FFB: Wishes Limited - W. A. Darlington

THE STORY: A little bit of Cinderella, a dash of Kafka, and a whole lot of lampooning the publishing world await you in Wishes Limited (1922). The novel begins as a bizarre fairy tale, tosses in a ludicrous parody of "The Metamorph-osis", but turns out to be an often hilarious satire about the creation, publication and public reception of a ribald bestselling novel.

THE CHARACTERS:  John Benstead, burgeoning novelist whose only work so far have been stories and vignettes, is eager to marry Beth, his longtime girlfriend.  To his shock she refuses his ardent proposal. She much prefers to wait until both have enough money to live on.  After some cajoling and begging Beth somewhat begrudgingly agrees to a pact with John -- she will leave him alone for one month and if he can write his first novel, get it published and make enough money she vows to accept his marriage proposal. John immediately sets to work, struggling with ideas for a comic romance modeled on his own failed engagement.  After multiple starts and stops and mountains of crumpled and torn up paper he wishes for help and poof -- or rather CRASH! -- his fairy godmother Florinelle appears direct from the ceiling.

Florinelle is far from your average fairy godmother.  For one she's looks about sixteen years old, much younger than 27 year-old John. She arrives costumed stylishly -- a short yellow flapper dress "cut low at the neck," "extremely high heeled shoes, a floppy black hat" and carries instead of a magic wand "a brilliant sunshade." For another she's plagued with labor problems. It seems that the fairy world has been overrun with union rules and the djinns and other fairy creatures who do all the real magical work are unhappy and are threatening to strike. She has been hard at work trying to appease them. But she heard John's plea for help and will do her best to fulfill his dreams. Then she begins to outline the rules: only one wish every 30 days, wishes are limited to twelve words and no more ("Oh! like a telegram, " says John), and Rule 7 (one of the least favorite mortals like to hear) no wishes for money or jewels. She needs John to make his wish soon as she's on the Conciliation Committee and they're very busy and she needs to get back to avert the impending strike. And so John carefully words his wish to be a bestselling novelist and Florinelle waves her sunshade and it's done. John finds it hard to believe it was so instantaneous, but keeps his mouth shut.

Possible colleague of Florinelle? John's fairy
has blond plaits and shuns cigarettes
(illustration by Lewis Baumer)

As she is about to leave Florinelle lets John know that she had to turn his next door neighbor into a black beetle because he frightened her as she appeared through the wall of his apartment on the way into John's home. John is concerned and pleads with her to turn him back into a man. But she reminds him of Rule 19 - one wish per 30 days -- and says he'll have to wait until next month. Then as abruptly as she arrived Florinelle vanishes. We don't hear from her again for many pages. Upon her exit havoc ensues.

The novel Hidden Souls appears in bookstores overnight, becomes all the rage but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the harmless comic romance John planned on the book is a tawdry potboiler, with several racy scenes, and lots of shocking language. It horrifies John that his name is on the front cover.  As if that isn't enough to deal with he finds himself entrusted with the care of Mr. Spalding (now a black beetle) and he carries his neighbor everywhere in a small box, always looking for a safe place to stow him and spending too much time consulting with his friends on the proper diet for a black beetle.  Needless to say his friends and relatives don't think much of John's sudden transformation into a "modern" writer indulging in eccentricities like taking up with strange insect pets. John somehow manages to keep Mr. Spalding safe from harm despite many close calls with insecticide, household pets and overfeeding with grease and bad greens.

The whole novel has a raucous Wodehousian feel, the humor is both witty and ridiculous. John has an aristocratic male confidante, there are old biddies and matriarchs on nearly every page expressing their outrage about Hidden Souls, saucy servants talk back, a couple of ivy-covered professors including a confused entomologist pontificate, and Beth who wants to believe John's outrageous tale grows impatient with his excuses for why she must wait a full month for genuine proof of magical events. Darlington balances all his farcical elements with some trenchant attacks on the world of bestsellers, the hazards of becoming an instant sensation, and the wild fancies of rabid fans of pop lit.

