A Quiet Belief In Darkness

Okay, a couple of reviews I wrote this week for two better-than-decent books I recently read. Don't know why, but I love that opening sentence. Anyway, they're both on Amazon, but I'll reproduce them here.

First up, what is ostensibly a horror collection titled The Dark Is Light Enough For Me, by John Claude Smith:

In a market that is pretty much saturated with the tiredest of horror tropes (vampires, zombies, werewolves), along comes this refreshing debut collection by John Claude Smith. And when I say refreshing, I certainly don't mean "lightweight". The darkness itself, in fact, is very much a constant character in these stories of guilt, hubris, paranoia, abuse, vanity, addiction, desire and depravity.

Many of these stories, though modern, have Lovecraftian antecedents in mood and theme, and if I had to name a more contemporary writer with which to make comparisons, I'd have to say Thomas Ligotti—although, again, with a slightly more modern twist. I don't want to say "gothic" exactly, since that would unfairly typecast these unsettling tales, and they deserve a wider audience than that.

Smith's language is often baroque and inventive, occasionally straying into the ambitious realms in which a scrupulous editor is necessary (and perhaps lacking at times), but any risk of overreaching is admirably offset when compared to the largely anodyne nature of so many contemporary horror clichés. Smith manages to unearth and expose more layers of that deceptively simple term "horror" than most: here, existential dread arrives in unexpected places; disgust and dismay, too. Some of these stories are downright distressing, in fact.

Which is all a convoluted way of saying: buy this book, read it, and be prepared for some serious insomniac unease.

I said "ostensibly" back there as it manages to be something more than straight horror. Anyway, moving on to my second offering, RJ Ellory's A Quiet Belief In Angels.

At first glance, A Quiet Belief In Angels is a coming-of-age crime melodrama with an ameliorating echo of Steinbeck. But if we recall the familiar dictum that truth is stranger than fiction, we can appreciate that RJ Ellory's plot owes at least as much to his own backstory as it does to any lurid dimestore novel. It earns its occasional extravagances, in other words. And it does this in two ways. First, as mentioned, the author's own life has been punctuated by some remarkably similar losses and heartaches as those of his protagonist, Joseph Vaughn. And second, the gentle, lyrical tone of the novel manages to temper and even mask what might otherwise appear ludicrous.

In an interview with fellow author Richard Godwin, Ellory claims there are "two types of novels […] those that you read simply because some mystery was created and you ha[ve] to find out what happened. The second kind of novel [i]s one where you read the book simply for the language itself, the way the author use[s] words, the atmosphere and description. The truly great books are the ones that accomplish both."

Ellory very much accomplishes that difficult synthesis. It's flawed, of course; what isn't? But the balance between the dismaying mystery that emerges from a series of violent child murders in small town 1940s Georgia onwards, and a soft, lush lyricism redolent of the southern landscape itself, is both a satisfying one and a successful one. This is a mystery yet it transcends genre conventions. It is a story of serial killings yet it transcends the police procedural. It is character-driven (Vaughn in particular is a compelling and unorthodox protagonist) yet quietly contemplative. It's a haunted tale, more than anything, a branch of southern gothic with a tragic twist.

Finally, I was also extremely impressed with the deft manner in which an English author manages to capture the authentic atmosphere, speech rhythms and culture of the American south, with very few jarring notes ("launderette" for "laundromat" was one of them, alongside the publisher's puzzling decision to use British style single quotes for dialogue in the Kindle version I had).

That aside, this is a novel well worth your time.

Enjoy them both.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Review of "Making a Name"

I reviewed Rosanne Dingli's Making a Name and other stories over at Amazon. I'll let it stand.

We are so spoiled these days, by the garish and the obvious. Subtlety and nuance seem to have been relegated to the quieter corners of the world. In "Making a Name and other stories", Australian author Rosanne Dingli seems to be on a one-woman mission to bring those qualities back into the mainstream.

These nine short stories are rich in the finer aspects of human interaction. It is a book filled with gestures. Glances, tilted heads, quiet movements tell deeper stories than many writers manage to convey in far showier works. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate homicidal savagery and alien invasions as much as the next fan of genre fiction, but who wants a meal of only protein? Green vegetables are good for you, after all. But I also don't want to appear to damn with faint praise, or compare Ms Dingli's stories to brussels sprouts. No, these are finely tuned and exquisitely textured snapshots of the human condition in all its regrettable, messy glory. And there is even a hint of unease that sometimes emerges more fully at the end, a haunted echo of something barely touched upon in the body of the story itself. I am being careful not to leave spoilers here, not that these stories particularly hinge on shocking revelations; even the twists are subtle.

One story in particular continued to resonate for me long afterward. In "Woman Peeling An Apple", the complexity of human relationships is at its most intense; all the loneliness, desperation, tender envy and regret of sexual longing are present in this beautifully crafted account of painters, photographers, friendships, and family ties. Its European setting (France, Belgium) enhances its paradoxically gentle power, and it won't let go.

If I were to offer one slight criticism, and not a particularly serious one, the writing is perhaps *too* mannered sometimes. Everyone "makes love"... and maybe this is my own capitulation to the sensational, but I found myself wishing they would get a little raunchier, a little earthier, now and then. But like I said, that is but a minor quibble; the vast majority of this work is a delight--in its memorable phrases, in its clear love of and dexterity with the language itself.

This is the territory of Virginia Woolf, or possibly Milan Kundera. Now *that* is certainly not faint praise.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.