Oct 08 2020

An Interview with Sharon Doering, author of She Lies Close

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did She Lies Close evolve?

The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for a child crime. Within months he was convicted, sold his house, and went to prison. While it was creepy (and I wouldn’t let my little boys play near his house), I never felt desperate. I had a good support system in my husband.

It got me thinking though…What if you moved right next door to a dangerous man, a suspect in a child kidnapping (maybe murder), and what if you had no support system, no sounding board? What if you were recently divorced and financially strapped? What if you had secrets of your own and mental health issues complicating your life? What if your sinister neighbor started talking to your little girl, giving her gifts?

I took the premise of a dangerous next-door neighbor and added a big old bag of What Ifs. I wanted to write a psychological thriller that was dark, desperate, and also funny. I wanted to write a thriller where the characters were stretched too far, where we get to witness some of them snap.

Q. As a mom who is the temperamental opposite of Grace Wright, the narrator of She Lies Close, I felt little empathy but a lot of sympathy for her. The demands of modern motherhood are so high, and can fracture stronger psyches than Grace’s, especially when coupled with the fragile social support systems America is notorious for. How does your own experience with motherhood inform your writing, particularly here with Grace?

What a beautifully worded question!

Some of the feelings Grace has all the time, I have experienced briefly. Most of us have. Anxiety. Deep love. Rage at the world. Anger at the kids. Fear of being caught as incompetent. Irritation with our partner. Shame. So much in here is honest. But the story and characters are invented.

I have felt some of Grace’s anxieties, but on a small, manageable scale. I am pretty laid back.

I have several women in my life who are juggling too much on their own. They have primary custody of their kids, they are working full time, struggling with finances, managing a home, doing the cooking, the cleaning. I am doing only half of what they are doing, and sometimes my workload feels overwhelming. I don’t know how these women do it. I think about this a lot.

I wonder how many of us who are feeling stable—emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially—are just two or three catastrophes away from going off the deep end. I wanted to explore that.

Being a mother was most helpful in the manifestation of the children’s characters in She Lies Close. Children are fascinating and complex, and I wanted to write a novel where we get to see their pure hearts, their evil genius, their intelligence, and their mindlessness. In writing She Lies Close, I didn’t use anything my kids have said, but having kids made writing their dialogue feel natural.

Q. Grace is a bold choice for a sleuth: overwhelmed, with poor impulse control and a tendency to make bad decisions. I kept wanting to yell at her to embrace both sleep and therapy. What inspired you to so fearlessly depict Grace’s mental and emotional unraveling as she insinuates herself into the case of 5 year-old Ava Boone’s disappearance?

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/08/an-interview-with-sharon-doering-author-of-she-lies-close/

Oct 06 2020

Machine: A White Space Novel (White Space #2) by Elizabeth Bear

Genuinely surprised after reading this to learn that Elizabeth Bear has no military/police background. Or, perhaps, like myself, she spent formative years around military, which would definitely explain the wholly authentic feel she brings to the ex-military protagonist and judiciary command structure of the universe she creates here in Machine which, while the second in a series, can be easily read as a standalone. I’m actually rather also surprised that this is the first thing of hers I’ve ever read, but there are so many books and so little time (and thanks to Saga Press for making sure I had a chance to get to this!)

Anyhoo, Machine is about Dr Brookllyn Jens, a trauma surgeon specializing in search and rescues after a stint in the military that helped her escape her backwater planet, leaving behind an angry wife and a now-distant daughter. Her closest friends are the crew of her ambulance ship, I Race To Seek The Living, or Sally, as the shipmind prefers to be known. When they receive a distress beacon for an ancient vessel that’s traveled way farther than it reasonably should have, coupled with a much more modern courier ship which also seems to be in distress, Dr Jens is the one who leads the rescue mission aboard the Big Rock Candy Mountain. To her dismay, everyone on both the BRCM and the attached I Bring Tidings From Afar is either dead or unconscious, save for Helen, an eager to please but intellectually stunted shipmind who’s been cut off from her own knowledge banks. When a fracture in the BRCM’s hull causes several of the inhabited cryogenic pods within to float loose into space, Dr Jens has little choice but to bring them aboard and ship her new patients — along with Helen, the decoupled Afar and its crew — back to Core General, one of the most important hospital stations in that sector.

