time to gather 'round the yuletide fire ... Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings (ed.) Tanya Kirk

9780712352529
British Library, 2019
318 pp

paperback

Not to steal thunder from either this book or the British Library, but ever since Valancourt came out with their first Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, I've sort of made it my yearly mission to read this type of thing around Christmas time, in a very small way carrying on a tradition which, as the editor of this volume notes, began orally, changing to print in the early 1820s.   (Speaking of Valancourt, Dr. Tara Moore, who edited the above-mentioned book,  also offers her thoughts on the matter in a 2018 podcast, which you can find here.)

As you will notice from the cover photo, this is yet another volume included in the British Library Tales of the Weird series, of which I have become a huge fangirl.  Believe it or not,  I've actually had this book in my possession since August, but through sheer willpower I somehow managed to put off reading it until now, not an easy task.  The good news is that it was completely worth the wait.  Many hours of pure reading pleasure are to be found here, and I'm not exaggerating.  The stories in Spirits of the Season are all somehow connected to events that occur around Christmas time,  and of the fourteen stories in this book, I had previously read only five: "The Four-Fifteen Express," by Amelia B. Edwards (1867), "Number Ninety," by B.M. Croker (1895), E. Nesbit's "The Shadow" from 1905,  "The Kit-Bag," by Algernon Blackwood (1908), and "Smee," by A.M. Burrage (1929), leaving nine new-to-me tales to discover, which is always a good thing.

One thing I suppose I ought to mention is that not all of these tales are ghost stories per se; as the title suggests, they are "Christmas hauntings," with more than just the shadow of the supernatural hanging over them.    Another thing I should say is that it seems as if not all of these stories were written with a mind to scaring the pants off the reader, as evidenced by "The Curse of the Catafalques," by F. Anstey (1882), Frank Stockton's "The Christmas Shadrach" (1891), and most especially "The Demon King," by J.B. Priestly (1931), in which one particular scene had me absolutely giggling out loud.  I think it's perfectly fine when good, supernaturally-tinged stories don't always end up on the scarier side;  I also think that it's a pity that people often dismiss them simply because they didn't get the fright they expected, often missing the underlying points of the story.  But enough of that.

from The Telegraph

My candidate for best story in this volume is M.R. James' "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance" from 1913.  From what I gather while researching this one, it isn't among the most popular of James' stories -- more's the pity since it's quite the shocker.  As the story begins,  W.R., the narrator of this tale, writes to his brother Robert that he is unable to join him for the Christmas holidays because it seems that their uncle the Rector has disappeared, and that he has been called to join in the search for the missing curate.  After a few days with no results and the police having left town,  W.R. begins to accept the inevitable.  In writing to his brother on Christmas day,  he tells of a "bagman" he encountered who shares his thoughts on a "capital Punch and Judy Show" that W.R. must not miss "if it comes" ... which, in a way, it does all too soon, just not in the way one would expect.  No antiquaries here.   Read this one slowly, savor it,  read it again, resavor.

The full table of contents is as follows, with starred titles new to me:

"The Four-Fifteen Express," by Amelia B. Edwards -- anthologized many times, but well worth the time once again

* "The Curse of the Catafalques," by F. Anstey -- snerk

* "Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk," by Frank Cowper, in which a man gets lost while duck hunting and lives through a horrific night

* "The Christmas Shadrach," by Frank R. Stockton.  Light, a bit silly, but edging on the strange side with purpose. Beware of what you might find in a curio shop...

"Number Ninety" by B.M. Croker, one of my favorite ghost story writers; here the action takes place in a house no one will rent no matter how low the cost

"The Shadow," by E. Nesbit, another sad tale by this author

"The Kit-Bag," by Algernon Blackwood -- after a long court case involving a killer with a "dreadful face," the private secretary of the legal firm involved decides it's time for a vacation.  Whether or not he'll get his kit-bag packed beforehand is another story. 

* "The Story of a Disappearance and An Appearance," by M.R. James

* "Boxing Night" by EF Benson, in which dreams play the major role -- another example of the underlying story here being worth much more than the potential scare

* "The Prescription," by Marjorie Bowen -- although a wee bit predictable, still very much worth the read

* "The Snow," by Hugh Walpole, in which a wife learns the hard way that she should have listened to someone else's advice.    

"Smee," by A.M. Burrage, a favorite of the Christmas ghost story circuit, with very good reason. 