I was especially pleased when Darlington added a final twist in the climax involving the magical transformation of Mr. Spalding's return to human form. John's ingenious plan backfires and he is accused of a crime leading to a farcical courtroom scene that British writers always seem to excel in.

QUOTES:  Rose, the second housemaid, appeared in the doorway. She was a rural product, with robust health and limitless amiability which accompany complete lack of brain.

He felt an outcast. He would have felt a pariah, if he had been quite certain how to pronounce it.

"Please!" she said, putting her whole soul and about seventeen E's into the word.

It is not easy to know how to begin a conversation with a lady upon whom, last time you saw her, you committed assault and battery. The books of etiquette, which overflow with advice on How to Eat Asparagus and Remain a Gentleman, What to Do with Your Cherry-stones, or the Correct Form of Address to the Wife of a Rural Dean, are silent upon such problems of everyday life as this.

THINGS I LEARNED: When John misplaces Mr. Spalding early in the book he asks his landlady if she has seen any black beetles around.  She replies that there is one but "he's that artful you wouldn't believe." She puts down Keating's everywhere but the bug "goes around it as clever as a Christian."  I figured this was some form of insecticide. And it was. A very popular one as it turns out with some hysterical looking advertisements like the one shown at right.

John takes Beth to Coldstream for their honeymoon. "You know, where the Guards come from." John's noted to have been a former rugby player back in his university days and I thought he meant the Coldstream Guards were an athletic team. But no, he means "the oldest regiment in the British Regular Army in continuous active service" as the Guards state on their own website. The group date back to the days of Cromwell when it was known as Monck's Regiment and was based in Coldstream, Scotland. Only after George Monck's death did the Regiment become known as Coldstream Guards.

W. A. Darlington by Lafayette (14 August 1928)
courtesy of National Portrait Gallery website

THE AUTHOR: William Aubrey Cecil Darlington (1890-1979) was primarily known for being the leading theater critic for Daily Telegraph during the 1920s.  He also served a stint as London Drama Corespondent for the New York Times. In addition to his criticism and theater writing he penned four comic fantasy novels, the most successful being Alf's Button (1919) which tells the story of a soldier who inadvertently releases a genie (or djinn as Darlington prefers) when he rubs one of his uniform buttons. He later discovers the button was manufactured from scrap metal that originally was an ancient Arabian lamp. Alf's Button was subsequently turned into a hit stage play and was filmed three separate times in 1920, 1930 and 1938, this last version starred Alistair Sim as the Genie and a group of comedians known as "the Crazy Gang" as the soldiers. Thanks to those extremely popular adaptations the book remained in print for close to four decades. The latest edition I uncovered was dated 1956. A less popular sequel appeared in 1928 called Alf's Carpet which I will be reviewing later this year.

Among Darlington's extensive non-fiction works are The Actor and His Audience (1949) and Through the Fourth Wall (1920), a collection of essays on theater, performance, and remembrances on actors and actresses of the early 20th century, all of which first appeared in Daily Telegraph. He also wrote biographies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1933) #15 in Great Lives; J. M. Barrie (1938) and Laurence Olivier (1968), more an appreciation of Olivier's movie acting, published as part of "Great Contemporaries", and only 92 pages.

EASY TO FIND? As of this writing there are exactly four copies of Wishes Limited offered for sale. There is only one hardcover edition and no other English language edition at all. None of the copies offered come with a dust jacket which frustrates me because the other DJs of Darlington's works are attractively designed and illustrated (see photo at right). Like many of Herbert Jenkins' books the front board is stamped with a cartoon illustration. In this case it appears to be a gigantic version of Mr. Spalding in beetle form chasing poor John. But such a scene never occurs in the book. The beetle remains regular sized throughout the story.