On the trip back, Dr Jens discovers that someone sabotaged Sally’s programming, probably while they were still docked earlier at Core General. When weird incidents start taking place at the hospital itself, primarily affecting AIs, Dr Jens becomes involved in investigating not only what happened to the crew of the BRCM and Afar, but also in uncovering a conspiracy that will shake her faith in perhaps the only thing she truly believes in.

First, I have to say that I loved the fact that Dr Jens suffers from chronic, debilitating pain but that medical and social advancements have made it so that this doesn’t hamper her from living the full, productive life she wants to lead. I strained the index finger of my left hand yesterday, probably because it’s cold and I was working tricky passages on my cello, and let me tell you, the thought of a future where I am automatically supported through my (minor, temporary) pain brings joy and warmth to me as I type through the twinges (and don’t even get me started on my arthritic knee.) This management of pain is only one aspect of a gloriously progressive future showcased in the White Space books as being very possible for not only humanity but also its syster species, as members of the Synarche that oversees intergalactic civilization is known. Most of the military sf and even progressive hard sf I’ve encountered to date tends not to be quite so baseline upbeat — I’d argue that Machine is more in line with those subgenres than with the more technologically hand-wavey space operas —  and it was genuinely refreshing to immerse myself in a future that was as optimistic as it was scientifically detailed.

I did think that the book started to falter in the last 20%, as the mystery was unraveled. Oddly, the reveals were done in such a way as to provoke minimum tension, which is great in a real-life situation where the point is to work through the problem to find an equitable solution, but just makes for dull reading for us people at home. I liked that the narrative stayed true to the characters but a little more suspense would have lent the events more gravity — I wanted to feel surprised when conspirators were revealed, and I wanted to feel sad when characters died. Instead, it was all very “then this happened, and then this”, which was quite a letdown after the terrific first 80%.

That said, this was a truly wonderful vision of a future I would definitely want to live in, and am happy to work towards. Machine brings up all sorts of ethical, medical and technological dilemmas, for both humans and other sentient species, and considers, if not outright resolves them, with discernment, empathy and heart.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear comes out today from Saga Press and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/06/machine-a-white-space-novel-white-space-2-by-elizabeth-bear/

Oct 05 2020

Daddy Daughter Day by Isabelle Bridges-Boesch & Jeff Bridges

Times I wish I had a daughter included while reading this sweet children’s book written by Isabelle Bridges-Boesch and illustrated by her father Jeff Bridges (yes, The Dude.) Little Belle wakes up one day and has a great idea that she rushes to share with her beloved dad. She announces that it’s Daddy Daughter Day, to the chagrin of her younger brother Sammie, who is Not Allowed to join. Belle and Dad embark on all sorts of backyard adventures, eventually incorporating Sammie and Mom, in a celebration of togetherness and the special bond between a girl and her father.

And while I regretted the fact that I haven’t a daughter to foist this book on, I did take solace in being lucky enough to have a dad I enjoy spending time with, tho our opportunities for same are few and far between now that we live continents apart. We did not, as Belle and her dad did, have pretend play sessions, but Dad and I certainly enjoyed reading the four important Sunday papers together in the living room — what can I say, even as a kid I was happiest when reading — then heading out to one of the malls to look around and maybe buy things and to definitely sneak eating some of the foods my figure-conscious mother did not approve of. I love that Ms Bridges-Boesch mentions in her afterword that not all Daddy Daughter Days are alike, but that the important thing is to spend quality time together.

But what I probably loved most about this book is Mr Bridges’ gorgeous art. Done mostly in pastel watercolors, the art tends towards the simple and dream-like, fitting for the subject matter. The style itself is reminiscent of Henri Matisse, invoking movement and joy. I loved how the text of the book was entirely in conversation, gracefully scrawled throughout in cursive, a nice challenge for modern kids who may not be as conversant in the handwritten font as we olds are. Regardless, the effect is one of dainty Fauvist charm, making this a lovely gift book for any daddy daughter duos.

Daddy Daughter Day comes out from Dark Horse Publishing tomorrow, October 6th, and will be available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/05/daddy-daughter-day-by-isabelle-bridges-boesch-jeff-bridges/

Oct 04 2020

Door into the Dark by Seamus Heaney

I admit that my first time through Door into the Dark I did not get as much out of it as I did from Death of a Naturalist. Entering again, I see more in the rooms that Heaney is making, evoking, although there is much that is still murky to me. The titles of the first three poems tell readers what to expect: “Night-Piece,” “Gone,” and “Dream,” which is more of a nightmare, quick and made brutal by a sudden turn. He is headed to dark places, will call attention to absences, will explore the unconscious.

