Jonathan Aycliffe as a horror writer--any opinions?
Jim Rockhill
which I thought quite good and have recently purchased THE TALISMAN, but
have not yet read any of the novels. Since most of these are now out of
print and becoming fairly expensive, which of the other novels would you
give your strongest recommendation?
"John Pelan" <jpe...@cnw.com> wrote in message
news:1bpciv42fs11j2g68...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 05:22:34 GMT, "Tabula Raza" <Uri...@ulro.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Tab
> >
>
> One of the best...
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
Paula Hunter
Paula
--
Paula C. Hunter
"Jim Rockhill" <jr...@locallink.net> wrote in message
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Jim Rockhill
"Paula Hunter" <hunter...@eonet.net> wrote in message
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Christopher Roden
<jr...@locallink.net> wrote:
>All right everyone. I have read Aycliffe's tale in MIDNIGHT NEVER COMES,
>which I thought quite good and have recently purchased THE TALISMAN, but
>have not yet read any of the novels. Since most of these are now out of
>print and becoming fairly expensive, which of the other novels would you
>give your strongest recommendation?
>
Jim,
As Paula mentioned, THE VANISHMENT and NAOMI'S ROOM are excellent. NR
caused something of a stir, I seem to remember, when it first came
out, with one or two commentators taking a dislike to the unpleasant
things that happen to the children in the story.
WHISPERS IN THE DARK, I regard as one of Aycliffe's more Jamesian
efforts: it reminded me a lot of 'Lost Hearts'.
Then there's THE MATRIX and THE LOST (despite its receiving some
criticism, I found this to be a well-written and executed idea), and
THE SHADOW ON THE WALL, which only came out in that wretched
Severn-House library edition (though it did have a dust-wrapper, I
think). Heck, they're all good. Get 'em all!
Christopher
Mark Dillon
Here are two comments on Aycliffe from 1999.
- - - - - - -
From: Mark Dillon (dq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA)
Subject: NAOMI'S ROOM -- Big disappointment. (NO SPOILERS)
Newsgroups: alt.books.ghost-fiction
Date: 1999/08/10
I sincerely hope that Jonathan Aycliffe's later ghost stories are
much better than NAOMI'S ROOM.
I'm also beginning to realize just how spoiled I've been by
LeFanu, Aickman and Hartley... but that's another story.
For me, the plot began to fall apart when Hillenbrand tells
Detective Allison to look for a man named <NO SPOILER>, and
Allison does *not* do what any competent policeman would do:
interrogate Hillenbrand. "Just who is <> ? What do you know
about him? How are you involved in this?" are the sort of
questions any detective would ask....
And a few chapters later, they do it *again*. Allison
walks away without asking the obvious question: "How the
hell did you ever find out about < >... and who is this new
guy you're telling me to search for?"
This is as annoying to me as those teenagers in horror films
who hear a gurgling cry from the cellar... and go down into
the dark, one by one, to have a look.
Yes, the book is crisply written and held my attention, but
it lacks the sinister atmosphere, the tension and the dreamlike
logic that I find -- in LeFanu, Aickman and Hartley.
And as for final chapters, well... the FRIDAY THE 13TH fans
will love 'em.
So please, let me know: has Aycliffe written better books...
or should I just be looking for a better writer?
Mark Dillon
PS. Sorry to sound so bitter, but I had heard good things
about Aycliffe and was looking forward to reading him.
---------------------------------
From: Mark Dillon (dq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA)
Subject: Re: NAOMI'S ROOM -- Big disappointment. (NO SPOILERS)
Newsgroups: alt.books.ghost-fiction
Date: 1999/08/10
Randy (rbm...@library.syr.edu) wrote:
>Weren't you at least a little impressed by the pervading, almost
>palpable sense of melancholy in the early chapters? The first half
>especially exudes a sense of sadness, loss and fear. I'll stand by what
>I said last week: the first half of the novel left me more uneasy than
>any novel I've read since _Ghost Story_. The second half not so much,
>but I thought it was, as you say, crisply written, and the denouement
>prefigured by earlier events.
I wanted to like NAOMI'S ROOM.
For one thing, it's short. Aycliffe writes with economy, which
in my view automatically sets the book in a higher category
than the bloated bestsellers on the horror shelves.
For another, it works primarily through implication and subtle
detail, which shows a great deal of faith in the reader's
ability to add one and one to get five.
But for me, the book fell flat... partly because of the plot absurdities
I mentioned earlier, but mostly because of something I find hard
to express --
The book is too straightforward. It lacks a quality that can
be found in other ghost stories by LeFanu, L. P. Hartley,
Robert Aickman, M. John Harrison, Bernard Capes... and in
works outside the field by Durrell, Ballard, Golding and Greene:
a certain heightened atmosphere, a visual super-realism
that comes close to paranoia, an almost dream-like sense
that the world is deeply wrong, a tension in which everything
around you becomes unfamiliar.
