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Post by Steve on Jun 25, 2009 2:00:40 GMT
Maggots by Edward Jarvis, Arrow 1986 It all starts with the discovery of a dead hedgehog in a boiler shed...
Meanwhile, not many miles away, a man watches in disbelieving horror as his own body is eaten alive...
For deep beneath the surface of the earth, the maggots are multiplying, lurking in the blackness until the time is ripe to burst out on an unsuspecting world...
Don't know about you but I reckon back cover blurbs don't come much better than that. They had me at the dead hedgehog. Felt a review might be in order but couldn't decide whether to have a go at The Witches series, The Specialist books (thanks to Ade for getting me into them again) or something else. Went for this one in the end - partly because both The Witches and The Specialist have been pretty well covered already on Vault while, as far as I know, nobody's ever tackled this or Jarvis's earlier Hamlyn horror, Pestilence (1983), and partly because I've been meaning to write something about Maggots ever since I first signed up at the old place in whenever it was. So, you know... it's time. First things first. Who is Edward Jarvis? All I know is he wrote this and Pestilence (more of which in due course if things go according to plan) and something called The Big Fix which I've never read but looks like some sort of crime thing and was published way back in 1969, quite some time before the halcyon days of the Hamlyn/Arrow nasties. He has a slightly odd, and not particularly readable, writing style but I find there's something tremendously appealling about his work. Anyway, to the matter in hand. Tod Brenner is a world authority on caves who wears a synthetic fun-fur jacket to do the gardening. Which would be fine if a devil-may-care hedgehog hadn't crept into Tod's toolshed and somehow managed to hang itself on the makeshift belt of said coat, and before you know it the little feller's a putrid writhing mass of foetid seething corruption and it's all downhill from there. Maggots. Everywhere. Millions of them. Billions. Trillions. No, hang on... zillions even. I mentioned Jarvis's writing style just now. How can I best describe it? You couldn't really describe his prose style as 'spare' or 'lean'. I really can't decide if he's padding madly ( Maggots runs to two hundred and thirty odd pages but could have fit comfortably into a NEL hundred and twenty pager if you took out all the adjectives) or if he just really likes describing the same thing in lots of different ways. You'd think that if you knew you were going to have to write about maggots for a couple of hundred pages, you'd keep a few verbs back to use to describe maggot movement later on in the book, but no - right from the off they're wriggling, writhing, milling, burrowing, weaving, heaving, squirming, swarming, sweeping, swirling. And did I mention the adjectives? There's no such thing as a simple 'path' in this book, not even a 'stony path' - it's a 'tree-lined, flower-flecked, sweet-scented stony path'. Hmm, interesting... could you perhaps tell us a bit more about this path? And the dialogue. Everybody talks, I don't know.... funny. Even when they're not doing a dodgy regional accent ("Line oop in t'threes, money raght ready, them as ain't paihd, tha knows.") T'threes? Yet somehow it all adds to the charm. To the overall strangeness of the thing (and it does get strange, believe me). One thing Maggots is really strong on is vomiting. I'm not sure if this has been included in the Vault pulp 101 yet, but I've come to notice that in every book I read one of the characters, whether due to revulsion, or fear, or just being punched in the stomach really hard, will at some point throw up. Maggots has wretching twice in the introduction. 'Repeatedly'. 'Violently'. The second time is perhaps some of the most spectacular heaving I've ever seen committed to paper - "threshing convulsively to the great jets of vomit that left his body in jerking, kicking eruptions". Some of this stuff is almost Pierce Naceian. But peculiarly British. There are some lovely little cultural references which I'll come to in due course...
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Post by vaughan on Jun 25, 2009 8:15:17 GMT
Needless to say I've never seen this book before (let alone actually read it) - but the basic premise, as flimsy and joyously silly as it is, if of great interest. Beasties and Bugs, you just can't go wrong!
Thanks for your review (I take it there is more to come) which I really enjoyed. As you say, I don't really need convincing it would be worth a buy, not with that cover blurb!
Thanks again!
