Guy N. Smith - Manitou Doll

[dem bones]

Guy N. Smith - Manitou Doll (Hamlyn, 1981)

Blurb:

A seaside weekend .... violence breaks out ... a horrifying rape .... and the fury of hell is reborn

The fairground stood on waste-land near the promenade. It was a Jumble of. sideshows, amusement arcades, the ghost train, even a menagerie... Also there was a fortune-teller – the Red Indian girl called Jane who sat quietly carving grotesque wooden figures.

When Roy and Liz Catlin arrive on holiday with their daughter Rowena, they find non-stop rain and a disturbing undercurrent of menace. Rowena is strangely fascinated by the fairground – and particularly by the mysterious Jane. Continually she returns there against her parents' wishes.

But the place has now become the focus of evil forces. Ugly deaths, mutilations, mass killings erupt in a terrifying wave of destruction. For a demonic slaughter is unleashed that can only end when an age-old score is settled.

Early worries that GNS is going to set this one in the states are happily vanquished once the US Cavalry versus Red Injuns prologue is dispense with and we cut to that most British of institutions - Bank Holiday violence between the Hells Angels and rival biker gang the Gladiators at an unidentified seaside resort!

It all kicks off at Jacob Shaefer's funfair, and the catalyst is a hapless mother who accidentally nudges her little boy's candyfloss right into the hateful face of Fat Fry, leader of the East London chapter! Fat - so named because he is - mercilessly lashes out at both mum and child, triggering the riot that's been building up all weekend. While the Angels and Gladiators attempt to dismantle the fair and each other, Fry and his henchman Stap slip inside the tent of Jane, the inscrutable " Red Indian Fortune Teller". Jane, as ever, has been carving away at one of the weird dolls she sells to the punters as lucky mascots and, despite informing her in no uncertain terms how untalented she is, Fry swipes the wooden figure when he leaves - having brutally raped her during his visit, obviously. As the police arrive to break up the pitched battle, he and Stap take to their bikes and head off onto the motorway. When next we catch up with them, they've just come off worst in a head on collision with a land-rover. Even the two experienced ambulancemen pale when they see the state of their mangled bodies. A double decapitation. What are the odds?

Solicitor's cashier Roy Catlin and his wife Liz ("Mr. and Mrs. Average from Conventional Town" as he bitterly concedes) are holidaying with their deaf daughter, Rowena. After the previous night's violence, they've no intention of visiting the funfair, but what Rowena wants she usually gets, and sure enough, it's not long before she's slipped away from her parents and into Jane's tent where the Cheyenne is carving away as if nothing untoward has happened to her in the last 24 hours. Just now she's occupied on salvaging the dolls for the Punch & Judy Show. As we learned in the prologue, Jane has every reason to despise the white race on account of how they treated her forefathers, but, unusually, she feels a bond of sympathy toward the little girl. When Liz discovers her missing daughter sitting with a fortune teller she takes an instant dislike to the "slut of a squaw", particularly when it becomes glaringly apparent - by the inevitable "protrusion" in this trousers - that Roy would very much like to shag her! Jane persuades the Catlin's to take in the night's Punch & Judy performance for their daughter's sake as Rowena is very excited by the dolls. As it turns out, it's quite the most violent and gory puppet show they've seen in their lives ....

To be continued: very promising so far

[Calenture]

Aug 16, 2008 20:27:26 GMT dem bones said:

As it turns out, it's quite the most violent and gory puppet show they've seen in their lives ....

To be continued: very promising so far

Glad you liked this one, Dem. That puppet show is unforgotten after reading the book back in the Seventies. I'm always muttering that it's the one GNS book I enjoyed (once it gets past the revolting sadism of the seaside boot boys scene, that is).

In fact, once it got into the really atmospheric fairground horror, I found I was actually going to bed earlier a couple of nights to have more time to read it!

That's cover is a thing of beauty, by the way. Just right.

[dem bones]

Actually, I think he depicts Fat Fry's vicious assault on the mother and son just right. Senseless, non-escapist and certainly not pretty, presumably the realism Richard Allen was always striving to achieve between eulogies to the wonders of Seagrams 100 Pipers.

The Punch & Judy show is brilliant because it's so unexpected but then i've found all the fairground scenes very effective - notably a murder in the Hall of Mirrors and the savage mutilation of a creepy child-killer on the Ghost Train. I'm on p. 124 now and it seems that Jane's ancestor's are animating her carvings to wreak vengeance on the hated whites ...

Later

This is getting terrific now! The little doll Jane carved for Rowena, furious at having been thrown in the sea by the girl's miserable mother, has returned in a foul temper and is presently engaged in killing everyone. Neat series of vignettes taking in several grisly seaside murders!

[manitoudoll]

I adore MANITOU DOLL (obviously).

Did someone say "revolting"?

It's all good fun to me.

Guy really nails it with this one.

There is nobody but nobody like him.

[vaughan]

Incongruous.

Yes, that's the word I'd use to describe this one.

This novel seemed to me to be a mix and match of the the weirdest elements, both for the story being told and more especially for Guy N. Smith himself. It's weird, and wonderful.

And incongruous.

Let me explain (I see there are fans -even big fans - of this book here, and I want to make myself completely clear.)

The book opens with cowboys and Indians. The wild west. The frontier days. The Cavalry. Yes - GNS is up for some bow and arrow action - tipi's, totem poles, river bed action and circles of wagons, all that stuff. Incongruity number 1. GNS writing a western?

Hard done by, a squaw is raped and generally downtrodden. Cursed and cursing.

Next.

England. A place I thought of a Southend-on-Sea, because it's always bloody raining. A fair ground with stereotypical crooks everywhere. And motor bike gangs. Not only motor bike gangs - but THE motor bike gang. Hells Angels.

Big Dipper, throwing rings into nails, air guns to shoot metal ducks, lions, apes, an elephant, candy floss. And an Indian. In Southend (or wherever you fancy the place is). A Squaw. A squaw named Jane. Jane.

Incongruity number 2.

Our central cast: Roy, Liz, and Rowena.

You're going to spend a lot of time with these three, and you're not likely to meet a more dissatisfying group for quite some time. Roy is a wimp. Liz is a bitch. Rowena is deaf and dislikes her mother.

They mope, they moan, and they have no control whatsoever over their child. They're holidaying in a hotel that is run by left-overs from the Second World War (or so it seems). If only it'd been Basil Fawlty's place we might have had more fun.

As the cover blurb states: Hell's fury breaks loose on a holiday weekend".

But it actually breaks loose over the ENTIRE WEEK.

Incongruity number 3.

And it rains. And it rains. It rains every day - all day - all the time. And apparently when it rains there is only one place to go, to the fair. Of course. So to the fair they go, they meet Jane. Liz gets angry, Rowena gets a free doll carved from wood, Roy gets an erection.

The Squaw doesn't mind Roy's erection at all.

Jane isn't just a fortune teller - she's a repair woman. She repairs things around the fair (there's quite a bit of this to do, since the bikers smash the place to bits). A handy-woman, no less.

Jane is raped by the bikers. She likes it. Heck - we're told - she even orgasmed.

Incongruity number 4.

From here hell's fury breaks loose. Jane is as much a victim as everyone else. Rowena is running the show. A man is kicked to death while swimming in the sea - by a doll a couple inches high (no, seriously). A woman is kicked to death in a cave - by the same doll.

And it rains and rains. It's miserable. People start dying. The police appear every now and again but the Keystone Cops would have had more luck with an investigation - I've seen Abbot and Costello figure out far larger mysteries.

So they close the fairground after murder number one? No. Two? No. Three? No.

There's an attempted rape on the Big Dipper. While it's moving. Going around, throwing people about. It doesn't work out (wonder why?)

Boats sink, machines fail, engines stall. It rains. Rains some more. The rain is followed by copious amounts of water falling from the sky - AKA: more bloody rain.

And the book cover - not the one shown above - lies. My cover has a carved Manitou doll, clearly in the wild west, an (apparently) naked woman in the background, arms aloft. Odd.

I think we can assume that I was left floundering by this one. There are so many odd elements thrown together. The fair ground, the story of native Americans, the carvings, the best Punch and Judy show ever, and rotten relationships thrown together in holidays none of them really wants.

Odd.

Frankly I didn't settle with it. Part of me is surprised I got through it. On the other hand it has some wonderful moments - and there's some pure pulp nonsense going on.

But it didn't feel GNS-thy. It felt disassociated, strange, and obtuse.

I liked it. I disliked it at the same time.

Going to need to read again some time. GNS caught me off guard. That can't be a bad thing.

And as for those incongruities.......