Door into the Dark

Heaney notes in Stepping Stones that “No poems were held over [from Death of a Naturalist] … From then on, it was start-again time.” (p. 89) Not only are they all new, but the years when he wrote the poems in this collection, 1965 to 1969, were particularly tumultuous. There’s little direct reflection of the political turmoil that shook the late 1960s, but art and literature becoming more experimental are at least echoed in Heaney’s poems that are more oblique than they were in Death of a Naturalist. Yes, a horse is gone in “Gone,” but what else? What plays “The Given Note”?

“The Forge” — which gives the volume its title from the poem’s first line “All I know is a door into the dark” — echoes the first collection’s opening poem. Where Heaney had been digging, finding, now he is working like a smith, forging, creating things poised between fantastic “Horned as a unicorn” and material “To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.” Heaney’s smith is a bit of a relic; he “recalls a clatter/Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows” in a time when trucks and autos are displacing horses. Not unlike poets who are of their times but also separate. “The Forge” is not quite a sonnet, tumbling out of the rhyme scheme in the last six lines, with final word in that section that poise “music,” “clatter,” and “a slam and flick” against each other. The smith, like the poet, “expends himself in shape and music.”

He writes of place, some more clearly identified than others. It seems likely that someone who knew Northern Ireland well could identify “The Peninsula,” and while “Night Drive” mentions road signs in France, its location is the road more generally, and the road on the way to one’s beloved. “At Ardboe Point,” by contrast, draws the general from the particular, the beloved found and drawn close.

Those lead toward “A Lough Neagh Sequence,” the volume’s strongest section. Dedicated “For the fishermen,” the set of seven poems takes readers into the lives of the lough’s fishermen, their legends and beliefs, their work and ways. The different lengths and structures of the poems capture different seasons on the water, different personalities among the fishermen, and different elements of the work — “Bait,” “Setting,” “Catch.” Two of the seven — “Beyond Sargasso” and “Return” — are written from the eels’ perspectives. In eight pages, Heaney catches a place, a way of life, and the physical world that ties them all together.

He closes again with a poem dedicated to another poet, this time “Bogland” for T.P. Flanagan. Heaney has opened a door into the dark, into the creative forge where sparks fly, where lives and landscapes afford countless possibilities. Though it is a small country — “We have prairies/To slice a big sun at evening — /Everywhere the eye concedes to/Encroaching horizon” — it is old and deep and fertile “Every layer they strip/Seems camped on before./The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage/The wet centre is bottomless.”

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/04/door-into-the-dark-by-seamus-heaney/

Oct 02 2020

The Night Archer and Other Stories by Michael Oren

Reading Michael Oren’s debut collection of short stories reminded me very much of being a teenager again and reading two of Roald Dahl’s short story collections for adults, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch, once I’d exhausted his works for younger readers. Densely packed with entertainment value, each book was a wild ride that I wouldn’t see the likes of again from a single author till Jeffrey Archer’s A Twist In The Tale. The Night Archer carries on in this tradition, deftly leaping genre boundaries to pull together a collection of stories whose primary shared trait is a surprising bend in the narrative. With fifty-one tales gathered together, there’s an abundance of reading material to be had here.

And that’s part of this book’s problem. Had each story been a remarkable gem, polished to a sheen and set carefully amidst others that would only enhance its beauty, this would have been a treasury of truly remarkable writing. With some tight editing, excising more than one repetition of theme and perhaps narrowing the selection to a trim twenty-eight or so (the number I personally marked down as being either good or interesting, with a further thirteen that had real potential,) stories like Jorge and The World Of Antonia Flechette, both excellent pieces on the road not taken, would have stood out better. As it is, the really great stories tended to be interspersed with what seem like lesser clones, or writing warm ups almost. You could have split this volume in two and published the second after several years and the stories would have had a much stronger impact for not being jumbled up all together in one book.

Of the gems, I found that I tended to enjoy the longer works, particularly Aniksht, the story of 4+ generations of one Jewish family surviving the brutality of the 20th century, as well as An Agent Of Unit Forty, the unironic tale of a university professor whose big mouth and bigger ego get him into trouble. The Thirty-Year Rule was a brilliant skewering of American, British and Russian interests in the Middle East, yet I still felt whole-heartedly for the protagonist and for his desire to look up and one day be reunited with his beloved. Metaxis and Nuevo Mundo were both fine examples of historical colonial horror, while What’s A Parent To Do? and The Widow’s Hero both spoke to the very realistic concerns of aging in the modern world. Ruin and Liberation, the first two stories of the book, were moving variations on the specters that haunt us at the ends of lives unfulfilled. The Curio Cabinet, featuring a frustrated police detective, was in my opinion the most successful of the outright murder mysteries included.