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Post by killercrab on Jun 25, 2009 9:38:28 GMT
Another highly entertaining review - zillions of maggots! You've still got the touch Steve - thanks. A
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Post by marksamuels on Jun 25, 2009 10:25:46 GMT
Great stuff, Steve! The Vault is really rocking at the moment Mark S.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 25, 2009 12:33:50 GMT
Top post, Steve, but, oh the pain! still my worst ever 'the one that got away' moment. They actually had a copy of Maggots in my local library which is how i got to read it, and, one day i'm returning from work and i see it on the FOR SALE rack. Good nick (perhaps understandably, it hadn't been borrowed so often). 30p. And me, 15p short of the asking price. A man's rapid spiral into drink and drugs hell can be triggered by setbacks of this magnitude. One thing Maggots is really strong on is vomiting. I'm not sure if this has been included in the Vault pulp 101 yet, but I've come to notice that in every book I read one of the characters, whether due to revulsion, or fear, or just being punched in the stomach really hard, will at some point throw up. Maggots has wretching twice in the first chapter. 'Repeatedly'. 'Violently'. The second time is perhaps some of the most spectacular heaving I've ever seen committed to paper - "threshing convulsively to the great jets of vomit that left his body in jerking, kicking eruptions". Some of this stuff is almost Pierce Naceian. Nice idea for a thread, steve. You might like to check out David James' Croc for the 'everyone join in!' puke party that follows the discovery of a chewed and mangled corpse after a couple of days in the sewer. Another i'm sure we'd all be proud to replicate outside the Star & Garter on a Friday night is James Wingate's toilet breaker in 'Simon Ian Childers's Worm. I particularly like that Mr. Wingate has a few dry runs before producing his masterpiece. "Clutching his distended belly, he half-fell, half-staggered into his spacious bathroom. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and started to retch noisily into the bowl. He managed to bring up some brownish fluid but nothing solid - which wasn't surprising as he hadn't eaten for days."More sputtering and retching follows but no joy. Then a terrible pain bends him double and .... stand well back. "He felt something heavy start to move up out of his stomach and into his gullet. It got as far as the base of his throat and then stopped. Panic shot through him as he realised he couldn't breath .... But then a final, convulsive muscular spasm forced whatever had lodged in his oesophagus upward into his mouth. Wingate watched in disbelieving shock as some kind of translucent tube was ejected out of his mouth and into the toilet bowl. For a mad moment or two he thought he was spewing up his own intestine. More and more of tube shot up his throat and out of his mouth and then, to his profound relief, there was no more and he could breathe again.
The came another shock. He saw that it was alive. It was moving slowly around in the bowl, coiling and twisting. One end of it began to rise up out of the water and he realised it was the thing's head. A mouth consisting of three segmented teeth or lips slowly opened .. .Your "Some of this stuff is almost Pierce Nacian" kind of anticipates what i was gonna ask. So, when it comes to best-worst when animals attack, i take it Eat Them Alive just edges this one out in your estimation?
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Post by Steve on Aug 15, 2009 17:44:01 GMT
You know, the more I think about Edward Jarvis, and Maggots in particular, the more I'm starting to think that it'd be the work of a lifetime to really do this stuff justice. There must be a book in it at least. Anyway I suppose I should crack on. Your "Some of this stuff is almost Pierce Nacian" kind of anticipates what i was gonna ask. So, when it comes to best-worst when animals attack, i take it Eat Them Alive just edges this one out in your estimation? I really wouldn't want to have to choose, Dem. The Pierce Nace comparison possibly doesn't do either Eat Them Alive or Maggots justice - they're both somewhat unique. The point I was trying to get across is that they share that sense of not quite being able to believe what you've just read. Lionel Fanshawe has made something of a name for himself with his ability to substantially up the word count of his books with detailed descriptions of life on a Greek island or someone cleaning their teeth. And I wouldn't want to take anything away from him, the man's a master pulpeteer. Jarvis though is in a different league. He manages to elevate extraneous detail to an art form. It's beautiful to see him at work. Maggots largely follows the established template for these 'When Animals Eat Your Kidneys' books - the scene is set, characters are introduced and just as swiftly digested but, oh, Jarvis gives the reader so much more. Take Chapter 1 for example, in which a group of O.A.P.s are given a guided tour of some caves in the Yorkshire Dales