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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 24, 2015 12:30:11 GMT
I started reading No-one Gets Out Alive. I got about 10 pages in before I had to quit. It was that or topping myself. Does it get any cheerier? No, quite the opposite. I've read all his novels and I think it's safe to say that he doesn't really do cheery (and this is probably the least cheery so far).
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Post by dem bones on Jan 24, 2015 13:43:09 GMT
I started reading No-one Gets Out Alive. I got about 10 pages in before I had to quit. It was that or topping myself. Does it get any cheerier? No, quite the opposite. I've read all his novels and I think it's safe to say that he doesn't really do cheery (and this is probably the least cheery so far). Don't tell me any more or it will knock Naomi's Room back into second place!
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 24, 2015 15:24:47 GMT
No, quite the opposite. I've read all his novels and I think it's safe to say that he doesn't really do cheery (and this is probably the least cheery so far). Don't tell me any more or it will knock Naomi's Room back into second place! Well, I wouldn't want that to happen - but if you are ever in the mood for something that I can best describe as "brutal urban folk-horror", then I'd give it a go. I'm not sure if I can say I enjoyed it exactly, but it made it on to my best of the year list all the same.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 26, 2015 22:14:50 GMT
I'm not sure if I can say I enjoyed it exactly, but it made it on to my best of the year list all the same. I have the same thing with the Horror Uncut! collection. While far from bereft of humour, even some of the black comedies made me depressed, while Thana's No History Of Violence is quite the angriest short I've read in many a moon. "Like" doesn't really come into it, but I still rate Horror Uncut! the "best" new anthology I read last year.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 5, 2015 10:10:25 GMT
The first paperback edition (HarperCollins, 1992) So I finally made a start on Naomi's Room last night and 64 pages later, am suitably impressed. Below is latest of my patented boring plot summaries (thus far). Read at own risk. Dr. Charles Hillenbrand, reflects on events of twenty years ago when he was a young man of thirty, happily married, a doting father, and destined for distinguished career in academia. Until .....December 24th, 1970. Hillenbrand travels to London on a Christmas shopping expedition with four year old daughter Naomi, destination Hamleys toy store in Regents Street. Charles only turns his back for a minute but that's all it takes for his little girl to be spirited away. Frantic, he informs first the store's security staff, then the police. "Don't worry Sir. She'll turn up. They always do!" He and distraught wife Laura, 26, hope and pray that such is the case. Naomi's corpse is discovered in a Spitalfields back alley on Christmas Day. Her face has been destroyed and hands severed. Whoever was responsible for this Ripperesque atrocity made sure she died slowly. "One or two of the more sensational dailies made wild speculations as to the motives of the killer or killers. There were the inevitable comparisons with the activities of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. One paper suggested a ring of Satanists.
Curiously enough, that suggestion sounds less bizarre nowadays, when even responsible newspapers, led by a bevy of psychologists and sociologists, tell us that child abuse through satanic cults is not merely recorded, but is endemic in our society. And perhaps they are right. Perhaps that is what he really was."Detective Superintendent Ruthven leads the investigation. Having lost his own daughter to a drugs overdose two years earlier, he at least has some understanding of what the Hillenbrand's are going through. The Daily Mirror's Dafydd Lewis is one among a legion paparazzi who stake out the Hillenbrand's Cambridge home hoping to land an exclusive snap of the grieving couple, but what he captures to film is more dramatic still. Several images feature a mystery woman and two children in Victorian dress. But the money shot is that of Charles and Laura in the garden, and stood between them, Naomi dressed in the yellow coat and red scarf she wore on the day of her abduction. Lewis arranges a meeting with Charles and shows him the set. Its clear he's terrified. Charles recalls that, shortly before their fatal excursion to London, Naomi spoke matter of factly of two girls, Caroline and Victoria, who also lived in their house. At the time he dismissed them as a figment of her keen imagination. The little girl's missing coat and scarf are retrieved from the crypts of St. Botolphs in Aldgate. Footsteps in the attic, a piercing scream from above and a disturbance in Naomi's room. Somebody has unwrapped her Christmas presents. Charles suspects his wife of playing stupid games. But even before the Mirror man gets in touch again he knows that is not the case. Lewis admits to breaking his word and surreptitiously snapping further photographs on his recent visit. They are no less disturbing than the first. And he has sobering news. Detective Superintendent Ruthven has been murdered. His body was found by the boiler in the crypt of St. Botolphs which, apparently, even the most desperate of vagrants avoids. His throat was slit. To be continued ....
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 5, 2015 10:54:20 GMT
I am looking forward to hearing what you think, Dem. But for now I am just going to try to understand the thinking behind that cover, which seems to have precious little to do with anything I can remember from the book!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 5, 2015 17:49:13 GMT
Well, there was a woman in the book. Several, actually. And eyes.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 5, 2015 23:13:57 GMT
I am looking forward to hearing what you think, Dem. But for now I am just going to try to understand the thinking behind that cover, which seems to have precious little to do with anything I can remember from the book! Up to p. 106 now (of 173) and must say I'm very impressed. Naomi's Room is not a novel I'd recommend to parents of young children as a light read though, unless I hated them. Disquieting from the off, it gets nastier with each revelation. The opening chapter had me a little worried that I'd find it all a grind but, his academic credentials once established, Dr. Hillenbrand eases up on the literary and Musica Antiqua allusions and gets with the pop culture; "I suppose she was still a child in 1970, perhaps Naomi's age. Christmas to her means horrid lights in the High Street and songs by Slade and Cliff Richards and inane game shows on the television." Its been a slick if uneasy read since. I certainly wasn't expecting Spitalfields and environs to feature. Anyway, Lewis and the Hillenbrand's have now broken through to the concealed room in the attic, and, although they've lived to tell the tale, Charles hints that soon they'll wish they hadn't. He's currently researching the life of Dr. John Augustus Liddley, the nineteenth century medic who built the house, and who, along with his wife and children, has a fondness for the posthumous photo opportunity ...