FFB: Let's Kill Uncle - Rohan O'Grady

I've known about Let's Kill Uncle (1963) for a long time.  But I only knew the movie version as adapted and directed by William Castle. For a teenager growing up in the 1970s that movie was pretty wild stuff.  It's stayed in my memory ever since I first saw it. Two teenagers in fear of their life plot to do in their nefarious uncle, a former commando highly skilled in martial arts and assassin techniques, before he kills them first. But having seen this movie only twice in my life I was not at all prepared for the book.  The only thing the book and movie have in common is the basic plot and the two first names of the children who are only 10 in the book.  Everything else is completely different.  And the differences are even more wild than the movie.

Rohan O'Grady (pseudonym for Canadian writer June O'Grady Skinner) has concocted a fantastical story that is a glorious mixture of Grimm's fairy tales, macabre black comedy, ecological critique and a whole lot more.  It's one of those rare books that defies pigeon holing and classification of any kind.  So unique and original in every facet it's hard to believe why Castle decided to change the movie and in effect cheapen everything that makes the book so odd and bewildering, charming and bewitching.

Did I just call a book about two potential child murderers charming?  Yes, I did. These ten year-olds, first introduced as holy terrors having nearly destroyed an entire ferry and terrorized the passengers while crossing from Vancouver to an unnamed Gulf Island, undergo a magical transformation in a matter of days. It's as if the Canadian island where they have been sent for a summer vacation has truly cast a spell on them.  But in truth it is the subtle manipulation of the adults who have little patience for bratty kids that has a positive effect on these little monsters. As the story progresses Barnaby and Christie grow to be great friends and their pact to do in the thoroughly diabolical Uncle Sylvester while fraught with danger and peril is really no more horrifying than Hansel and Gretel shoving the witch in the oven.  It's a matter of survival and an eerie rite of passage. Even as they plot to kill Uncle they also plan to blame a mentally disabled young man they have befriended.  But wait -- how can that be charming? I'm at a loss to explain it all.  By rights it should be revolting, and yet the outrageousness never once seems vulgar or offensive.

June Skinner as seen
on the rear DJ of the US edition

June Skinner's writing is the key. She guides the reader masterfully avoiding all the pitfalls of quaint and cutesy incidents and never once veering into self-parody.  For the first half I kept asking myself it if it was intended for children.  Past the midway point it is clear that children are not Skinner's main audience, though I imagine her adult themes (elitism and racism, ravages of war, destruction of wilderness and its consequences, among others) perhaps have a powerful resonance for modern young readers. Still the writing has a quiet soulful mood so peculiar to the best of children's books, one in which a sonorous voiced narrator is telling a bedtime story. You're lulled into a world where the writer paints rich pictures of a rural Canadian village, gives each supporting character deep meaningful lives and sharply voiced dialogue. She even gives thoughts and human emotions to animals just as in a fairy tale.

We get to know the animals just as intimately as we do the human characters, especially how they feel about the humans they encounter. There is a misanthropic bull named Iron Duke also plotting a death wish for his cruel owner.  There are dogs, cats, horses, and even a budgie all getting their chance to shine over the course of the novel. Most importantly there is ol' One-Ear, a cougar as battle scarred and world weary as Sgt. Albert Coulter, the local Mountie still haunted by dreams of being a prisoner of war.  Coulter and the cougar have a lot in common and Skinner does an impressive job of tying these two together over the course of the story.  How many books have you read where a mountain lion is given to expressing ennui when faced with the choice of turning vegetarian or starving?

Remarkably, Barnaby and Christie manage to befriend this cougar suffering from a poor diet and a weltschmerz that nearly outdoes Young Werther's.  Too exhausted to chase them away or frighten them with a roar One-Ear becomes their playmate and surrogate pet. Barnaby and Christie grow to be friends yet also seem to transform once again into miniature adults playing house with One-Ear as their adopted child.  Just as the adults of the Island have managed to tame the little monsters from the ferry these two children seem to be taming a wild beast.  Barnaby never forgets their mission, however, and soon he finds a way to add One-Ear to the plot to do in Uncle Sylvester.  Will it all go according to plan?  Little do the children know that Uncle has been spying on them with the aid of his high powered binoculars and his surefooted jungle tracking skills.  Just how much has he learned about their plot?  Who will get who?