Of the duds, it should surprise no one that I rolled my eyes at Slave To Power. While I won’t dispute the historical accuracy, I felt it somewhat telling that the only tale which blamed a religion for the cruelty of its adherents was this story of a pasha overseeing impalements. Weird how the Cossacks who figured so largely as villains in other tales didn’t have their Christianity tied so closely to their crimes against humanity. I was also thoroughly annoyed by The Betsybob, which started out quite well and movingly but devolved into a weird, unfunny joke, devoid of the pathos that marked many of the earlier stories in the volume. I’ll give The Blind Man the benefit of the doubt in hoping that the kids’ protests were at their mother’s incredibly horrible assumption regarding the title character’s mental state, but there’s no saving D, a truly awful short story narrated by the father of an autistic child. Not only does the narrator claim that Douglas “does not feel, not entirely” but he also longs for his kid to grace him “with a real son’s smile.” Worse than this devaluation of the humanity of an autistic person was the romanticization of his unnamed father, who was portrayed as the real victim here.

Yet this is all of a parcel with the Dahl and the Archer, products of mid- to late-20th-century literature that were popular if edgy for the time. Looking back on single-author collections like those with the benefit of decades of social progress, it’s fascinating to see where the subversive veers into the sublime or, lamentably, into sheer nescience. The best of The Night Archer falls squarely in the former, with stories that feel transcendent of time, yet too many more feel stuck still in the 1970s and 80s. I would love to see the timeline of when these stories were written, and honestly would have preferred that to the somewhat banal introduction reminding us that there is no freedom without form or limits, whether in writing or in life. True, but much less interesting than a thoughtful discussion of how the stories in this book specifically came to be.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/02/the-night-archer-and-other-stories-by-michael-oren/

Sep 30 2020

The Paper Boat: A Refugee Story by Thao Lam

This powerful picture book is a wordless recreation via metaphor of the author’s family’s journey from Vietnam to Canada at the end of the Vietnam War. Only two at the time, Thao Lam remembers little of the events themselves, but has taken her mother’s story and crafted it beautifully for this children’s book.

Working in her preferred mixed-media/collage art style, she tells the tale of a Vietnamese family forced to flee their homeland by boat, merging seamlessly with the tale of ants also embarking on a perilous journey using a paper boat her mother folded to keep her quiet and entertained while hiding from military brutality. The ants have a hard time of it out on the open water, beset by heat, birds, hunger and storms. So it is almost magical when the ants make their way to safety, just as Ms Lam’s family does, finally settling in beautiful urban Canada.

This is a book that requires the reader to pore over each beautiful panel in order to get the full effect of the story. It’s especially important to pay attention on pages 28 & 29, as my 9 year-old and I needed to go back when we were done reading to see that the ants had made landfall and weren’t merely swimming in a calmer sea. I was probably slightly more affected by the book than he was, tho he did enjoy the art and the fact that there weren’t any words till the insightful author’s note at the end.

The Paper Boat is the kind of book that skillfully does the tough but necessary work of encouraging empathy, especially for refugees. While Ms Lam is carefully neutral about the involvement of Malaysia in resettling Vietnamese arrivals, I personally wish that the land I grew up in had shown far more hospitality then, and would show far more kindness and decency to the refugees they host now. Which is all very well for me to say, given that I live in a country with its own deplorable track record, that I’m hoping to help correct come November*. In the meantime, I’ll keep promoting books like this one in hopes that it will help open eyes, hearts and minds to the very real human suffering we can do so much to alleviate simply by recognizing the humanity in one another and treating others the way we would want to be treated.

*semi-regular reminder for Americans to check your voter registration and otherwise prepare yourself to vote by going to Vote.org.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/30/the-paper-boat-a-refugee-story-by-thao-lam/

Sep 29 2020

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (Enola Holmes #2) by Nancy Springer

I absolutely panicked when I read somewhere that the Netflix movie Enola Holmes is based on more than the first novel in the book series, The Case Of The Missing Marquess, so borrowed this to squeeze in between the eleventy billion deadlines I’m facing (I was wrong, btw: the movie is based on only that first.) Fortunately, The Case Of The Left-Handed Lady is a fast read, like its predecessor. Unfortunately, it somehow manages to be slighter, despite the wealth of material introduced here.