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Post by dem bones on Feb 6, 2015 18:21:25 GMT
Finished the book this afternoon, and not to put too fine a point on it, loved everything about it. Rather than attempt a synopsis, a few random thoughts from a dull brain. The numerous set-pieces are superb. Horrific as they are, I'm not sure its the episode in the attic involving Mrs Hillenbrand, her sister-in-law Carol, and little niece Rebecca, or its Poe-esque sequel some days later will stay me so much as the phantom photographs - I got very powerful The Omen vibes from them which says much for Aycliffe's descriptive powers. Another thing I find truly commendable is that Naomi's Room gets its business done in under 170 pages. Nowadays the author would likely be pressurised by his publisher to go away and ruin it with an additional twenty chapters of padding. If there was one sequence didn't quite ring true (with this reader), it was Dr. Hillenbrand's overnight conversion to Liddley's cause on reading his damning diary. It seemed implausible that Charles would suddenly become entirely sympathetic to a death cheating torture-murderer who has caused him so much pain, but here he is painting Liddley as the victim. Then again, Charles has been acting irrationally for some time and, after all he's been through, can't say I blame him. Ha, that old Vault synchronicity strikes again. As I remember it, Naomi's Room is a damn fine ghost story. I seem to have clearer memories of The Matrix though, partly because it is largely set in Edinburgh and partly because it's about nasty black magicians - always a winner with me. More weird synchronisity. Returned home earlier from Brick Lane via Fashion Street. Continued with the novel to learn that the very same Fashion Street was where one of the corpses was discovered (minus the intestines: they were found in a neighbouring alley). Guess I should be glad this flat has no attic. Will be looking to nab a copy of The Matrix now.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 6, 2015 19:44:05 GMT
But for now I am just going to try to understand the thinking behind that cover, which seems to have precious little to do with anything I can remember from the book! Well, there was a woman in the book. Several, actually. And eyes. Regarding the cover illustration (HarperCollins 1992: the first paperback edition), I think it depicts Anna Sarfatti, governess to little Caroline and Victoria. When Mrs. Liddley learns that Miss Sarfatti is pregnant by her husband, she throws her out onto the street, the catalyst for Dr. John Liddley's descent into - depending on your perspective - madness/ sanity/ enlightenment. Roger Judd's artwork for Mary-Rose Hayes' criminally under-rated black magic novel is far more suited to Naomi's Room than it ever was The Neighbours
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Post by dem bones on Feb 9, 2015 18:32:31 GMT
Reviewing Naomi's Room in Ghosts & Scholars 14 (Haunted Library, 1992), Jan Arter is positively scathing, especially of Jonathan Aycliffe himself on the grounds of his "evident hostility towards women (for which I ought perhaps to have been prepared in view of the fact that his field is Islamic Studies." Having cited several examples of the authors "misogyny" at work in the story, our critic concludes her piece with a no nonsense "I shall arise now and go and throw the book into the dustbin."
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 10, 2015 11:21:28 GMT
Jan Arter is positively scathing, especially of Jonathan Aycliffe himself, on the grounds of his "evident hostility towards women (for which I ought perhaps to have been prepared in view of the fact that his field is Islamic Studies)." That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 25, 2015 12:24:28 GMT
I have now read THE MATRIX. It was ok, though no NAOMI'S ROOM. It actually gave me a mild frisson at one point, when the protagonist looks at an old photograph of himself and his wife. It could have been a draft in the room, though. Overall, it is like something by a less cheerful Dennis Wheatley. Oddly, what appears to be a brief attempt to invoke "Casting the Runes" in the middle of the story is immediately abandoned.
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 25, 2015 16:41:26 GMT
I have now read THE MATRIX. It was ok, though no NAOMI'S ROOM. It actually gave me a mild frisson at one point, when the protagonist looks at an old photograph of himself and his wife. It could have been a draft in the room, though. Overall, it is like something by a less cheerful Dennis Wheatley. Oddly, what appears to be a brief attempt to invoke "Casting the Runes" in the middle of the story is immediately abandoned. Agreed. Unfortunately the returns diminish ever faster with his other books. Odd things appearing in photographs seem to be one of his recurring themes (he used that one again in "The Silence of Ghosts").
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 29, 2015 11:41:48 GMT
Under the pseudonym "Daniel Easterman," "Aycliffe" has also written a number of ostensible adventure/suspense novels. BROTHERHOOD OF THE TOMB (1989) concerns a former CIA agent who fights a splinter group of Catholic priests interested in child sacrifice. The intended genre notwithstanding, this is just as bleak and nasty as his horror novels. It is no NAOMI'S ROOM, but if you can stand the author's ultra-gloomy world-view, it is better than something like THE MATRIX. I particularly liked the last few sentences of the book, in which the author makes clear to you, if you had expected a happy ending, that you can never really win in this life.
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