotel, but this revelation leads to his undoing.
Fascinating ideas are woven into the text of this story and it contains an interesting variation on the theories of ghostly existence. There is an oriental feel to the supernatural phenomena in the story, the implication that ghosts are just part and parcel of our natural world even if not acknowledged as such. Driving the story is the egotism of the narrator, his desire to be vindicated and the tone of voice that author Stephen Graham Jones maintains throughout, switching back and forth from self-justification to apologetic, all the while trying to project a veneer of scientific detachment. He is somebody who, while not exactly evil, is led into evil by his perception of and obedience to the diktats of science, so that inevitably what he does causes more problems than it solves. There’s an element of ambiguity present, so that we wonder if in fact it is the narrator who is haunted, by guilt over his first failure. The cumulative effect of all this good stuff is a story that is never less than gripping, one that delights with its twists and turns of fortune, and the concepts that provide its solid foundation.
Ray Cluley is the writer with the most Black Static credits under his belt, a grand total of eleven published stories last time I checked, and another one in this issue. One of those stories, ‘Shark! Shark!’ from #29, won a British Fantasy Award, and if that’s the good news then the even better news is that if you missed it then you can read it now, as it features as the bonus story in WATER FOR DROWNING (This Is Horror chapbook, 91pp, £5.99). It’s a bright and witty account of the making of a horror film with killer sharks, metafictional in a way that put me in mind of John Langan’s work, especially ‘The Revel’, with the writer directly addressing the reader and chiding us for the wrong conclusions he has led us to make before pulling the rug out from under our feet one last time with a revelation of the true nature of the beast. It was great stuff and thoroughly deserving of all the praise heaped on it and award given.
Having got ‘Shark! Shark!’ reeled in, let’s move on to consideration of the headline act that is ‘Water For Drowning’. Josh doesn’t think much of the other members of Break N’ Wave, the band he plays with and writes the occasional song for, but it does get him a lot of girls, so that’s okay then. One such girl is Genna, who he decides to fuck even though everyone else tells him she is seriously screwed up. Sadly for them both he gets drawn into her obsession, a fascination with mermaids undercut by the belief that her parents have gone back to the sea and she will follow them, just as soon as she finds the right way to transform herself. Josh tells her a ‘comforting lie’ that only reinforces this belief and eventually leads to tragedy.
There’s a lot of mermaid stuff going on here by way of backdrop, with folklore and fiction all used to reinforce Genna’s obsession (and her attraction to Josh is initially based on some marine themed songs he’s written), Cluley presenting a powerful picture of mental illness and variation on the changeling story template. For mixed-up Genna the mermaid represents a chance to achieve the happiness she feels is missing from her life. Against that we have the not so nice character of Josh, with Cluley creating a vivid picture of selfish and self-centred musicians, the love-hate relationship between the various members of the band, their rivalry and at the same time almost parasitic need for each other. While he has an agenda of his own, Josh is coming to see Genna as an alternative to the band. Her madness speaks to something in his own nature, so that he can’t just fuck and run, is instead drawn into her world, the idea that she is in some way special playing counterpoint to similar feelings he has about himself. Love is of course impossible between these two, no matter how often they say or think the word, but there is a form of symbiosis going on, so that after the encore has been played and the audience all gone home, Josh realises that he has lost something of value, flawed though it may have been, and that forever after he will be haunted by the memories of the mistakes he made. Cluley’s great achievement here is to make us believe in someone as unlikely as Genna and see the good in a prick like Josh, his narrative moving effortlessly from a strident account of a cynical male exploiter to something that borders on the poignant and compassionate. I loved every harsh, bitter word of it.
REMEMBERING THE DARKNESS: A.K. BENEDICT
While it might be a little early to be talking about the emergence of a new subgenre, there’s a certain chill in the air that suggests the day of the time travelling serial killer has arrived. Lauren Beukes is most definitely making waves cour
tesy of The Shining Girls but A.K. Benedict was there a month or so before her with THE BEAUTY OF MURDER (Orion pb, 416pp, £7.99).
