I discovered Adam Nevill's
fiction in September 2012, I still remember clearly the date since I keep a
small date inscription on books I enjoyed reading. LAST DAYS made me buy
APARTMENT 16 and THE RITUAL and APARTMENT 16 made me crave more of Nevill's books.
When HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS was released in Dubai, I couldn’t wait and drove
the same day to the bookstore to buy it before heading back home after a long
day of work. And so it continued. I chose to write this small
introduction about my personal experience with Adam's fiction to illustrate how
intense and huge the impact this incredibly talented author leaves on his
readers.
I read once in one of the horror anthologies where Adam wrote a story, "If
anybody has proved the persistent popularity of supernatural fiction then it is
Adam Nevill...Adam's love for the genre comes through in every one of his
tales..." because it is evident that Adam goes very deep inside to dredge
out these tales. They come from him, his personal experiences, his fascination
for the genre and in the unique voice in which he weaves those tales. It is
that dedication and passion that engages the reader; deeply entangled in the
story, emotionally affected by the images and atmospheres created there. Novels
or short stories, the outcome is sheer dread and a new riveting experience.
WARNING! SOME WILL NOT SLEEP is no different. As with all of Nevill's
stories, the reader will be drawn to 11 selected horrors and dark nightmares
involving the bizarre and the grotesque made solely to haunt and affect minds,
11 tales of disturbing images, of childhood fears and ghastly characters and
heart- stopping situations. 11 yarns presented in the author’s very fine prose,
his evocative and atmospheric style, his some time simple and clear tone, and
at other times subtle and lyrical. Simply put, they are beautifully written.
With the opening tale, WHERE ANGELS COME IN, a child ventures with his friend
to enter the tall scary house on the hill which ''no adults like to talk
about''. This story fears ranging from that of the old house and the fear of
social ridicule and disapproval. Those fears, expressed in the first person
narrative of a genuine child voice, take the reader back to childhood memories
of old ghost stories and absurd dares. The story is also an homage to M.R
James, but like the author said " It is in the spirit of the master than
anything else”. It is in that uneasy feeling sinking inside the reader
when the children traverse the gate, in that dread seeping from the morbid
stillness and eerie surroundings of the house and its weird statues in the
overgrown garden. It is also suggested in that inevitable anticipation of what
resides in that sinister house and what would happen to the children if they
encounter the residents of the old house?
In SOME WILL NOT SLEEP, children have another two shares manifested in PIG
THING and ANCESTORS. As the title suggests, in PIG THING, the tone is juvenile.
It is the name given by one of the children to the beast she saw lurking behind
the bushes. A story about children who find themselves trapped in their house
in New Zealand, new land, after their parents ventured outside to check that
hairy swine/human thing. The sense of that morbid, endless waiting the children
feel, the hopelessness of their doomed situation in a foreign new place and
that terrible thing outside build up the tension and anticipation of what is
coming, all this engulfed in a thin film of dark melancholy floating in the
air. In ANCESTORS, the author transfers us to Japan and Asian horror. This tale
is seen through the eyes of the child and her naïve innocent perspective of the
new old house the family moved to, where a new friend lives, where haunted toys
also live and move at night. The elements of Asian horror are depicted in the
bleak atmosphere, old creaky house, unstoppable rain and in the basic
description of ghost with its entangled, long hair and white teeth, of the
bones found in the chimneys, the legion of haunted toys with a grudge and the
incomprehensible surrealism through the eyes of a child.
The origins of THE RITUAL and APARTMENT 16 are actually found in this
collection. With THE ORIGINAL OCCUPANT, the reader is taken back to those
forsaken boreal forests and offered a glimpse of what lurks within. A
different approach of story layers is adopted here. “To tell stories within
stories" is narrated in the first person and this time in the voice
of a sophisticated and erudite character recounting the story that was
told to him, again in first person, by a friend who went searching for a mutual
friend who had disappeared in Radalen in the Scandinavian wilderness
where "legends of the Ra and human sacrifices " exist. The
description of Ra "a wet snout, yellow canines and blood-spoiled eyes”
with its fetid smell, brings back to mind the demoniac image of Moder from THE
RITUAL. The atmosphere in this story is of a crushing heavy nature coming from
the morbid stillness of the backwoods, the rudimentary dark ambiance of the
Stuga along with an intensifying terror generated from the letters exchanged
between the two friends, the nefarious reputation of Radalen and what lives
there, and the horrific sketches left by the disappeared friend.