I'm not doing very well, am I?
A sense of mystery. A sense of the uncanny and the arbitrary.
A feeling that certain things can never be explained.
The illogical logic that you find in dreams.
For me, Aycliffe is far too *tidy* and rational in his approach
to the fantastic. He gives his ghost a history and a motive, and in the
end reveals just why Hillenbrand and his daughter have been singled
out as targets.
All very reasonable... but hardly *strange*.
Mark Dillon
Jim Rockhill
> Here are two comments on Aycliffe from 1999.
>
Thank you, Mark. I looked up your remarks earlier in the week (there
were even a few remarks by Bill Allison and rbadac in there), but
Aycliffe has written a few more novels since this thread appeared. I
had been a bit concerned by other reviews about the level of violence
at the end of NAOMI'S ROOM, but since it sounds like such an
exceptionally atmospheric novel up to that point, I am willing to give
it a chance. I do not agree with Jack Sullivan that the violence in
Wakefield's late tales is "sickening"; I rather felt it was
appropriate to his subject matter. I would rather Aycliffe did not end
the novel in an orgy of mayhem, but will not know how whether or not
it was appropriate or how much it may have harmed the novel as a whole
until I have had a chance to read it. Thanks to Huw and Chris for
finding copies of this novel and WHISPERS IN THE DARK for me!
Jim
Christopher Roden
wrote:
>
>The book is too straightforward. It lacks a quality that can
>be found in other ghost stories by LeFanu, L. P. Hartley,
>Robert Aickman, M. John Harrison, Bernard Capes... and in
>works outside the field by Durrell, Ballard, Golding and Greene:
>a certain heightened atmosphere, a visual super-realism
>that comes close to paranoia, an almost dream-like sense
>that the world is deeply wrong, a tension in which everything
>around you becomes unfamiliar.
Mark,
Could part of the problem you have with Aycliffe be that you're
expecting the brevity and conciseness of a short story in novel form?
Certainly, the supernatural comparisons you quote: Le Fanu, Hartley,
Aickman, Capes, work well in that form. Doesn't this come back to
discussions that have taken place before?: that the supernatural story
works best in the short form?
I personally don't think that Aycliffe suffers over-much for the
longer length, though admittedly he is seen to be drawing threads out
at times - aren't a lot of novelists?
As for too straightforward, well, I don't know that I'd agree with
that necessarily. Does every novel - and let's be fair and say that
most supernatural novels are written for entertainment rather than as
an intellectual exercise - have to be a comment on humanity, or an
intellectual exercise? In reality, I don't think that's what Aycliffe
is trying to do at all. He's essentially (as Daniel Easterman) a
thriller writer. What he's trying to do is spin an entertaining
supernatural yarn at novella or novella length.
If there is a downfall at all with Aycliffe, it's that he hasn't
really been given the opportunity to develop his style in the genre.
His publishers never had a clue about how to market his work, so much
so that it was never effectively presented - with the result that he's
essentially dropped out of sight. Though I haven't been in direct
touch with him for a while, I'd be surprised to learn that he has done
anything new in this field since THE TALISMAN (what, three years ago
and more?). Although A SHADOW ON THE WALL was the most recently
published, this was actually written before THE TALISMAN.
I think this has been mentioned before, but anyone looking for
Aycliffe UK firsts has a hard job finding the early titles in
hardback. I've never seen hbs of either NAOMI'S ROOM or WHISPERS IN
THE DARK, though JA assured me that they did exist. It's likely that
HarperCollins did such small print runs of these early titles that any
hardbacks which did exist simply disappeared into the library system.
Certainly there was never any shortage of either of the large format
paperback versions of these, either at time of issue, or, more
regrettably, in the remainder shops in the UK. I'm not sure how he was
handled in the US market, as these titles were issued before we moved
over to Canada, and the only US hardback Aycliffe I have is the
HarperPrism THE LOST, which is not, unfortunately, as visually
appealing as the UK first.
There was an interesting presentation pack put out in the UK at the
time of publication of THE VANISHMENT. Titled JONATHAN AYCLIFFE / HERE
LIE THREE TALES THAT WILL NEVER DIE, it contained the large format
paperback of the new title, THE VANISHMENT, the trade paperback of
WHISPERS IN THE DARK, and an audio casette of NAOMI'S ROOM, read by
Tony Britton. But Harper Collins fouled up even on that. The whole
thing was originally intended to be produced to represent an
atmospheric tombstone, but ended up being just a black box with a
facial image from the cover illustration of the VANISHMENT, together
with titling. It came out around about the same time as the first
Ghost Story Society Convention which we held in Chester in 1993(?),
and I seem to remember it sold quite well there, not least because
Jonathan was there to give one of the talks, and so sign a few copies
at the same time. It seems to pretty much have vanished off lists now,
though I recall seeing one in a catalogue of Ken Cowley's possibly as
recently as last year - and at a very affordable price, too.