Enola Holmes has successfully eluded her elder brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft, and saved the life of a marquess. Now established as the working class secretary for a nonexistent “perditologist”, she’s waiting for her first case to arrive so she might prove herself via her creation, Dr Ragostin. But then Dr John Watson of all people walks in, wanting to hire Dr Ragostin to search for, well, herself. Deciding to stall him, she picks up a lead to an actual case through their conversation: the disappearance of Lady Cecily Alistair, who is thought to have eloped but is nowhere to be found.

Enola undertakes several clever disguises as she ingratiates herself to Lady Cecily’s mother before going in search of the teenaged girl on her own. She also runs into trouble while performing her night-time charitable acts as the Sister Of The Streets. There’s a lot of sharp social commentary and a wealth of historical detail, as Sherlock eventually sniffs out her trail and comes in hot pursuit, even as Enola herself keeps sending signals to her mother for help, or at least news, through newspaper ads. The scenes where their investigations collide make for the best part of this novel.

Unfortunately, the main plot involving Lady Cecily’s disappearance is… really not great. Enola jumps to all sorts of conclusions, and while her legwork is exemplary, I found the denouement of who and howdunnit to be surprisingly weak. I also thought it unlikely that Sherlock wouldn’t decipher the language of flowers, but was willing to suspend my disbelief for that. The use of the howdunnit, on the other hand, was not something I could swallow, especially given Enola’s own opinions on the subject.

I’ve heard that this second is the weakest in the series, so will likely try to pick up some of the rest as soon as my schedule allows. Hopefully, I’ll also get the chance to review the movie soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/29/the-case-of-the-left-handed-lady-enola-holmes-2-by-nancy-springer/

Sep 28 2020

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

The afterword of T Kingfisher’s terrific The Hollow Places (which I’ll shortly be reviewing over at CriminalElement.com) mentions that it’s based on the classic horror short story The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, which has been cited by H. P. Lovecraft as being one of the most terrifying stories ever written. Being a voraciously curious reader, I immediately went to look it up and read it. I’m a bit sorry I did, but only in relation to THP, which lost just a little bit of its luster when I realized that so much of it wasn’t original to Ms Kingfisher (THP is still a great book, tbc.)

The Willows itself is the tale of a canoeing expedition undertaken by Mr Blackwood’s unnamed narrator and his friend, The Swede, upon the Danube. They have an easy companionship, enjoying the various delights and enduring the various travails of their adventure, till they arrive in a Hungarian stretch of water where the river runs rapid and high. They decide to make camp in an archipelago of small islands inhabited primarily by willows. A passing boatman appears to warn them off, but they laugh off his pantomimed warnings as being peasant superstitions. But then night falls, and the duo find themselves victims of sabotage as something is lurking in the willows, seeking a victim on which to feed…

My immediate reaction to finishing this story was “holy shit, that was so incredibly gay!” As I do not use “gay” as a derogatory term, please know that I mean literally homosexual, as that was undoubtedly one of the most “I desperately need an outlet to discuss my sexual attraction to the same gender” stories I’ve ever read in my entire life. It’s as if Mr Blackwood sat down and thought, “Hmm, I want to talk about the sex I had on my last nature trip but society will literally try to imprison or otherwise crush me, so how do?” Substitute “imagination” for “homosexual longings” and the monster in the trees as “society’s homophobia” — I mean, the entire scene where the narrator and The Swede stumble around in a physical embrace, where the only way they can shut out thought of the monster is to surrender to pain or a swoon is so overwhelmingly “I just had anal for the the first time.” For fuck’s sake, there’s a scene with a column of nude bodies ascending to the sky in an awe-inspiring pillar! This is Brokeback Mountain by way of an Edwardian horror story, and frankly I am here for it.

But ofc, I had to see if anyone else had the same opinion, and was honestly shocked at how the internet failed me. Given how the sexual subtext of Victorian and post-Victorian fiction is fuel for hundreds of graduate theses, I do not understand how there is no serious mention of The Willows’ obvious metaphors to be found, barring one intrepid Reddit poster. Anyway, don’t take my word for it: you can read the whole story at Project Gutenberg as I did. Let me know what you think if you do!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/28/the-willows-by-algernon-blackwood/

Sep 24 2020

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

It’s sometimes funny what sticks with a reader. I first encountered Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Fritz Leiber’s famed sword and sorcery duo and the protagonists of Swords and Deviltry, on the order of 40 years ago, and I remember very clearly that I started with the second volume: Swords Against Death. If I were recommending the series to someone who hadn’t read them before, I think I would have them start there too, and come back to the origin stories that make up Swords and Deviltry some time later.