And before APARTMENT 16, there was TO FORGET AND BE FORGOTTEN and DOLL
HANDS where Adam returns to his origins and his unique territory. TO
FORGET AND BE FORGOTTEN takes place this time in Antwerp, Flemish Belgium
instead of upper London. The reader follows the story of a “gentleman of
absence’’, seeking a lonely existence away from a society ruled by human baboons
and executive trolls, accepted to work as a night-watchman in the prestigious
Dulle Griet Huis, where a few very elderly residents live. Like Barrington
House in APARTMENT 16, the overshadowing Dulle Griet Huis has another ghastly face
to show. Sudden flits of movements, the shadows coming down the stairs, the
doors banging, footsteps running, voices inside empty apartments, all this
cannot combat the building’s horrid eccentric residents who were to be awaken
from their hibernation. The dread and the weird are displayed in every trait
given by the author to those elderly creatures, something taken from a parallel
demonic dimension. TO FORGOT AND BE FORGOTTEN is an unsettling story of horror
and entrapment and despair. A doomed fate where the protagonist fled the
annoying familiar to be trapped in the horrid unfamiliar. In DOLL HANDS, it is
2152, some dystopian future comes out as “painting of Francis Bacon”, as the
author calls it in his story notes. In that particular painting he chose to
draw a distorted image of humans, where people shed their humanity and
cannibalism becomes a delicacy. In Gruut Huis, the backdrop of the story, the
rich feed on the poor served by the facilitators/caterers. People are like
animals, the rich -Vultures, the caterers are weasels and the poor nothing but
livestock. It is a dreadful disfigured realm of disfigured characters who
shock the unshockable. "I am the one with the big white head and the
doll hands’’.
Like all his writings, Adam shows a huge fascination for the grotesque
aesthetic and the world of bizarre and strangeness. And MOTHER’S MILK and
YELLOW TEETH were made with the same fabrics. The surreal images of
MOTHER’S MILK and the very disturbing characters who live there are exhumed out
of the deep darkness of the author's very creepy nightmares. Starting
with the characters, it is difficult to define what the mother and her kin are.
A bizarre incongruous combination between bestial and human. Their physical
description is beyond imagination, stick legs, hairy back, buzzing, madness.
And that addiction to the mother's milk craved by the protagonist/narrator, doomed by
his inescapable situation in that place, leaves in the reader a sickening
feeling that cannot be shaken away. As for YELLOW TEETH, the story is the
invasion of a squalor and a festival of all odours. The situation is summarized
by the beginning sentence said by the narrator “I made a terrible mistake’’
when he let an acquaintance inside his house and his whole world is
metamorphosed into a temple of filth for a wretched goddess. The sensory
images, the meticulous description of each detail, the intense metaphors, the
blunt pictures, all come to violate the worlds of both witnesses of this
sacrilege, the narrator’s as much as the reader’s. Simply the story
stains your brain. All of this is accompanied by the uncanny elements that find
their climax at the end of the story.I should mention that this story reminded
me of NO ONE GETS ALIVE, the miasma and filth surrounding Fergal in his
summoning Black Maggie.
The evil cult manifests itself in this collection and this time in the western
American wilderness with WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT? It is a journey of
revenge and culling taken by the dragoon in search for his sister who was taken
by the undead Fair-Skinned Nephites and their malevolent prophet Levi. A fast
pulpy tale that takes place in harsh western America and that has elements of
uncanny and macabre about that Black Carriage, black horse, a preacher-devil.
Although, I haven’t read any of Cormac McCarthy’s books, but it is important to
say what the author mentioned in his notes that WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT? was
inspired by McCarthy’s fiction with regards to its western atmosphere. However
it is a story written in the very unique voice of the author.
In Adam Nevill’s books, monsters come in different forms and different faces.
And in AGE OF ENTITLEMENT, it is a human face. When an unstable man discovered
that his friend has been exploiting him for decades, the betrayal is killing
and the result in Nevill’s world is nothing but catastrophic. I loved the
subtle mysterious tone of the story and the dominating eerie atmosphere. The setting is Battlefields of Normandy in France, the description of the place is
dismal and macabre and foreboding, the graves, the cruel sea, the old buildings
and those like- living statues and those odd few locals intensify the sense of
irritation, abandonment and loneliness similar to the protagonists betrayed
hurt feelings.
Needless to say that the author’s story notes at the end of the collection are
priceless. They recount how these stories came to life and which personal
experiences and inner thoughts have shaped them. They definitely reflect a
certain period of the author’s life dominated by feelings of frustration,
isolation, despair and a deep desire to escape society where greed and
inequality reign.
In brief, Adam Nevill proves in SOME WILL NOT SLEEP that he is a
master of the craft, like every book he wrote, he has demonstrated incredible
skills to hook the readers and to entrap them with his characters in a spiral
of incremental madness and abject fear. It is how gripping his writing can
be, how original and unique the stories he whips up and how real and chilling
the primal fears he induces in dark backwoods, in a haunted house, ancient
buildings: his frights come along with puppets and creepy dolls, they are
inflicted by an evil cult or demonic creatures, dreadful monsters who come in
all forms and shapes. Frights to bear for SOME WILL NOT SLEEP, a book that
exceeds 5 star rating, a remarkable feast of horror, weird and grotesque.
Finally a special thank you to the author for sending me ARC in exchange of an
honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment