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Post by severance on Oct 21, 2007 11:31:07 GMT
I thoroughly enjoyed Ball's The Venomous Sepent a few months back, so I'd been looking forward to the day when Lesson for the Damned worked its way to the top of the 'to be read' pile - and now that it has, thankfully it in no way disappointed.
Penelope (Penny) Carstairs is an ordinary junior school teacher in the village of Hoggins in the Peak District, except for the fact that she's a nymphomaniac and bored. She's screwing two men at the moment, Claude Witherington, the married headmaster of her school, who knows exactly what to do to please her in their pre-school sessions (though the old cleaner is getting suspicious). Bruce Tyler the farmer's son, on the other hand doesn't have much of a clue, but is strong, athletic and crazy about climbing rocks, cliffs, even buildings in the village. In one scene he climbs up to her bedroom - "Penny! The bloody catch is fastened! Let me in! Come on! I'm holding on by a fingernail and my right bollock!"
Her two very boring domesticated housewife friends Jean and Anne-Marie (whose particularly ugly baby gets called Sweetie the whole time) persuade Penny to go a night school class run by Alcybiades Barton and learns of a supposed witch buried up alive against the church wall two hundred years ago.
That's all the plot I'm going to give, as I'd hate to ruin it for those of you yet to read this wonderful slice of 70s kitsch.
The only thing that lets it down slightly is a "To the Devil a Daughter"-type weak ending, but apart from that it's spot-on. Curt didn't think much of it at "Groovy Age of Horror", but then he is a yank ;D I reckon he missed a lot of the Britishness about the characters, little Jimmy West dropping his pencil and trying to see her knickers in class, the school fete and assemblies, singing rugby songs in the pub on a Friday night - this gets a solid 7.5 from me, just below "Venomous Serpent" and "Tanith" but above "Village of Blood."
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Post by dem bones on Aug 22, 2009 18:48:37 GMT
Brian Ball - Lesson For The Damned (NEL,Dec. 1971) Blurb Penny was born under a good sign. The right star at the right time. She is ideal for the Devil.
Midsummer Night approaches: a windswept Peak District lays bare its soul, anticipating the arrival of His Satanic Majesty. And Penny, the provincial young Night School mistress from a nearby estate, prepares herself for the ultimate violation.
But what if the Devil wants more? Just finished this and can only marvel at Sev's review because he's nailed it spot on, whereas i've tried twice and abysmally failed to do Lesson For The Damned any kind of justice. A very odd novel, pitched somewhere between a toned down Confessions ... and a sex-rated Dennis Wheatley Black Sorcery job. At first the author is so busy concentrating on getting in plenty of rogering that you wonder if he's forgotten all about the supernatural, but Mr. B knows what he's about and, once Penny has been lured into Alcybiades Barton's Devil Worship cult, he up the pace, and even settles into serious mode for a couple of chapters. " ... she saw the strained white face of Julia Lightblanket staring hopelessly up at a tiny patch of grey light high above her head. She saw too the squat brutal shape of the parson, Joshua Hoseason at his grim, silent task in the dark. Piece by piece the heavy hewn blocks of gritstone slid into place on cold black mortar. And the girl watching the stone grow about her." Penny, it seems, is a reincarnation of the witch entombed alive in the wall of the village church and has inherited her dark powers, which she uses to play spiteful, childish tricks on those who upset her. I use the word 'seems' advisedly as Lesson For The Damned is big on red herrings and 'hilarious mix-ups', so you're never quite sure who is really calling the shots - Penny, Barton and his evil henchwoman, Councillor Mrs. Lucie-Smith, JP, the Reverend Pluckrose, or possibly the Devil himself? Even the climactic Sabbat at Maidens Rock - featuring an apocalyptic cameo from Bruce's garlic sausage sandwich - has its moments of nastiness while still reading like Carry On The Devil Rides Out. I wonder what Dennis would have said?
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Post by marksamuels on Aug 22, 2009 22:09:09 GMT
Dem I am pleased to announce that you are the first winner of the unofficial "SJ" award... This rare accolade is issued in honour of long gone Saturday mornings and dolly-bird revealings of the highest quality....  Jolly good! Keep up the good work! Mark S. |
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njhorror
New Face In Hell
Man of Il Mangia
Posts: 7
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Post by njhorror on Aug 23, 2009 0:50:11 GMT
Hey Mark, good to see you around.
I'll be seeing you.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 23, 2009 20:14:43 GMT
I am pleased to announce that you are the first winner of the unofficial "SJ" award... This rare accolade is issued in honour of long gone Saturday mornings and dolly-bird revealings of the highest quality.... Mark S. i didn't hear the nuns laughing when i got my ten yards swimming certificate and i don't hear them laughing now! Move over, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Eat your hear out, Albert Camus. Give it your best shot Pierce Nace. cream always rises! where were we? Oh yeah, Lessons For The Damned. The landlord of The Stag was evidently out the night Brian Ball visited which is kind of a shame as he could have made the Worst Pub Landlord thread, if only for tolerating Bruce of the tenacious right bollock and his mates. "Look at her" bawled Bruce again. "What a super bust and bum! Come on, let's have a song! Mrs. Webster! Get on the piano - let's have If I Was The Marrying Kind!" |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 25, 2009 20:06:54 GMT
News to me if no-one else - Brian Ball is still doing his bit, or at least he was last year when he contributed a story to the 13th and, sadly, final issue of Philip Harbottle's Fantasy Adventures (Cosmos Books, Jan. 2008). Don't know how we missed FA, as it brings to mind a modern version of Lionel Fanthorpe's Supernatural Tales with contributions from Syd J. Bounds, E.C. Tubb and John Glasby, all of them card carrying members of the Badger Books brigade at one time or another.
Here's the blurb for #13:
The late SYDNEY J. BOUNDS' vivid new story PLAGUE PIT tells the horrifying story of what happens when an out-of-control modern technology meshes with an Ancient Evil, and is the first of several all-new stories by this much-loved master of fantasy leading off this special collection of science fiction, fantasy and supernatural stories, including: THIS WORLD IS OURS, a bizarre tale of the future by the late PHILIP E. HIGH, another great writer who is no longer with us; PRISONER OF TIME, an engrossing short novel of the weird consequences of a scientist's revenge by JOHN RUSSELL FEARN; SLEEVE OF CARE, a classic chilling fantasy by E. C. TUBB; plus many other entirely new stories by: BRIAN BALL, ANTONIO BELLOMI, ERIC BROWN, JOHN GLASBY, TONY GLYNN. Another Cosmos Books paperback original collection.
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