Supernatural Tales 45

David Longhorn (ed)
Supernatural Tales

Now this is a rarity, I'm actually up to date with issues of Supernatural Tales thanks mostly to wanting to catch up on all my unread zines, chapbooks and the like over this second lockdown.  Happily this one was the best issue in a while helped in no small part by stories by three authors I really like.

Carrie Vacaro Nelkin gets things off to a strong start with 'Stricken' a fun little story about the monster under the bed before the very excellent Charles Wilkinson gives a characteristically strange story about starlings and music in 'The Harmony of the Stares'.  This is followed by Rosalie Parker's 'The Decision' which is written with her customary eye for the odd and the unsettling but I must admit to being a tad confused by the ending.

Mark Valentine is on fine form here taking a turn as a football pundit and if only all match reports were like this then maybe I'd read the back pages of the newspaper.  I wasn't particularly taken with Malcolm Laughton's story which melded 'Kidnapped' with a rose tinted slavery subplot and a vengeful spirit.

I liked William Curnow's 'The Round-About' which came across like a sentimental Aickman and Iain Rowan's 'The Wildness' was a brief but interesting tale of madness before the book ends with Tim Foley's rather obvious ghost story.

Like all compilations Supernatural tales can often be a little patchy but it's always worth a read as there's usually a good story or two or three or, like here, six.

Buy it at the link above.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Splendid in Ash

Charles Wikinson
Egaeus Press

Charles Wilkinson's SPLENDID IN ASH contains seventeen previously uncollected stories from a writer whose seemingly effortless ability to turn the ordinary, the everyday, the outwardly mundane volte-face into regions of feverish weirdness is unrivalled.

I first came across one of Wilkinson's stories - 'Absolute Possession' - in a copy of 'Supernatural Tales', it was a wonderfully odd tale with a perplexing ending.  It was one of those stories that stick with you long after both because you enjoyed it and because of how much it frustrated.  The same could be said of Wilkinson's previous collection (also published by Egaeus Press) 'A Twist in the Eye' which was a wonderful collection of frustrating invention and elusive delights that seemed to revel in leaving the reader wrong footed and adrift which, you'll be usurprised to learn, continues to be the case here.

'Absolute Possession' is here and is still baffling but also still enthralling and accompanying it are stories of ghosts of retribution and guilt , bodily transformation, hellish bureaucracy and the end of the world.  All show Wilkinson's vivacious and unfettered imagination in full flight as ideas rise and crash through from unexpected directions before flying off at unlikely angles.  It most readily recalls the work of Robert Aickman with it's restless willfulness and Aickman's own preferred term of 'strange' is perfectly applicable to the stories contained in this beguiling collection.

Buy it here - http://www.egaeuspress.com/Splendid_in_Ash.html

You can read a nice little Q&A with the author here - Dark Lane Books

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

A Twist in the Eye

Charles Wilkinson
Egaeus Press

Throughout the sixteen stories collected in this remarkable book Charles Wilkinson explores themes of place, ritual, identity, death and transmutation with a rare, if not utterly unique, confidence. They are enigmatic but never vague, dreamlike but never illogical, horrifying but only occasionally visceral. Few writers can write ‘weird’ with so convincing a voice.

I first read a Charles Wilkinson story in issue 35 of Supernatural Tales, it was a thoroughly enjoyable slice of weird fiction with an ending that I thought arrived far too suddenly which slightly marred the experience.  I was really impressed and invested in a copy of his collection issued by Egaeus Press back in 2016 and having spent the last two days immersed in it I'm still impressed, with reservations, but definitely impressed.

There are two or three obvious touch points to Wilkinson's writing - Robert Aickman, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood - and from the first he takes the sense of the strange in the mundane and in the liminality of new homes, guest houses and childhood abodes and in the unapologetic stylistic conceits of the jump cut endings and an oblique take on narrative flow.  From Machen and Blackwood in particular we see an embracing of the elsewhere and the otherhere.  The worlds within and beyond the natural where soul, spirit and anima are as ephemeral, as elusive and as dangerous as smoke.

As for my reservations well it remains the same as from my first reading.  Wilkinson crafts a beautifully realised story into which we are dropped and instantly and wonderfully submerged and there are storyworlds here that I could happily inhabit for days but with Wilkinson the ending is apt to burst through at any moment jarring us back into the mundane world.  It seems to me that many of his ideas could do with a bit more room, a novella (or even longer) would allow his ideas room to stretch and for their conclusions to arrive more organically and with a more deliberate pace.  But, and I want to stress this next part, this is just a reservation.  I adored this book and if I read another one half as good this year I'll be very happy indeed.

Available from the publisher at the link at the top of this review.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Supernatural Tales 35

David Longhorn (editor)

I've been planning to pick up a copy of Supernatural Tales for a while now but things kept getting in the way and I'd forget about it.  This time when I got a mailout from Mark Valentine detailing his very intriguing contribution I straight way grabbed myself a copy.  Turns out it was worth every penny and I really should have started buying these sooner.

The magazine consists of 6 and half (possibly) stories and a couple of reviews.  The latter are of a book, a film and a comic, none of which I'm familiar with although the comic is an adaptation of Arthur Machen's superlative 'The White People'.  If you've read Longhorn's blog - http://suptales.blogspot.co.uk/ - then you'll know his reviewing style is eminently readable and he makes all three sound very enticing.

The first of the stories, 'Absolute Possession' by Charles Wilkinson is a hugely intriguing but ultimately frustrating prospect that sets up a mystery only to suddenly bring the whole thing to a crashing halt.  I really wanted this to be much longer to give Wilkinson the opportunity to develop and tease out and fully realise the really interesting premise.  Indeed, I was so taken by Wilkinson's writing that I tracked down a copy of his collection published by Egaeus Press.

Mark Valentine (photo by R.B. Russell)

Mark Valentine's story, 'The Scarlet Door' did everything his mailout promised it would with a story of the unexpected perils of book collecting. Andrew Alford's 'A Russian Nesting Demon' struck me as a very glib story about body dysmorphia and I skipped past Micheal Chislett's, 'The Subliminals' as it was part 1 of a story to be continued in the next issue when, if it concludes there, I'll read both parts together - it's also the reason for that 'possibly' you may have noticed back there.

Matt Joiner's paean to the buildings of our past and the remnants of their existence that inhabits our memories takes literal form in his 'The Utter Dust' which set me to quietly remembering those places that meant much but are now lost in all but memory.

John Howard is an author we've encountered here at Wyrd Britain before on a number of occasions and have always been delighted to do so.  His contribution 'The House at Twilight' also deals with place, memory and loss in a bittersweet tale of love broken, lives parted and the brutality of loneliness.

The beauty and the power of Howard's story does no favours to Helen Grant as her story of Midas' curse and the greed of selfish venal men seems rather empty after it.  A re-read a few days later helped me enjoy it more as a fun tale but I think it needed to be otherwise positioned in the magazine as anything would have struggled in the emotional backwash of Howard's piece.

As I said at that top of this I've long been meaning to dip a toe into S.T. and it seems I chose the most opportune moment as for the most part this was a very fine collection that I heartily recommend.

Buy it here - http://suptales.blogspot.co.uk/p/buy-supernatural-tales.html