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The Collected Macabre Stories
by LP Hartley
(Tartarus
Press, £35.00 / $55.00, 393 pages, hardback, published 1 December
2001; ISBN: 1872621627.)
The ghost story, arguably man's oldest attempt to lend recognizable
shape to the unknown isn't simply "the most exacting" form of art, as
expressed by one of its leading practitioners, L.P. Hartley, but, as
both process of discovery and emotional artifact, also requires the
seemingly contradictory use of realism to lend the fantastic believability
and effectiveness. Lending substance to human anxieties through symbolic
images and archetypal patterns that other forms of literature lack the
willingness and aesthetic tools to confront, the macabre tale, and the
supernatural story in particular, invites readers to face aspects of
their internal and external worlds that they ordinarily wouldn't be
capable or willing to explore. Through a re-examination of the seemingly
normal, expected, or logical is revealed the surreal and fantastic --
the supernatural -- which succeeds most potently as art (and perhaps
physical/spiritual possibility) when not too far removed from the actions
of everyday life.
In The Collected Macabre Stories, by L.P. Hartley, questions
of supernatural possibility and evil as both human behavior and independent
entity are realistically treated, lent impressive power by the author's
creation of aesthetically believable environments, characters, and perspectives
which, as a result of their almost banal normalcy (as well as their
ability to lull the reader into a suspension of disbelief) produces
shudders and, perhaps more importantly, invites questions of faith when
the most disturbing of phantoms pour from even the sturdiest of human
stock.
The terror tales and ghostly visitations of Hartley's superbly crafted,
chilling ghost stories reaffirm life by paradoxically exploring death
and, to a greater extent, speculating on what, if anything, exists after
the last sigh is silenced, the last breath stilled. Yet it is with fear
that the macabre tale is primarily concerned, not salvation, and the
secret geography of fear is a territory L.P. Hartley walked with both
enthusiasm and authority, the mastery of his ideas and expression evidenced
in "A Change Of Ownership," whereupon an isolated, delusional little
gentleman's insecurities are granted horrid solidity as someone or something
keeps him out of his house, and in "Podolo," where a monstrous man-beast,
not a ghost, forces a lovely young woman's friends to end her suffering
with grim violence, just as she herself had opted to do for a starving
kitten earlier in the narrative -- a moving bit of ironic counte cruelle
exploring the various implications of seemingly kind acts.
Hartley, by first crafting a mirror-image context of naturalistic
life, and secondly, by investing solid characters with lyrically charged
prose, lent his literary nightmares what he liked to refer to as "a
natural as well as a supernatural interest." In this collection of his
best supernatural fiction, he often seduces the maximum effect from
the smallest of coincidences, allowing the natural psychology of characters
as much attention as to take as the fantasy in such tales as "Night
Fears," "The Face," The Corner," and the enchanting if somewhat out-of-place
Faerie Tale "The Crossways." In Hartley's universe, supernatural forces
interact with humanity as a result of misdeeds, guilt, misplaced emotion,
or, more horribly still, through no discernible reason at all. This
later type of tale is particularly chilling, and employed to good effect
in "Feet Foremost," whereupon a house owner is implicated in a generational
supernatural conflict with an extremely attractive, extremely deadly
female spirit through no other reason than the blood in his veins. If
innocence is no promise of reprieve, culpability is a promise of torment,
expressed to masterful effect in "A Visitor From Down Under," a tale
whose flesh-creeping ending revises a well-worn pattern from European
folklore.
An admirable gift for devotees of fine fiction, this over-stuffed
buffet of midnight transformations and traveling graves, caroling specters
and raging shadows includes thirty-seven of Hartley's best macabre tales,
from such traditional ghost stories of suggestion as "Three, or Four,
For Dinner" through the vicious sensibilities of "The Traveling Grave,"
to the ambiguous nightmares of "Home Sweet Home." Although a certain
degree of repetition lessens the effect of the cliche-driven "The Stain
On The Chair" and "Someone In The Lift," Hartley's innovative flair
for drama, careful structure of events, and emotionally evocative language
makes his explorations of alienation, the danger of relationships, and
the macabre threat of loneliness a treat to read. In short, this collection,
introduced by Mark Valentine, is a celebration of the darkly comedic,
the tragic, and the unknown -- a chronicle of midnight encounters between
the haunters and the haunted better known for his mainstream novels
than for the work where he truly stood out.
Review by William P Simmons.
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