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!

Little Beauties

Ok, I've been mulling this over for a few days now and I've given up.  I've finished reading 'The Doll', a recently published collection of rediscovered Daphne Du Maurier short stories and I've tried to find a funny or clever way to say what I think of it, but, to be brutally honest, I don't think there is one.  So here goes.  I absolutely loved this book.

'The Doll: Short Stories'
by Daphne Du Maurier
(Published 2011
by Virago Press)

I've been gradually working my way through Du Maurier's books for a few years now and, assuming this project goes to plan, quite a few more will eventually feature in this blog.  I don't like to rush it when I find an author I like who has passed away, I work on the theory that they won't be producing anything new any time soon, so it's better to savour each work one at a time rather than gobbling them up and getting cognitive indigestion.  Du Maurier's work has been described as 'Romantic Gothic' and, so far, I've got to admit I've preferred her when she's being more Gothic than Romantic.  That's probably why I found 'Frenchman's Creek' a bit dull, but loved 'The King's General' and, of course, 'Rebecca'.

If, unlike me, you prefer the wild, romantic Du Maurier, then you probably won't get as much enjoyment out of 'The Doll' as I did.  This is a collection of some of her earlier, 'lost' short stories published in her early twenties and you can feel the influence of earlier gothic novelists, such as the Brontes, throughout.  Every story is a well observed, reflective exploration of often warped or dying relationships and unpleasant identities.  There's an amoral vicar, men who get what they want then leave the women they loved behind, selfish social climbers who don't realise they're selfish social climbers, people who react to every 'sign' when making decisions and those who ignore even the most obvious ones.

This is also a fascinating collection because you get the feeling that Du Maurier was finding her voice when writing these stories.  She tries different perspectives, styles and narrative devices, making this a real must-read for anyone interested in creative writing or English Literature.

Really, my only niggle is that I felt the collection was named after perhaps its weakest inclusion.  Although the idea behind 'The Doll' was interesting, I felt that it really wasn't the best of the stories included here and was perhaps only included because of its rather ambiguous plot and the fact it features a young man obsessed with a girl called Rebecca.  Certainly, this story won't be the reason I re-read the book again in the future.

Now my enthusiasm has been restored after the moderate disappointment of 'Frenchman's Creek', I can't wait to get back to some Du Maurier later in the year.  Just as well really, I've got another 17 of her other books to go!