The Wish Dog and Other Stories

Penny Thomas & Stephanie Tillotson (eds)
Honno

The Wish Dog and Other Stories takes you into the realm of the unknown, the ghostly and the gothic, in a colourful kaleidoscope of half-glimpsed shades.
The title story, The Wish Dog conjures up a fetch – a lifetime companion much wanted; Harvest is a haunting reworking of Babes in the Wood; Sovay, Sovay tells of a Grand Guignol actress who loses her head to a dream of romance and returns with a thousand stories to tell to her bewitched audience; in Broad Beach a man who has had a close encounter with death has dreams that seem larger than life – what he wants most is to run, like the athlete he watches at the tideline each day.
Other tales feature a ghostly mansion in a Merthyr park, a lonely soldier permanently on guard, the angel of death and a would-be suicide, a lonely Inuit asleep on a mountainside, a row of small wet footprints on floorboards…
Open the pages if you dare, but don’t forget to look behind you.

There seems a little confusion over themes in this book.  The introduction opens with the question of 'What makes a good ghost story?' and the cover refers to 'Haunting tales from Welsh women writers' and I wonder if this perhaps explains the variety in the stories here with many going down the path of the supernatural while others offer a story with a wider interpretation of the world 'haunting'.

Of those in the latter camp Nic Herrriot's 'Convention is the Mother of Reality...' is the undeniable stand out with it's delicately poignant tale of ageing and friends both real and ... other and Gillian Drake's 'Seashells' is a quick but satisfying story of both person and place finding each other.

Of the former there are a few which go in too heavy handed or are just a bit too clunky to conjure up any chills but in amongst them is the folk horror of Sian Preece's 'Harvest' and the jealous spirit of the 'Caretakers' in Jo Mazelis story both of which provide engaging diversions.

I like coming across unexpected ghost stories and in the case of this unassuming volume it proved to be mostly for the good as there was very little here that I didn't enjoy, much that I did and a few that really shone through.

Buy it here - The Wish Dog: Haunting tales from Welsh women writers

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'The Changes' Trilogy

Welcome to the Britain of The Changes. A Britain returned to a level of medieval peasantry by a sudden and inexplicable hatred of all machines that consumes most of the inhabitants.

Written by English writer Peter Dickinson and originally published between 1968 & 1970 tells three separate stories - originally in reverse chronological order - about life in this harsh new world.

In 1975 the series was adapted by the BBC into a 10 episode TV series which I'll talk about some other time.

The Weathermonger

"This is the time of The Changes -- a time when people, especially adults, have grown to hate machines and returned to a more primitive lifestyle. It is a time of hardship and fear! When 16-year-old Geoffrey, a "weathermonger" starts to repair his uncle's motorboat, he and his sister Sally are condemned as witches. Fleeing for their lives, they travel to France -- where they discover that everything is normal. Returning to England, they set out to discover why the country is under this mysterious spell. Only discovering the origin of the deadly magic will allow them to set the people free of its destructive influence."

This is the first of the trilogy that formed the basis for the 1970s TV series 'The Changes' although this one barely featured in the TV show at all except for a vague similarity in terms of the ending.

It's the sorry of two kids - Geoffrey and his little sister Sally - who are travelling through a Britain that is hostile, barbaric, superstitious and which has somehow regressed back to the middle ages in order to find the source of the problem. With the assistance of an ancient Rolls Royce and Geoff's (titular) weather magic the two plough their way across the country being attacked by wild boars, angry superstitious peasants and lightning whilst being pursued by a feudal lord and his pack of dogs.

It's a little romp of a book and I'm really surprised it isn't better remembered although I wonder if the drugs at the end had a part in that. Personally though I thoroughly enjoyed and I am very pleased to have the other two instalments here ready for reading.

Heartsease

At a future time in England when anyone knowledgeable about machines is severely punished as a witch, four children dare to aid in the escape of a "witch" left for dead.

The second in Dickinson's trilogy of The Changes is set an undisclosed amount of time before the first and features an entirely new set of characters.

What is almost immediately apparent here is that Dickinson has pulled back from the overtly magical nature of the first - no more weathermongery - and all that remains is the vague sense for 'wickedness' expressed by the repugnant Davey Gordon and of course the mortal terror and hatred of machines. The book is all the stronger for it too with the reigning in of the magic allowing a far more interesting and real story to unfold.

The story tells of the rescuing of a 'witch' - in actual fact an American sent to Britain to investigate The Changes - from a crude grave following his stoning by the villagers by 4 young people and their subsequent flight along the canals in the boat named in the title. It unfolds slowly and carefully marshaling it's energy until the children are ready to make their move at which point the pace is relentless and rollicking good fun.

I must admit to having been a little confused by the presence of the American though as in the first book it is established that those trying to reach Britain from outside were repelled by some force or went through The Change themselves. This does make him slightly incongruous but I wonder if Dickinson was feeling a little constrained by the 'rules' laid out in the previous book.