and encounter a giant eye (of which more later). Most writers would've been happy to leave it at that but with Jarvis you get the full tour; "Now, unless there are any questions at this stage we will proceed to the Upside Down Jungle - a series of knobbed pendant formations suspended from the roof - before moving on to the Giant Toadstool Couch, clearly so called from its appearance and uncanny resemblance to that fungus, passing the Great Sword of Excalibur - a six foot long stalagmite - on the way; and then on past the Wrinkled Wet Bedspread - a broad plane of rumpled lime deposit covered by a permanent sheet of running water - until we reach the Grand Majestic Gallery. This is by far the most important single feature..." ...and on for pages and pages, Wardrobe Hall, Lake Sinister, the entire Marston Major cave system. In detail - "it takes something like five hundred years for a stalactite to grow just one inch in length; and about nine hundred years to add just one square inch of flowstone to any given surface area." Did he just sit and copy out an entire guidebook? I don't know but the sheer audacity, the flagrant disregard for conventional narrative on display here, is as stunning as it is stultifying. And just in case you were still eager for more hardcore geology, Chapter 2 introduces the character of Mr Willard, a science teacher, who's delivering a lesson to his class. On Geology. That's right, open your books at page 22 and prepare to learn, over the next half dozen or so pages, everything - and I mean everything - there is to know about the precise structure of the earth's mantle. I'll paraphrase a bit to save time but basically there are three main kinds of rock involved; igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. That's it in a nutshell but we get the entire lesson delivered by Mr Willard, complete with Joyce Grenfell type asides, "Stop picking your nose, Benson", "I hope you're taking all this in, Wilson-Boyd". Yes, Mr Jarvis. And then, then... just when you're beginning to wonder where this literary madness will end... mild mannered 'Wally the Willard' turns into Master of Kung Fu and beats the shit out of a knife-wielding class smartarse. You weren't expecting that, were you? No, neither was I. Nobody ever is. This is Jarvis. Nothing can prepare you for Jarvis. "..the lath-lean science teacher swung up a foot in a side-step kick to the armpit, caught the arm holding the knife with his other hand and flung the burly fifteen-year-old off balance, smashing a reverse punch to his face for good measure as he went down. Mr Willard smoothed his hair, shot the cuffs of his cardigan from the sleeves of his leather-elbowed tweed jacket and turned to the class. 'Karate class over for today,' he said quietly. 'And if any more of you want the same, or better, I'll oblige you any time. Everybody's welcome. Any questions?'" Nobody fucks with Mr Willard and nobody fucks with Edward Jarvis. Nobody. I'm not sure I've quite managed to adequately convey the full impact of Chapter 2 of Edward Jarvis's Maggots - the sheer grandeur of the thing - anyway, I hope you get the idea. And Jarvis doesn't just give you geology and kung fu, in Chapter 3 you get sex in a hotel, a quick tour round Riva del Garda ("the picturesque, Romanesque town of Riva del Garda in the Province of Trento within the Region Trentino-Alto-Adige, Northern Italy") and he still finds time for a woman to get devoured in the shower by a swarming mass of microscopic maggots. Actually, that's just the first part of Chapter 3. In the second part he takes in the Dolomites (a maggot flood), the charming lakeside town of Malcesine, with a quick excursion to the stunning natural beauty of the cascata at Varone (a waterfall of maggots) and throws in a crash course in Elementary Italian complete with pronunciation guide; "Bwan dzor-no. Ko-me sta?" You see with an Edward Jarvis book you don't just get maggots, you learn stuff too. Breathtaking stuff. I've only got you up to page 44 and I still have to go back and try to explain the big eye in the cave.
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Post by fullbreakfast on Aug 15, 2009 19:23:37 GMT
"..the lath-lean science teacher swung up a foot in a side-step kick to the armpit, caught the arm holding the knife with his other hand and flung the burly fifteen-year-old off balance, smashing a reverse punch to his face for good measure as he went down. Mr Willard smoothed his hair, shot the cuffs of his cardigan from the sleeves of his leather-elbowed tweed jacket and turned to the class. 'Karate class over for today,' he said quietly. 'And if any more of you want the same, or better, I'll oblige you any time. Everybody's welcome. Any questions?'" Nobody fucks with Mr Willard and nobody fucks with Edward Jarvis. Nobody. Magic. What with the long pedantic interludes in the narrative, and the yobbo above getting exactly what he deserves in such satisfying fashion, I'd give odds that Edward Jarvis had spent some professional time at the chalkface. Really enjoying this guided tour of Maggots, thanks. I hope you take us all the way through!
