Good Gothic!

What a month!  You'd think I'd been trying to read 'Ulysses' backwards, upside down and in Ancient Egyptian it's taken me so long to get through this latest book!  Hopefully there aren't many more like that on the shelves!

I've just finished 'A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread' by R. Murray Gilchrist, a collection of short stories very much in the Gothic genre.  In the 24 tales, we find love innocent, lust sinful and an awful lot of broken hearts.  Everything happens against a background of beautifully described landscapes and gardens and, of course, usually involves supernatural interference with the lives of (usually arrogant) men.

'A Night on the Moor and Other
Tales of Dread' by R. Murray Gilchrist
(Wordsworth Editions,  2006)

This was very much a mixed bag, but I probably enjoyed 'The Crimson Weaver', 'The Lover's Ordeal', 'The Lost Mistress', 'The Madness of Betty Hooton', 'Bubble Magic', 'The Panicle' and 'A Witch in the Peak' the most.  'Bubble Magic' had a lovely wry little twist which made it quite fun. 'The Panicle' and 'A Witch in the Peak' focussed on lower class characters, which made a nice change from hearing about doting young couples mooning about manor houses and formal gardens.  The trouble was that, on the whole, the stories either felt clichéd or just a bit silly.  Because of the genre and when they were written, they do seem to feature an awful lot of silly men (why on Earth abandon your fiancée for 40 years?  Of course she's going to be different when you get back!) and often typecast women as such feeble minded wretches that they're almost unbearable.

Gilchrist does have two redeeming features however.  1) He writes some extremely funny and pompous names (What's not to love about Vernon Garth, Tryphena Wilbraham, Althea Swarthmoor, Lord Frambant, Pliny Witherton and Peregrine Fury?) and 2) His descriptions of the landscape, gardens and even the ladies' dresses can be captivating.

If I'd picked up this book as a young teenager, I would have loved it.  Unfortunately, at my age, I think I've kind of grown out of these moody fairy tales.  They have a certain amount of charm as literature of their time (Gilchrist lived from 1868 to 1917), but on the whole the stories felt too bogged down in cliché most of the time to have any real impact.  There are times that you feel he sleep-wrote though them the ingredients are so similar (take one young maiden with dark ringlets and one haunting garden feature, add one cocky young man...).  But if you've got the stamina and are into dark romance, you may find something to enjoy here.  But I can't make any promises!