Stephen Killigan has just started in his new post as junior lecturer at Sepulchre College in Cambridge. Out one night he stumbles across the body of a woman he presumes to be the missing beauty queen Miranda, but when the police arrive the body has disappeared. Stephen faces being charged with wasting police time and also accused of bringing his college into disrepute. He remains haunted by the stone mask the dead girl was wearing and the words “This is your fault” carved into the flesh of her arm. And then another body is discovered, that of a young boy, a chorister who went missing the day before he is found, only the corpse is in an advanced state of decomposition, defying all the laws of science, at least those we know about.
From another lecturer, a man called Robert Sachs who is an expert in aesthetics and argues for the beauty of murder, dropping dark hints that he may have indulged in experiments of his own, Stephen first hears the name of Jackamore Grass, a killer who can travel in time and uses this ability to dispose of the bodies of his victims. Sceptical at first, Stephen can’t deny the evidence of his own senses when he too begins to shift back in time, finding himself sojourning in seventeenth century Cambridge. The police however, and quite understandably, are having none of it. Instead, with the discovery of Miranda’s body, displayed exactly as Stephen described, DI Jane Horn and her colleagues are ready to take a long, hard look at Stephen Killigan. It’s up to our hero to tackle Jackamore Grass himself, but first he has to master his time travelling abilities and take care of some very personal business.
For her first book, A.K. Benedict has produced a novel that eludes easy categorisation, one which melds elements of the thriller and crime drama, science fiction and horror, playing elegant riffs on the tropes of all four genres. It is meticulously plotted, with significant developments in each of the time periods in which the book is set, and details neatly dovetailing into the overall design, so a contest between artists in the seventeenth century has repercussions for the people of today and the theft of antique masks from a museum in Padua in 1742 assumes an importance that only becomes clear with hindsight.
Presiding over this labyrinthine plot, the evil genius of the book, is the character of Jackamore Grass, a killer with the intelligence of a Moriarty or Lecter and the chameleon like abilities of a Ripley. He is an eminently memorable villain who always stays one step ahead of Stephen and two steps ahead of the reader. Essentially amoral, thanks in large part to the ability that separates him from the vast majority of the species, Grass regards others as little more than subjects for him to experiment on, to be shaped by and suborned to his will, even as he despises them for letting him do so. In Stephen Killigan he thinks that he may have found somebody who is not contemptible, but the lecturer’s inability to cast off the shackles of conventional morality despite Jackamore’s manipulations is a big disappointment to Grass.
Stephen Killigan seems initially a brittle person, someone with a sharp tongue, using wit to defuse situations but also a bit of a smart arse. As the plot unfolds we learn something more of his past, the tragic event that perhaps made him the way he is, and the man grows in stature as he resists the lure of the übermensch that Jackamore dangles before him. Killigan is a philosopher whose beliefs are challenged, and a man who has to learn the lesson of acceptance, that there are things he can’t change and lives he can’t save. He makes mistakes, in love and lust, and they cost him dear. Benedict spares her character nothing, but as a result of the rite of passage the narrative puts him through he makes the transition from potential buffoon, somebody we aren’t quite sure if we like or not, to a person of gravitas, and we respect him the more for that, that his triumphs haven’t come easy.