Woven around the duelling murder plots we get a fascinating character study of Sgt. Coulter.  He has fallen in love with the wife of the Island's vicar and every night he writes a love letter to her, sharing with her his doubts, fears and hopes for the two kids to whom he has become both a guardian angel and surrogate parent.  He never mails these letters. Just as soon as he has finished pouring out his heart and soul he rips up the letter. Coulter is the most intriguing character in the book, complex, conflicted, compassionate and impassioned. We learn he is probably the only member of the Royal Mounted Police who hates horses. We watch him suffer through nightmare flashbacks to the POW camp and his haunted visions of the aftermath of the concentration camps he was forced to visit before being sent back to Canada. His story is both humorous and poignant and yet another example of how Skinner has crafted a beguiling story.  There's so much more to this novel than what the title implies.

For a long time this was a very hard to find this book. Luckily, for all it is now readily available in both a paperback edition and digital book from Bloomsbury in their marvelous series that also brought back into print Miss Hargreaves, A Kid for Two Farthings and other well-loved but sadly overlooked novels. Anyone interested in reading one of those rare indescribable books, one that reads like no other you've read before, ought not to be put off by the title or the cult movie.  Let's Kill Uncle is quite a magical and unforgettable reading experience.  In fact, I can't wait to read the book all over again.

*  *  *

Reading Challenge update: Silver Age bingo card, space L2 - "Book made into a movie"

FFB: Foam of the Daze - Boris Vian



Tam Tam Books ed., English translation
Currently in its 3rd printing

The fantastical world of Boris Vian’s L’Ecume des Jours (1946) -- punnily translated as Foam of the Daze by Mark Harper -- is populated with kitchen mice that act as miniature housekeepers; deadly tools of assassination like the cop-killer and the heart-snatcher; and a mind boggling invention called a pianocktail, a combination robotic bartender and musical instrument that mixes, blends, and delivers potent potables by simply playing a tune on the keyboard. And Vian’s invention is not only limited to bizarre machines and anthropomorphic animals. The writer, also an accomplished musician, composer and friend of 1940s Parisian jazz and literary elite, was a lover of linguistic trickery and wordplay. Translating his many puns and jokes must’ve been a challenge to Harper who does an admirable job trying to capture the playfulness and humor that, as with most foreign language puns, are often untranslatable. For much of its brief but densely filled 220 pages the story is one of Vian’s most exuberant and joyous works.

Foam of the Daze is an unapologetic romance, a surreal fairy tale, and a literary satire all wrapped up in one delightful package. The story, however, is not all hearts and flowers though those two images feature heavily in the story. Vian scales the heights of delirious newfound love and plummets into the depths of despair when a mysterious illness threatens to end the ecstasy of a young couple’s honeymoon.

Wide eyed jazz lover Colin lives a carefree life enjoying cocktails and playing Duke Ellington records with his musician friend Chick who quickly meets and falls in love with the beautiful Alise. Colin is immediately jealous and longs for his own Alise. No sooner does he make his wish then he meets Chloe, as equally wide-eyed and optimistic as he is. It’s no coincidence that she bears the same name as a popular Duke Ellington song. There are no real coincidences at all in Vian’s world. Every action, every word of dialog has a purpose and is interconnected to every object and character in the story.