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Post by bushwick on Aug 16, 2009 12:42:28 GMT
I've only read 'Pestilence', and that's a pretty ridiculous book. There's a long segment where the book just becomes a travelogue for a town in Essex? Proper extraneous detail. Don't have the book to hand so can't remember the details.
(Reading 'Eat Them Alive' has been a seismic event in my life. And I lent it to my brother, who's lost the fucker, without even reading the bloody thing first!!grrrr...)
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Post by lordgorse on Sept 5, 2009 11:05:39 GMT
I admit MAGGOTS had me beat by the end of chapter seven; I just couldn't take any more. But reading this is making me think I should have another crack at it...but I ain't starting at the beginning again...
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 29, 2011 18:03:57 GMT
Query. Is the author aware that maggots are baby flies and that they eventually grow up into adult flies? Does this occur in the book? 'Cause it sounds from the descriptions I skimmed through that Jarvis is presenting them as being maggots all the time. But then, scientific accuracy was never a particularly strong point in these kinds of books. I confess to having a weak stomach and a deep-seated fear of crawly, squirmy things, so I think this book would severely terrify me. Yeah, I know, what am I doing on this board, then? Well, some types of gore I can take and others I can't. Killer maggots isn't one of them. That said, I am kind of interested in the scene of the woman getting devoured in her tub. Sounds like some prime fetish fuel for certain types of people.
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Post by erebus on Apr 8, 2011 12:52:14 GMT
I recall reading this years ago and being confused also about the eye. And after being weened on heavy doses of Richard Lewis creepy crawly books. Various G N Smiths rogues and all the other worm, ant and blowfly exploits this one really disappointed me. It sounds like the ultimate in grubby/insect vs human extravaganza's, but is sadly a huge boring letdown. A revisit is in order. But its way down the pile.
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Post by kooshmeister on Apr 11, 2011 3:12:06 GMT
So what is the deal with the eye? I haven't read this and it's been mentioned here without any explanation, and, sucker for spoilers that I am, I'd love to know.
I'd also love to know where is a good place to get this book. So far Amazon and eBay have proven utterly useless and I'm hellbent on reading it.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jun 17, 2011 13:44:42 GMT
Got my copy of this in the mail from the UK. What a lovely, gruesome cover. So far despite the promises of the cover art, it's been relatively tame, as though Jarvis figured the maggots in and of themselves were enough to be gross; he doesn't really describe the death scenes overmuch. Even the shower scene was a bit of a letdown for me. Oh, well. At least Mr. Willard the science teacher is awesome. We shall see what the future holds.
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Post by erebus on Sept 29, 2015 12:37:46 GMT
Been shying away from the old pulp stuff recently, I could be burned at the stake for even suggesting that here at the Vault. So to redeem myself I pulled a couple off the shelf that I hadn't read for a number of years. The first being Tendrils. A gut slurping, backside invading, oozy treat from SIC, or HAK if you prefer. Great start. And then Maggots. The initial member did a superb job on reviewing the book, but as you can see it would appear like the rest of us, this novel got the better of him. I too recall bailing out all those years ago. I'm currently on chapter 12 and its becoming a chore to even do a page of this, its just so boring. The characters are tiresome and dull, and the constant dialogue is just irratating as nothing happens to move the book forward. But maybe the gory vignettes will save it. No ! So for we've had a bloke walk into a front room floor covered in them, a kid falls into a gulley full of the things, a shower head spews out a torrent of parasites onto a women in her shower stall....surprise surprise the glass door gets jammed. And a French lady lets an army of grubs wriggle toward her a burrow under her nails, after she proclaims they're cute ! All this may sound gruesome, but its not told nor written in any style to grip or enthral the reader. Now I know what you're saying, "What do you want from a book called Maggots ?" Yes its far fetched twaddle, and ridiculous. But all the Spiders, Jellyfish, Caterpillars and Beetle attack books seemed to pull it off. Even the writers other Book Pestilence did okay ( although I recall that being poor ). But I'm going to try and stick this one out. Perhaps it will pick up. Needs a miracle though.
Oh and I too am still non the wiser about the giant eye either.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jul 2, 2016 0:22:52 GMT
Oh and I too am still non the wiser about the giant eye either. I very vaguely recall, these years later, that I answered my own question whilst thumbing through the book (which I no longer own) and that the eye turns out to belong to a giant maggot. Or something along those lines.
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