While Benedict is excellent at fleshing out her hero and villain, she doesn’t stint on the supporting cast either, with the story told from several different character perspectives, each sounding distinctive and convincing. Robert Sachs is a man who is essentially a moral coward, using aesthetic theories as a pretext for the crimes he commits and abets, only finding anything like personal nobility at the end when he is beyond redemption. Stephen’s best friend is the irrepressible Satnam, a man with a quick answer to everything and a superficial persona that masks real depth. The girlfriend Stephen acquires during the course of the story and much to Satnam’s disapproval, librarian Lana Carver, is able to match his every double entendre with one of her own, a thoroughly independent modern woman who isn’t afraid to go after what she wants or to criticise behaviour she finds demeaning, and her undoubted research skills help to move the action on. Discredited physicist Iris Burton, who must surely be modelled on Roberta Sparrow from Donnie Darko, in some other space-time continuum if not this one, provides Stephen with valuable information and practical help, while remaining an endearingly wacky old lady, like Miss Marple on speed. Perhaps most significantly, mainly because a coda implies she will feature with Stephen in future stories, there is DI Jane Horn who is fighting cancer and at the same time dealing with her most difficult case, acutely conscious that she is a woman in a man’s world and that all it will take is one slip or misjudgement for the pack to turn on her.
Nor is Benedict remiss in describing the physical locations in which her story is set, bringing to life on the page the cloistered confines of modern Cambridge where the very stones seem steeped in history, and then zeroing in on that history by transplanting her characters in time. Her depiction of Cambridge in the seventeenth century is remarkably detailed and convincing, so that you can smell the air and hear the sounds of life as you read, unchanging human nature in conflict with the forces of progress. In the struggle of the fen men to preserve their heritage in the face of ambitious drainage schemes you can find echoes of very modern concerns, such as the threat of fracking, though that is probably incidental to where Benedict is coming from. She even lets Stephen and Lana loose on a day trip to my stomping ground of Yarmouth, and I can personally vouch for the verisimilitude of that outing.
It’s a fast paced book, with short chapters that flash by at a ferocious clip and a prose style that continually delights with its verve and invention. Like Stephen Killigan, Benedict is never one to shy away from a memorable and vivid phrase, one that sounds just right in context, so that we read about a character who “folds up like a deckchair” or a building that “looms over the Cam like a silent movie villain”. There are a few cringe worthy moments when she seems to be straining just a little too much for effect and originality, but far more often the metaphors and similes are bang on target, making the prose a joy to read, to just luxuriate in the language used. And, while this is at heart a murder mystery, serious themes are being dealt with, questions raised about aesthetics and philosophy, quantum physics and morality. If Benedict doesn’t have the answers any more than Stephen Killigan does, she is asking the right questions and doing so in an engagingly dramatic manner.
It’s not a book without flaws. There are several occurrences of what I’ve come to think of as WTF moments – in particular I am dubious about the economics of Stephen’s plan to save Sepulchre College – and I don’t recall any attempt to address the problems of paradox implicit in the concept of time travel. But perhaps these things will be addressed next time out of the gate, and I do hope there will be a next time, as overall this was an impressive and strikingly original work with some memorable characters and serious themes from a writer who, on this evidence, is going to be somebody to watch in the coming years.
Q&A WITH A.K. BENEDICT
I see that in the past you’ve been a musician and composer, and from your Facebook page that you also tread the boards. I’m wondering how these disciplines affect your writing, if at all. Does acting help you to get inside the head of your characters? Does knowledge of rhythm give your prose that extra beat?
Acting and music are great for me – not least in that I actually leave the house and talk to real people, not just the
ones doing odd things in my writing. Learning and delivering lines makes me very aware of my own dialogue and keeping it as crisp and pertinent as possible. It is very obvious on stage when a play loses an audience so I think I’m more aware of an audience who needs to be right inside the story. Acting does help me get right inside the head of my characters, which is not always pleasant. Also, I’ve found that I take on some of the physical mannerisms of characters when I’m writing from their point of view taking on the way they sit, fidget, drink their tea or react to something on the news. That’s as far as I go though, method writing might be taking it a step too far – living inside Jackamore for too long would not be good for the populace of Hastings.
I love rhythm and rhyme in language and do find myself counting beats in a paragraph to make it balance. I realised in answering this that I also see scenes in terms of time signature and books in terms of music form – is this in waltz time? A symphony? A two and a half minute punk single with a scratch down the middle?
You did a creative writing course at the University of Sussex. What are your thoughts on that? How did it benefit you? What aspects of writing can’t be taught?