Boris Vian, circa 1940s

The most remarkable thing about this love story is the way illness is depicted. So often people talk about how their lives fall apart when a loved one is suffering a terminal illness. That is literally what happens to Colin’s world. His house begins to deteriorate, the ceiling crumbles, glass windows and tiles shatter, rooms shrink and doorways become almost inaccessible. All because Chloe has succumbed to an inexplicable malady, a miracle illness. Somehow a water lily has begun to grow around her lungs and heart. It’s not possible to operate and remove the plant without killing her. The only treatment method is to surround her with flowers and plants, tend and care for them so that in their beauty the water lily is shamed into withering and disappearing from Chloe’s body.

Filled with a soundtrack of Ellington’s music, multiple references to New Orleans and Memphis style jazz, and a subplot involving a satirical jibe at Vian’s good friend Jean-Paul Sartre who appears in the book as pop sensation Jean-Sol Partre, author of Vomit and other works of existentialist bestseller-dom, Foam of the Daze is like no other book I have ever read. Practically unclassifiable in the way it absorbs so many genres Vian's novel is bewitching and strange and hysterical and ultimately deeply moving. It’s an assault on the senses and the intellect. Imagine entering a floral shop crammed full of exotic plants and breathing in the mix of heady scents, taking in the wide array of colors and shapes, all while drinking an unnameable, rainbow hued cocktail with an indescribable yet utterly intoxicating flavor. This is what it’s like to read Vian’s novel.

Graphic novel adapted by Benoît Preteseille

His writing can be hilarious as in the sections making fun of collector mania. When Chick is not satisfied with owning Sartre’s books a wily bookseller coerces the musician into buying the writer’s fingerprints and old pants convincing him the items will increase in value as much as the writer’s books. Only a few pages later Vian tugs at our heartstrings in relating Colin’s desperate attempts to become gainfully employed often humiliating himself in the process so that he can earn enough money to keep buying plants and flowers that will help in his wife’s strange treatment plan. Not only do Colin and Chloe and their house suffer as the water lily infiltrates everyone and everything, but Chick and Alise undergo a rift in their relationship that leads to a surprisingly violent climax.

L’Ecume des Jours has been adapted into a movie by French director Michel Gondry and retitled aptly enough Mood Indigo, after the Ellington jazz standard, starring Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris as Chloe and Colin. The movie has already appeared throughout Europe at a variety of film festivals and will be shown at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago Sunday, May 11, 2014 as part of the Chicago Film Critics Film Festival. The movie has been picked up by Drafthouse Films and should appear in a limited release at art house cinemas sometime in the summer and eventually be released on DVD. A paperback tie-in edition is being released in the summer under the movie’s title. Anyone too impatient to wait for that edition can order Foam of the Daze directly from Tam Tam Books or any on-line retailer right now.

FFB: The Cook - Harry Kressing

What makes a book a cult classic? Is it the writing alone? The subject matter? Must a cult novel by virtue of the word cult be something strange or weird or offbeat or...? (pick a similar adjective of your choosing) Maybe all of these criteria go into the making of a cult novel. One thing for sure cult novels usually are treasures of the bookshelf we like to label Forgotten Books. Learning of one through a cult novel's devoted reader for me is akin to the high a mountaineer must get once he's reached the apex after a grueling climb. I only heard of The Cook (1965) through one of the many comments when I asked followers of this blog to offer up titles of books they'd like to see put back in print as part of the giveaway for The Starkenden Quest last week. A very grateful thank you goes to Kelly R for mentioning this book as one of her favorites and one she would love to see reprinted. The Cook was one of the most rewarding reading experiences I've had this year. So utterly unique, deceptively simple, positively hallucinatory.

The Cook starts off like a fairy tale and as its very simple plot unravels it becomes a dark fable on all of the seven deadly sins. Vanity, Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Pride, Wrath, Sloth -- all are here, some more prominent than others. Conrad Venn is entranced with the Gothic castle known as the Prominence situated on a remote plateau outside the town of Cobb. Though the grounds are beautifully kept and the imposing presence of the castle is hypnotically fascinating Conrad wonders whether it is inhabited. He travels into town and learns from a tavern keeper of the legend of the castle and the feud between the Hills and the Vales, descendants of A. Cobb, the original owner of the Prominence. Conrad also learns of Cobb's strange will that prevents the Prominence to be occupied again until the two families quit fighting and are joined through marriage. The tavern keeper says the feud is long over, but the Hills and Vales still live apart from one another with little contact. Each family is dying off with the last of the Vales being Daphne Vale, an enormously fat young woman who rarely goes out, and Harold the only son of the surviving Hills her only prospect for marriage. With this legend planted in Conrad's mind and the fact that the two families seem to be obsessed with outdoing each other when it comes to their cooks Conrad takes it upon himself to unite the families and re-open the doors of the Prominence.

Cooking and food and the etiquette of lavishly prepared meals are the strange tools of Conrad's trade. He is a Machiavellian wizard in the kitchen and his nearly magical meals cast a spell over Mr. and Mrs. Hill and their son Harold. He acts as cooking tutor, nutrition consultant and financial advisor. Transformations of both body and mind begin to take place as everyone eats his amazing food. Fat people become thin, thin people become fat. Master becomes servant and servants rebel against employers. All the while Conrad remains untouched, unaffected and his eye is ever on the Prominence. He wants it so badly he can taste it. He'll stop at nothing to possess his castle and become its king.

Kressing tells his story with a mix of black humor and brief explosions of unexpected violence. Conrad is feared and admired by everyone he encounters. With only a hint or a subtle suggestion he gets everyone to do his bidding. He is an untouchable magician, the wise man on the mountain, and always a formidable presence. Even when he nearly severs the hand of a man he intentionally injured he somehow manages to come out the hero of the day. The Hills, the Vales and the entire town of Cobb are at his mercy. He gets what he wants from each person he meets, using them and playing up to their vanities and vices. Conrad always wins; his associates and students often pay a heavy price.

The Cook is a fable, an allegory, a thriller, a satire. It's a phantasmagorical and intoxicating read. Like eating a fine meal in the best restaurant reading The Cook is one of those rare pleasures you don't want to end. It's not surprising to me at all that those who have discovered this book return to it over and over for more tastes of something one just can't get enough of.

Shaking "The Monkey's Paw"

illustration by Maurice Grieffenhagen from The Lady of the Barge (Dodd Mead, 1902)

A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS:  This essay reveals much about the story.  If you are not familiar with "The Monkey's Paw" you should probably stop right now.

Decades ago I saw one of the most terrifying films of my teenage years. It was Tales from the Crypt. Nothing since has matched it in gore and gruesome imagery, wickedness punished in so macabre a fashion. For months afterwards several of the scenes haunted me while I slept. It was also the first time I heard of "The Monkey's Paw" One of the episodes in the film was an update of the W.W. Jacobs story of wishing for too much. Husband and wife receive an ancient statue that grants three wishes. "Just like the monkey's paw," the wife says. "You know the old story..." For weeks, maybe months, afterwards I spent way too much free time hunting down the story. Even with the trusty Encyclopedia Britannica and the Ridgefield [Connecticut] Library at my disposal finding the story proved very difficult. Probably because I hadn't a clue who wrote it. That would've been an immense help. Since I was a rookie in the world of literary research way back then compared to now I was pretty much stuck. Eventually I found it through utter serendipity. But enough traveling down memory lane and onto my impressions of this classic tale.

In its simplicity "The Monkey's Paw" still has the power to create chills and build suspense and, yes, even surprise the reader. I can't recall what my first impressions of the tale were when I read over forty years ago, but having pored over the story recently I was struck but why it is still a classic. It's practically a textbook case for anyone who is thinking of writing a suspense tale or a ghost story. Each element is introduced at the precisely the right time and there is no heavy handed repetition. There is no gratuitous gore that seems to be required these days. And, thankfully, there is no rational explanation offered at the end to ruin all the previous chills.