* "The Demon King," by J.B. Priestley -- the "stolid Bruddersford crowd" definitely gets its money's worth  and more during a pantomime and the Happy Yorkshire Lasses make their debut dance appearance 

* "Lucky's Grove," by H.R. Wakefield.   This story came in second in my personal favorites lineup.  The Braxtons'  land agent finds and cuts down the perfect tree for their family Christmas celebration; unfortunately, no one bothered to tell him that he shouldn't have taken it from Lucky's Grove.  A fine story this one, so much so that I'm actually considering buying a copy of the old Arkham House edition of The Clock Strikes Twelve to read more of Wakefield's work. 

from the Library of Congress

 Spirits of the Season makes for great Yuletide reading, but if you missed it this holiday season, not to worry.  It can be enjoyed just as much any time of the year, and for true fans of these old stories -- the famous and the "unjustly obscure" -- it is a definite no-miss.  Editor Tanya Kirk has certainly made some excellent choices for inclusion here, and they are very much appreciated by this reader.


Just one more thing: for those who may not know, Ms.  Kirk also has another volume of stories called The Haunted Library, which picks up many stories that have never been anthologized.  Buy button clicked.  Expect more on that book to come later.

Tales of the Tattooed: An Anthology of Ink (ed.) John Miller

9780712353304
British Library, 2019
317 pp

paperback

Each time I take one of these books off the shelf, I know I'm in for a few hours of reading pleasure.   I bought my copy at Book Depository since the American publication isn't scheduled until July of 2020 (as if I could wait that long);  should anyone decide to pick up a copy there, it also says that the publication date is July 2020 but it shows as being available, with copies sent out within two business days. 

Admittedly, the majority of tales in this book trend less toward what I'd personally consider as weird and more toward pulpy crime fiction (albeit some with a strange edge); given the focal point of tattoos I would have thought there would be plenty more to be found on the weirder side.  Having said that, the stories themselves are entertaining enough; they also, as Miller states in his introduction, "emerge from an intriguing window in tattooing's history."   How that works I'll leave to the reader to discover, but I have to say I was surprised more than once. 

The table of contents reads as follows; the starred titles are my favorites:

"Two Delicate Cases," by James Payn (1882)

"The Green Phial," by TW Speight (1887) *

"A Marked Man," by WW Jacobs (1901) 

"The Tattoo," by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (1909)

"The Tattooer," by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (1910)**  

"The Background," by Saki (1911)

"The Tattooed Leg," by John Chilton (1919)*

"Branded," by Albert Payson Terhune (1919)

"The Tattooed Eye," by Arthur P. Hankins (1920)

"The Starfish Tattoo," by Arthur Tuckerman (1921)

"The Secret Tattoo," by Frederick Ames Coates (1927)

"The Tattooed Card," by William E. Barrett (1937)

"Skin," by Roald Dahl (1957)*

While not exactly on my favorites list, the opening story gave me my first jolt in the form of a woman who comes to a doctor to have a tattoo removed.  I've read a lot of Victorian fiction, but this is the first time I've read about an obviously well-to-do woman of position who opts to have a tattoo inscribed upon her skin.  I was away and unplugged from the world at the time I read this book, but on the basis of this part of the story alone, as soon as I got home I had to buy one of the sources listed at the end of Miller's introduction, Bodies of Subversion: A  Secret History of Women and Tattoo by Margot Mifflin.  Yes, I am that geeky.    "The Green Phial" is an eerie blend of weird and murder mystery, beginning with a "singular and very vivid dream."  The dreamer, Langholme, is convinced that the tattooed man he encountered in his dream had a similar dream in which he played a role in Langholme's.  When by chance (?) Langholme and his friend run into this tattooed man, Langholme seeks proof that such is the case.  "The Tattooed Leg" is one of the more macabre stories in this book, in which a man whose leg had been lost in a wreck discovers that the tattooed leg under his cast  belonged to another and has been grafted on to his body.  Although he gains assurances from the surgeon that he's going to be "good as new," it isn't long until after being released from hospital that he realizes that something has gone horribly wrong.  Science gone awry is the matter at hand here, with this story making for a fun yet bizarre read.  "Skin" by Roald Dahl has a sort of commonality with Saki's "The Background," but Dahl's story has much more of a finely-honed,  implicitly-horrific edge to it that gave me a true case of the willies.  An older man, down on his luck, finds himself on the Rue de Rivoli where he sees a painting by a Paul Tichine displayed in the window of a gallery.  His discovery takes him back in his mind to a time when he knew the artist; his wife had been Tichine's model back before Tichine was Tichine and before his art was so highly prized.  Entering the gallery, where he is immediately asked to leave, he makes the mistake of revealing that he has a picture given to him years before by the artist.  Not a good move, really.  While "Skin" was downright creepy, Tanizaki's "The Tattooer" works on a completely different level uniting beauty, eroticism, ecstasy, and pain, beginning with an Edo-era tattoo artist with a sadistic edge: 

"His pleasure lay in the agony men felt as he drove his needles into them, torturing their swollen, blood-red flesh; and the louder they groaned, the keener was Seikichi's strange delight. Shading and vermilioning - these are said to be especially painful -- were the techniques he most enjoyed."