All told it's a lovely little read that takes it's time in the telling and does so to tell a more honest and human tale than the first.

The Devil's Children

After the mysterious Changes begin, twelve-year-old Nicola finds herself abandoned and wandering in an England where everyone has suddenly developed a horror and hatred of machines.

And so the story of The Changes ends...or begins. The third part - and the one with the most in common with the TV series - tells of young Nicky Gore and her travels with a group of Sikhs as they attempt to find a safe new home in this strange new world.

It's fabulous stuff with a story that's both tight and well paced. The Sikhs - who remain unaffected by The Changes - are portrayed as both extraordinary and ordinary. Their behaviour and mannerisms relayed and interpreted through Nicky's childish and retarded - thanks to the influence of The Change - viewpoint; her opinions softening as she gets to know, trust and like them and becomes more at home in their company.  Dickinson is unafraid of his characters and boldly displays prejudice and misunderstanding from all sides - overtly from the nearby villagers with whom the Sikhs begin trading, more subtly from the Sikhs, 'We are cleaner than Europeans.' He's also willing to have fun with them - the running gag with the Sikhs riotous discussions that invariably lead to the correct decision being made.

I've seen these books listed lately in reverse order - with this one as part 1 - but I'm very glad I read these in the order they were published as this was easily my favourite of an excellent series and a very nice way to leave this changed world.

The Owl Service

Alan Garner
(Armada Lion)

Something is scratching around in the attic above Alison's room. Yet the only thing up there is a stack of grimy old plates. Alison and her stepbrother, Roger, discover that the flowery patterns on the plates, when traced onto paper, can be fitted together to create owls-owls that disappear when no one is watching. With each vanished owl, strange events begin to happen around Alison, Roger, and the caretaker's son, Gwyn. As the kids uncover the mystery of the owl service, they become trapped within a local legend, playing out roles in a tragic love story that has repeated itself for generations... a love story that has always ended in disaster.

I've been wanting to give this one a read for a long time now but was waiting to find a nice old copy. I was finally able to track one down the other day (same edition as the one pictured) and jumped right in.

The story tells of a trio of teens and assorted adults in a house in a valley somewhere in mid Wales. The discovery of some old plates with drawings of owls on them links the three kids into an ancient story from the Mabinogion that has returned again and again to plague those of the valley.

It was an odd sort of read that left much unanswered - Why was Huw so respected in the village if he was simply one of the previous participants? Why had no one else spotted the fairly obvious solution to the problem?

There was little in the way of redemption at the end for the central characters and it made a nice change for it to be the more unpleasant of them to emerge as the hero.

An odd and intriguing book with a dark and uncompromising personality that leaves you feeling more than a little drained at the end.

Buy it here - UK / US

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The White People and Other Weird Stories

Arthur Machen
(Penguin Classics)

Actor, journalist , devotee of Celtic Christianity and the Holy Grail legend, Welshman Arthur Machen is considered one of the fathers of weird fiction, a master of mayhem whose work has drawn comparisons to H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Readers will find the perfect introduction to his style in this new collection. With the title story, an exercise in the bizarre that leaves the reader disoriented virtually from the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside down. "There have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin," explains the character Ambrose, "who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed.'"

Machen has been hovering around my attention for a long time now but as I've been so busy I didn't think I had the head space for him. Recently a gap in my schedule decided for me though that the time was right and what a treat it turned out to be.

Now, I realised long ago that my heart was in the pulps but I do like to occasionally stray into other waters as the tides takes me and of late I've been thoroughly enjoying some older work whist taking the opportunities afforded me by both free time and good weather for some outdoor reading.

Arthur Machen

There are moments of sublime beauty here, particularly the little title piece which is a perfect realisation of , entirely fictitious, Welsh folktales as filtered through the diary of a young girl who may or may not be experiencing the world they report first hand. Alongside this are several stories relating similar sorts of Welsh related folkloric horror and some, for me less successful, World War One inspired tales. Machen was obviously a devotee of the stories of his childhood but he was also not afraid of bringing these tales up to date as he does on The Terror. Truthfully though, this was the story I found least satisfying.

What let things down though (particularly on The Terror) were the notes by S.T. Joshi. Machen uses Welsh place names throughout which Joshi seems committed to attributing to actual places. Now, I grew up near (and still live close to) many of the places he claims are the ones mentioned and they just do not fit the descriptions given in the stories. For instance, Llantrisant which, in 'The Great Return' Machen describes as 'the little town by the sea [...]' is certainly not the one Joshi claims it to be due to the simple fact that it is nowhere near the sea. Indeed the nearest sea to the town is on the other side of Cardiff (the Welsh capital city). This was only one of several claims that drove me to distraction but equally it must be said that there were many notes that I found both interesting and essential.

The notes aside though this was a wonderful and resonant read for me as a Welsh man reading these tales sat under a tree on the Welsh coast.

Beautiful, lyrical and inspirational.