Christopher
Mark Dillon
Christopher Roden <ash...@ash-tree.bc.ca> wrote, in reply to
yours unruly:
>> The book is too straightforward. It lacks a quality that can
>> be found in other ghost stories by LeFanu, L. P. Hartley,
>> Robert Aickman, M. John Harrison, Bernard Capes... and in
>> works outside the field by Durrell, Ballard, Golding and Greene:
>> a certain heightened atmosphere, a visual super-realism
>> that comes close to paranoia, an almost dream-like sense
>> that the world is deeply wrong, a tension in which everything
>> around you becomes unfamiliar.
> Mark,
> Could part of the problem you have with Aycliffe be that you're
> expecting the brevity and conciseness of a short story in novel form?
> Certainly, the supernatural comparisons you quote: Le Fanu, Hartley,
> Aickman, Capes, work well in that form. Doesn't this come back to
> discussions that have taken place before?: that the supernatural story
> works best in the short form?
I'm not sure that brevity is the reason for the effectiveness of LeFanu,
Hartley, Aickman, Bierce and the others I've cited; I think their
power depends more upon a specific attitude towards causality
(the idea that certain things are essentially inexplicable, arbitrary
or capricious) and an almost paranoiac concentration by their
protagonists upon external details (the quality of light, the rustling
of leaves, the jagged marks upon a crumbling garden wall) -- a
heightened awareness reinforcing the idea that something is seriously
wrong.
I think it would be very hard to extend that attitude and that intense
focus over several hundred pages -- after all, most novels, to various
degree, depend upon recognized causes and effects (Joe did this
because Jane did that, and her actions were influenced by something
Old Man McOogle did years ago, because he was distraught by the actions
of a mysterious woman...); most novels vary their moods and
points of view. But I'd like to believe that someone, someday, will
succeed brilliantly and amaze the rest of us.
> As for too straightforward, well, I don't know that I'd agree with
> that necessarily. Does every novel - and let's be fair and say that
> most supernatural novels are written for entertainment rather than as
> an intellectual exercise - have to be a comment on humanity, or an
> intellectual exercise?
Well, no... nor did I mean to imply this. When I called NAOMI'S ROOM
too straightforward, I meant that Aycliffe plays all-too-straight with
the reader: he explains, in the end, why <NO SPOILER> has targeted the
central characters; he provides a motive for his supernatural villain,
ties up the loose ends and leaves everything neat and tidy at the novel's
climax. Case closed. "Move along, people, there's nothing left to see."
> In reality, I don't think that's what Aycliffe
> is trying to do at all. He's essentially (as Daniel Easterman) a
> thriller writer. What he's trying to do is spin an entertaining
> supernatural yarn at novella or novella length.
Which is fine. There are many ways to write a supernatural story,
and even though I have a personal aesthetic bias, each way is legitimate.
I would have to say, though, that readers who love the uncanny events
and hallucinatory mood of LeFanu, Hartley, Bierce, Aickman or M. John
Harrison will not find these pleasures in NAOMI'S ROOM; the book takes
a different approach which readers may or may not appreciate
on its own terms. (Aycliffe's convenient plot-holes are a separate
issue!)
Mark Dillon
Quebec, Canada
Mark Dillon
Jim Rockhill wrote, in part:
> Thank you, Mark. I looked up your remarks earlier in the week
> (there were even a few remarks by Bill Allison and rbadac in there), but
> Aycliffe has written a few more novels since this thread appeared. I
> had been a bit concerned by other reviews about the level of violence
> at the end of NAOMI'S ROOM, but since it sounds like such an
> exceptionally atmospheric novel up to that point, I am willing to give
> it a chance.
I was less annoyed by its climactic bloodshed than by its
tidily-explained history and motivation of the supernatural villain.
Imagine PSYCHO without its eerie final scene of Norman Bates
talking to him/herself in the rubber room, ending, instead, with
Simon Oakland's reassuring patter, and you'll have some idea of
my reaction to NAOMI'S ROOM.
But all the same, to be fair, I really should try his later novels.
Mark Dillon
Quebec, Canada
City of Worms
> But I'd like to believe that someone, someday, will
> succeed brilliantly and amaze the rest of us.
At least someone has. Campbell with INCARNATE, for one.
Jim Rockhill
"City of Worms" <death...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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