 However, his true desire was to "create a masterpiece on the skin of a beautiful woman."  He'd been searching for the perfect subject for four years without success, but all of that changes when he just happens to notice a most exquisite young woman's foot sticking out beneath a palanquin's curtain.  He continues his search, this time for that one woman; little does he realize what will happen when he finds her.   I love Tanizaki's novels, but sadly I seem to have neglected his short stories, something I'll certainly be rectifying in the near future.

from Business Mirror

While I've only briefly hinted at my favorite stories above, the rest are also quite nicely done, although in my opinion, the weirdness is a bit tamped down in those.  Overall, Tales of the Tattooed is another fine entry in the Tales of the Weird series, and I haven't found a bad book in the bunch.  I have been highly impressed with the wide range of stories presented in these volumes, and whoever dreamed up the concept in the first place ought to be congratulated. 

Animals of the Exodus, by Alexander Zelenyj

9781908125828

Eibonvale Press, 2019

Eibonvale Chapbook Line #12

hardcover

cover art by David Rix 

(read earlier this year)

"When your Earth-mud walls are scaled at last, 

strike out: your home waits in the vault

None of it was your fault

We belong somewhere, too."

The cover blurb of this book describes Animals of the Exodus as "A 70-page festival for the world-broken. Because there are paths..."  a concept that I first came across in Alexander Zelenyj's Songs for the Lost, a most brilliant collection of stories which  I've been recommending to everyone and anyone who will listen.   It was there also that I first encountered the Deathray Bradburys,  "the most infamous cult band in the history of rock and roll" as noted on the back cover of this author's Ballads to the Burning Twins (Eibonvale, 2014).   The quotation above is from one of their songs, "Migration of the Ancient Children" which is found at the end of this book.  The Deathray Bradburys themselves are legendary, when at the end of August, 2000, they 

"along with 225 of their fanatical followers, disappeared from the face of the Earth as part of the fulfillment of a self-prescribed cosmic prophecy."

As explained in Animals of the Exodus, their quest was to

"fulfill a cosmic destiny of finding those who've suffered irreparable trauma, and taking them away from the place of their suffering to a distant Paradise: the binary star, Sirius."

 And indeed, in keeping thematically with past works by Zelenyj,  the world in these 70 or so pages of interlinked stories is indeed one filled with "irreparable trauma," and the paths taken by those who suffer who seek to find, again quoting from Ballads to the Burning Twins, "a place, far beyond all of this despair..."

The book begins with "Taking Karen Away," which unfolds under the "twin stars of Sirius"  with a horrendous act, the reverberations of which will later resurface in another story as one of the two people here will soon find herself hoping to find "a paradise among the stars."  "Celeste Had to Go Away" occurs ten years after the "initial disappearance" of the Deathray Bradburys, with the actual story beginning much earlier during "72 hours like lifetimes endured in Hell."  In "Some Saw the Fire Exodus," a boy watches as his sister and her boyfriend come to the culmination of their own particular path, knowing that one day he'll see her again.  Finally, in what is certainly the best of the four and most exquisitely written, "The Mayflies Want to Fly," a boy and his "goddess" teacher take a roadtrip toward "That bright pair" of stars in the east, "in case they're good places."  My advice: read each story slowly and carefully -- the links will emerge without having to look for them --  and consider the book as a whole even though it is divided into short stories. 

Anyone who has had the pleasure to have read anything by this author will feel the same emotional gutpunch as before; here he offers such an incredible depth of not just feeling but the very real sense of a broken world  in the very short span of less than 70 pages. Some authors take forever to build that sort of reality in their fictional universes; that is not the case here at all.   Also, like most of the best books I read, there is absolutely no denying that Animals of the Exodus is beyond relevant to our own times.   As I've said before, Mr. Zelenyj really gets it; he's such a brilliant writer that I'd read absolutely anything he writes in the future. 

I loved this book; it will not be for everyone but it cannot fail to touch more sensitive souls like myself. 

*****

My very special thanks once again to the most excellent people at Eibonvale.  It was such a great, smile-producing surprise to have discovered it a few months back in my mail.  And please,  more of the Deathray Bradburys!!