Herbert White meets up with an old war buddy and invites him to his home for an evening visit. The purpose is to complete a story he told of a monkey's paw and an old fakir. The sergeant-major has brought the paw with him and tells the story:

It had a spell put on it by an old fakir....a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives and those who interfered did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.

White, his wife and son soon learn that the soldier had his three wishes granted and would rather have the paw destroyed than pass it on to anyone else. When pressed for more details he tells his hosts that the first owner used his third wish to wish for death and that was how he came into possession of the paw. With that he tosses the paw into the fireplace, but White rushes to the hearth and retrieves it before it is completely destroyed. The soldier leaves and warns them to "wish for something sensible." At the son's urging the father wishes for some money £200. Nothing immediately happens and they turn in for the night. Of course, only trouble can follow.

The story is neatly divided in three sections and primarily deals with three characters -- Mr. White, his wife and their son. In the first section we are introduced to the wish motif and the family makes their first wish. In the second half they make their second wish. In the third and eeriest portion the husband ends their ordeal with a final wish -- the only wise wish the family ever makes. The old fairy tale motifs are all present and indeed Mrs. White at one point says, "Sounds like the Arabian Nights." There is some making fun of the whole idea and we get the idea that the family is not too believing of the powerful magic they have come into contact with. Jacobs describes the son as "frivolous" and he mocks the idea by telling his father to wish to be an emperor to escape his nagging wife, Mrs. White asks the husband to wish her to have four hands and they all laugh at the prospect of getting what one truly desires. The reader knows only too well that this family is doomed.

When Mr. and Mrs. White realize that in following the son's suggestion for money they have altered their lives in a horrible way they panic. The money comes to them as compensation for a gruesome accident at the factory where their son worked. He has died at the hands of the machinery. Mrs. White immediately wants to wish her son back to life and runs to find the paw. There is a struggle and an argument. The family is beginning to learn that there is strange magic at work that they truly can defy the laws of nature. The husband is reluctant but is powerless at the maniacal urging of his wife and when he refuses to make the wish she does so herself.

It is at this point that Jacobs uses the best tool of the writer of a ghost story -- the power of suggestion. We feel the terror of the husband and know the longing of the wife for her son. There is a terrible knocking at the door, the wife rushes downstairs and the reader remains upstairs with the husband who dare not move from his spot. While he envisions what must have happened to his son, remembering the accident, his wife frantically tries to open the door but has trouble with the bolt. The reader is wondering as well: Will she see her son? Or is it something else? What will happen to her? The husband at last makes the final and inevitable wish -- the only sensible wish made while the paw was theirs those brief fateful days.

And the story ends with an eerie image complete with a poignant sound effect that sends a final frisson up your spine:

A cold wind rushed up the staircase and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.

It is certain that the echo of that misery-filled wail reached all the way to the cemetery where no doubt it settled like a mournful shroud on the still undisturbed grave of their hapless son.

---

This article is posted by request. (Thank you, Neer, for reminding me that I already had something on Jacob's masterful tale.) The essay in a slightly different form originally appeared at "The Weird Review" back in 2001. Devotees of the traditional ghost story are encouraged to investigate that website, owned by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, for a wide variety of reviews and essays on supernatural literature.

"The Monkey's Paw" was originally published in The Lady of the Barge (London: Harper & Brothers, 1902) and (New York: Dodd Mead, 1902). Copies are available via the usual used bookseller sources and are relatively cheap if you are wiling to settle for the Penguin reprint paperback rather than a first edition. The story is available to read for free at Gaslight and as a free download in audio format at Project Gutenberg. I'm sure it can be found other places in the digital airspace as well.

This is yet another of my contributions for Carl V's R.I.P. VI Challenge. For a change -- a post in the short story category.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field - Dave Zeltserman

I may get flack for what I am about to do, but here goes nothing. Dave Zeltserman’s exceptional novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a genre blending true original combining elements of the horror novel, the crime novel and...the fairy tale. And now that I’ve got you either scratching your head or rolling your eyes let me explain.