Leiber himself did much the same; the three stories that comprise this volume (“The Snow Women” 1962, “The Unholy Grail” 1970, “Ill Met in Lankhmar” 1970) were published more than two decades after the first print appearance of the duo. It’s better to come back and have these stories fill in the details of the pair’s beginnings, to enjoy Leiber’s stylish tics, and see how Leiber conceives of his heroes as youths after having chronicled many of their later adventures.

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

I have always enjoyed the mock archaic summaries that Leiber places in the table of contents. Here, for example, is what he says about “The Snow Women”:

Of the ice magic of women and of a cold war between the sexes, setting forth the predicament of a resourceful youth ringed by three masterful women, together with pertinent information on father-son love, the bravery of actors, and the courage of fools. (p. 3)

Much of the story is there, and yet it isn’t — a splendid teaser.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/24/swords-and-deviltry-by-fritz-leiber/

Sep 22 2020

Dracula’s Child by J.S. Barnes

As pastiche, J. S. Barnes’ Dracula’s Child is a remarkable sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic tale of vampiric horror, the legendary Dracula. Told in an epistolary manner similar to its predecessor, it tells the tale of the surviving vampire hunters some thirteen years past their execution of the dark Transylvanian lord, as pieced together by a young man on the eve of one of the greatest real-life horrors to sweep through Europe, the scourge of The Great War.

Having retired to the countryside, Mina and Jonathan Harker are married but not entirely happily. Their son, Quincey, is a smart, sensitive boy on the verge of adolescence. The occasion of his twelfth birthday party draws Jack Seward, Abraham Van Helsing and Lord Arthur Godalming, with his delicate lady wife Caroline in tow, to the grounds of Shore Green to celebrate. But Van Helsing is seized with a fit and collapses after suddenly warning the assembled party of dire things to come.

The Harkers immediately take on the responsibility of Van Helsing’s care, as he has no other family left. The Godalmings promise to cover any additional expenses after Dr Seward sends a beautiful young nurse, Sarah-Ann Dowell, to assist the Harkers. But Sarah-Ann’s arrival seems to stir up inappropriate feelings in the Harker men, even as she worries about her own lover back in London, a gangster she’s been trying to reform. Meanwhile in Europe, two hedonistic bachelors form an attachment that sees their paths cross that of a scientist determined to bring an unusual species of bat back to England for display. But surely none of these odd events can have anything to do with Dracula, given that he was executed and put into the earth so many years since?

Finding out exactly how all this has to do with Dracula is only part of the charm of this novel, that keeps Mr Stoker’s prosody while filing off some of the duller aspects of his writing, to tell a lively tale of a resurrected vampire hellbent not only on dominion but also revenge. In expanding the ambitions of Mr Stoker’s original, the events of Dracula’s Child take a decidedly political turn, as the press, the police and even parliament itself are pulled into the shadows of a dark cabal that believes the ends justify the means. One of my favorite passages from the book involves a motorist refusing to assist our heroes because he believes that the count is bringing order back to England: a terrifying but not at all unrealistic depiction of the kind of bullheaded arrogance seen in too many “patriotic” citizens the world over.

I do wish that an explanation had been given as to the source of the many dreams and oracular pronouncements that aided our vampire hunters tho. The emphasis on faith in the text was appropriately Edwardian but I felt that the evil was better accounted for: if God was willing to work so many miracles through the subconscious, why not do more to stop Dracula and his minions directly? The wonderful set pieces felt marred by the fact that I often had no idea why some of them were happening. There was tons of creepy Gothic/gaslight atmosphere but my critical mind kept wondering how we were getting into and out of these passes.

That said, this was a perfect novel to kick off the changing seasons, as the nights get longer and the days grow chillier, and all you want to do is enjoy hot soups and snuggle under the covers with a good, scary read. We’ve been given the opportunity to speak with Mr Barnes about Dracula’s Child, so you can look forward to that interview in the coming days! The novel itself comes out today from Titan Press, and is available from all good booksellers.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/22/draculas-child-by-j-s-barnes/