Title: Dracula’s Guest & Other Stories
Author: Bram Stoker
Publication: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (1 May 2006)
Paperback: 224 pages
Rating: 3 out of 5
Bram Stoker might have penned the most recognised novel on vampires – misconstruing the character of the Transylvanian prince of the Order of the Dragon along the way – but he was never a great yarn teller. I cannot tolerate Dracula, his magnum opus, for the melodramatically bad piece of writing that it is. His style, therefore, isn’t his saving grace in these collected stories, however he came up with some interesting if slightly folkloric tales of the supernatural.
The title story, Dracula’s Guest, is thought to be a prequel to Stoker’s most recognised novel about the Transylvanian vampire Count with decidedly odd habits. The atmospheric prose of the story is accentuated by its setting in a cemetery. An unnamed narrator, possibly Jonathan Harker, is in Munich and travels on Walpurgisnacht. He is ‘English and therefore adventurous’, which proves to be something of a drawback by the end of his little experience. If he is the same Jonathan Harker from Dracula, it shows how stupid, stubborn and narrow-minded some characters are. They never learn their lesson!
The Judge’s House is excellent and truly a frightening tale. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I tell the story to anyone who cares to listen. Most of them get the chills halfway through and one, a student of mine, ended up staring at me wide-eyed in fright. The story is inspired by Le Fanu’s An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street but it is, as mentioned by the editor of this collection, more visceral in evoking fear.
Stoker’s other tales make for some worthy reading as well. Those that I found interesting are The Secret of the Growing Gold, The Coming of Abel Behenna and The Chain of Destiny. Stoker tends to romance it up whenever he can with his stories so the experience of reading supernatural fiction with tinges of courtship add to the factor that he doesn’t come up with many scary stories. In fact, The Judge’s House is the only real thriller in this collection.
As with most collections, there are some good stories which share the pages with bad ones. In this case, Crooken Sands, The Red Stockade and The Dualitists are the culprits, especially the last which I find quite tasteless in its supposed humour.
Title: The Werewolf Pack
Selected & Introduced by Mark Valentine
Publication: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (12 Jun 2008)
Paperback: 224 pages
Rating: 2 out of 5
This collection aims to provide a selection of werewolf tales that are popular, sometimes even rare, and once, quite weird. 3 stories from the book deserve mention for the reasons stated below. Read on.
R.B. Russell, yes, the same man who penned Like Clockwork, does the bizarre routine again with his Loup-Garou – a short postmodern tale about French cinema, possible mania and a puzzling end that I couldn’t grasp.
The Clay Party by Steve Duffy is a combination of the American Manifest Destiny, ambitious settlers, Romanian matriarchs and a pack of steadfast wolves. The story is reminiscent of the movie, Ravenous (which totally rocks by the way). Yeah, cannibalism rampant.
Gail-Nina Anderson’s The Tale Untold tries to be Angela Carter’s In the Company of Wolves – the short story and the movie. So, that is very disappointing. Not many can imitate Carter’s prose and wicked sense of storytelling successfully.
One thing shared by all authors mentioned in this review is that they are all contemporary writers. The rest of the stories in this collection make for some very dry reading. Not a good book to waste your time on.
Title: The Temple of Death
Authors: A.C. Benson & R.H. Benson
Publication: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (10 Sep 2007)
Paperback: 240 pages
Rating: 3 out of 5
Don’t be fooled by the lurid title – the less famous brothers of E.F. Benson are much too preoccupied with religion and proselytizing their beliefs to actually write anything bloody or gory. I prefer R.H. Benson’s 7 short tales to each of A.C. Benson’s longish, ridiculous and extremely obvious tales. The latter has a tendency to come up with utterly uninspired ‘ghost stories’ that it is a chore not to yawn. The Uttermost Farthing passes muster as it borrows from M.R. James in style but the rest are dreadfully wishy-washy.
My favourite stories by R.H. Benson are Consolatrix Afflictorum, which is more of a Catholic mystical weepy than a ghost story, and The Traveller. This story successfully imagines the afterlife of the murderers of Thomas a Becket and it’s great when you read it on a rainy night with a cup of tea by your side.
Title: Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories
Selected & Introduced by Rex Collings
Publication: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (5 Jan 2008)
Paperback: 304 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Yet another collection of ghostly tales from the Wordsworth publishing house! The Victorians loved their ghosts and the Edwardians carried that love on to some extent. This collection has the traditional fare on offer, from greats such as Dickens, Collins and R.L. Stevenson to surprising contributions from Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Nesbit and William Thackery, individuals we associate with other types of literature than supernatural.
Sir Walter Scott – strictly Regency - gives us The Tapestried Chamber which is rather basic in its elements: an old castle, a haunted room and the residential ghost making its presence felt. The Spectre of Tappington is another equally weak offering from the pen of Richard Harris Barham. It’s meant to be a farcical take on the genre and is dreary and longwinded.
All is not lost, what with 2 ghastly tales, as Edgar Allan Poe’s popular and well loved story, The Tell-Tale Heart, takes its place as a stalwart of the genre. There are 2 Le Fanu tales as well: An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street and the fantastically odd Narrative of a Ghost of a Hand. Thankfully M.R. James isn’t ignored; his The Haunted Doll’s House and A School Story provide more credit to the collection.
The surprising (to me) inclusion of Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Squire’s Story doesn’t really add up to much. The same goes for Thackery’s The Story of Mary Ancell.
As to my favourites, there were pleasant discoveries. Charles Dickens (← I avoid him like the plague) gives the chills in To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt. Miss Braddon’s tale, Eveline’s Visitant, proves to be horrifying and fatalistic, evoking a melancholy sigh of regret from me on Eveline’s behalf. Edith Nesbit, the author of Railway Children, definitely wrote a memorable yet simple tale of village superstition come to life in Man-Size in Marble.
The collection concludes with 3 true ghost stories as well but only one, A Ghostly Manifestation written anonymously by a clergyman, is truly frightening. It takes place in Calcutta in the 19th century and has some seemingly authentic details plus a violent back-story. The other 2 tales deal with famed manifestations of supernatural phenomena in the Tower of London, including the incident of the phantasmic bear.