As I read this unusual novel I couldn’t help but think of the gruesome tales of Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, and even the Arabian Nights. W.W. Jacobs’ supernatural classic “The Monkey’s Paw” a story about the horrific consequences of wishing for too much and itself a story influenced by fairy tales was another that kept popping into my brain. Like the best of fairy tales Zeltserman’s book is so simple and so stripped down that the essential plot can be told in a few sentences. A man is charged with following the rules in a baroque contract outlining the meticulous care of a vast field that daily is overgrown with bothersome weeds. It is his task to remove all the weeds every day. If he doesn’t, the weeds will grow to gigantic proportions, uproot themselves, transform into monsters called Aukowies and take over the world. Each day he removes the weeds and burns them, but during the night they have all grown back. It is a life of endless drudgery. Then someone breaks a rule in the sacred contract. The characters are forced to make decisions they might otherwise not have in trying to make things right but only end up breaking more rules leading to the inevitable disaster. No happy ending here. It's fairy tale noir.

Following rules to the letter for fear of dire consequences is the fundamental rule of many fairy tales notably "Rapunzel" (which coincidentally has a lot to do with gardening as well) and especially "Bluebeard." That story about the wife told never to open the door to a forbidden room has been borrowed and recycled by many writers, even turned into a basic trope of hundreds of horror movies, but it has its origins in a fairy tale. Curiosity gets the better of the Bluebeard's last wife, but it is something more compelling that leads the characters to their destruction in Zeltserman's book.

Loyalty, filial love, and the preservation of the family are in conflict with Jack Durkin's stubbornness. He insists on fulfilling his contract as the caretaker no matter how much misery it brings his family. They live in poverty, eating corn flakes for dinner, and scrimping on their $8000 a year received from the town council for keeping at bay the monsters Durkin promises will show up if he fails at his weeding job.  His eldest son Lester, a lazy rebel, hates the fact he is next in line according to the contract but the younger son, Bert, shows devotion to his father and is eager to both believe him and carry on the dreaded job.  It is Lydia, his wife, who is fed up with it all and who will in secret take the contract to a lawyer who she hopes will find some loophole that will allow her family to escape its claustrophobic rules thus giving them back a real life.

What happens to the Durkins then is best left to the reader to discover for himself. The fairy tale premise transforms into a crime tale about child neglect and the suspicion of beating and maiming. Durkin and his family try to escape the contract that imprisoned them but pay dearly for their dreams of a better life. Remarkably, Zeltserman manages to imbue the pages with a miasma of ambiguity so that the reader is never really sure that Durkin is imagining the Aukowies or if they really exist hidden deep in the soil waiting patiently to grow immense and wreck havoc. The reader is compelled to read on hoping that somehow Durkin can find his way back to normalcy amid all the chaos erupting around him. But it is a dreaded journey that gets bleaker and more disturbing as it draws closer to the inescapable horrific finale.

This is the first book by Dave Zeltserman I have read. I will be looking for his other novels which I see from his website range from tame thrillers to hardcore noir novels of crime and violence. That he is not better known and better celebrated is an utter mystery to me. Based on The Caretaker of Lorne Field alone -- a truly original, imaginative and exciting book -- it is clear to me that he is one of the more accomplished crime writers we have today.

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 This is one of many posts I am contributing to the R.I.P. VI Reading Challenge. In this case it doesn't stand for recquiescat in pace. It's R[eaders] I[mbibing] P[eril]. Carl V., who blogs at Stainless Steel Dropping, has for the past six years asked bloggers to read (or watch) and review mystery, supernatural, horror, and dark fantasy works (novels, short stories and movies) throughout September and October and share their thoughts with the blogging world. How could I resist taking part in something so obviously up my alley? When you see this eerie logo at the bottom of a post now you'll know what it means.