Ramsey Campbell - Obsession

[sean]

A little gem, this one - often overlooked. Some readers have said they find the writing a bit sketchy here, but peronally I'd say that there are simply not many wasted words.

The books working title was 'For the Rest of their Lives', which seems more apt really.

Early edition (?):


Tor edition (1986):


Futura edition (1998):


BLURB (from the Futura edition):

THEY HAD UNLEASHED A DEMONIC POWER BEYOND THEIR CONTROL...

Four kids burn with adolescent frustration in a dead-end seaside town. In a bid to change their mundane lives, they form a secret, unearthly pact, each one calling on the powers of a dark supernatural force with a wish to be fufilled. But what begins as an innocent game soon becomes a chilling nightmare. Their desires are granted, but for a horrifying price...

"The kind of novel that would be up for literary prizes if anyone bothered to look beyond the genre labels"
- City Limits

"An ingenious, beautifully crafted tale... Campbell writes of our deepest fears in a precise, clear prose that manages to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time"
- Washington Post

"The undisputed master of the psychological horror novel"
- Robert Holdstock

"One of the world's finest exponents of the classic British ghost story"
- Daily Telegraph

"Campbell does more than jar the nerves and chill the spine: he assails one's very grip on reality"
- Publishers Weekly


I have to say that is one hell of a crappy, misleading blurb - although not as bad as the one mentioned in the afterword which promised "...such horror, such terror... death, violence and bloody vengeance" !!! All very fine and good things, but not really apt in this case.

The novel starts in the mid-1950s, when four teenagers find themselves dealing with the things that life throws at them in their own ways. One of them has a grandmother staying with his family after a violent attempted robbery - and she is driving everyone apart. Another has a teacher that picks on him, a third is concerned that her mother is being hassled by a man at work in the local museum, and the fourth is more than a little worried about his fathers gambling problems.

One day Peter (with the grandmother difficulties) receives a mysterious letter, four sheets of paper containing the words "What I most need is..." followed by a blank space. In desperation, he persuades his friends to each fill in one each (which they do, mainly disbelieving, trteating it all as a bit of a joke) but the wind claims the completed forms before they can be returned.

Peter's grandmother dies in a fall (caused by Peter himself?), the man with the gambling problem wins the pools, the bullying teacher suffers a stroke, and a man working at the museum is hit by a car.

The best part of a quarter of a century passes, and all the children are now in their late 30s. Peter becomes obsessed with the business of the letters and thinks he is being haunted by his grandmothers ghost. Then each of them are beset by an array of problems which Peter feels to be related to their pasts, although he soon finds that he will have to take drastic measures to get them to co-operate with him.

The spendid thing about this novel is that it works as if there is no supernatural element involved at all. The various mishaps and disatsers that befall the main characters could pretty much happen to anyone. Peter (who suffers most and reacts worse than any of the others) can be seen as a man gradually falling apart due to the long buried guilt of causing his grndmothers death, and before long he has killed again. Jimmy loses his wife in a tragic accident, Robin's now senile mother is destroying her doctoring practice with her bizzare behaviour and accusations, and Steve's marriage and business are both disintergrating. Like the earlier childhood events, the intervention of the supernatural is by no means certain.

This is a splendid thriller, which will have you cringing as well as expecting the worst. In some ways, it is the precursor of later books such as 'The Count of Eleven' (the letter that starts it all), 'The Long Lost' (which also has a rather ambiguous supernatural presence) and 'Silent Children' (with its kidnapping storyline).

Definitely pick up a copy if you see it anywhere!

[dem bones]

Thanks for the review, Sean. I found this a lot easier to get along with than The Doll Who Ate His Mother which was the only other RC novel I'd read when I tried Obsession. Normally, I'm not one for stories where the seemingly 'supernatural' elements are explained away, but I thought this was excellent, mainly because Campbell approaches it from a different angle: there's absolutely nothing uncanny in what happens, it's Peter (I think: been a long time since I read it) unintentionally infecting the others with his own overbearing sense of guilt.

I'm sure I'll re-read this again one day - back to back with Raymond Giles' Night Of The Vampire!

[mickc]

Granada 1985

[Craig Herbertson]

I thought the basic premise was good and the novel was well constructed with goodish characterisation. The end was good.

The thing that utterly defeated me was a kind of loose prose at times. This with a taken for granted setting and description of characters. At times I didn't know who was who or where they actually were. I can't count the times I was thinking what does this sentence mean? And I just wanted a little of this very basic pulp technique of telling the reader in easy terms what was happening. It really put me off what was otherwise a nice wee book.

Of course, I'm getting on a it and can't remember things easily...

[carolinec]

Jan 30, 2009 13:30:07 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

The thing that utterly defeated me was a king of loose prose at times. This with a taken for granted setting and description of characters. At times I didn't know who was who or where they actually were. I can't count the times I was thinking what does this sentence mean? And I just wanted a little of this very basic pulp technique of telling the reader in easy terms what was happening.

I must admit, I sometimes have that difficulty with some of Ramsey's short stories (I read more of his shorts than his novels, and I haven't read Obsession at all). Sometimes, I do find myself wondering who said what, when and why, and I've definitely found myself having to re-read some sentences to make sense of them or revisit where the story is. It doesn't happen in all his stories - only very few in my reckoning - but it certainly does happen in some.

[PeterC]

What a relief - I used to think I was the only one who had this problem with RC's prose.
Yea, now it can be told - I also find myself re-reading passages in his stories (I've only tried a couple of his novels and never made it beyond a few pages).
RC's characters can be stereotypical (all those sarcastic teachers and religious maniacs) and he often trips over own his feet when writing dialogue.

He's still terrific, though.

[carolinec]

Jan 30, 2009 17:03:39 GMT PeterC said:

I also find myself re-reading passages in his stories (I've only tried a couple of his novels and never made it beyond a few pages).

It's strange how he does this sometimes but not others. When I read his novella, Needing Ghosts, I was so hooked I couldn't put it down. Now that's quite a complex story as the main character goes from one strange situation to another, with increasing weirdness as the story unfolds. But it held my attention perfectly and, although it was very strange, I didn't have trouble following it at all.

And with Ancient Images, again I could follow this well and got really hooked into the story. The Grin of the Dark also, though that gets pretty strange in places!

But I tried The Darkest Part of the Woods and just couldn't finish it - there didn't really seem to be much of a story to it, and half the time I was confused as to what was going on. I mentioned to someone that I'd got about two-thirds through it and was "waiting for something more interesting to happen", but he said it didn't - although he thought the book was brilliant!

I think RC affects different people in different ways, at different times in his career.

Re his short stories too, some are dead easy to get into and really grab you, and others leave you thinking "eh?". "Voice of the Beach" is one I never could understand - mind you, I think that's probably because I obviously wasn't smoking the same kind of substances as he was when he wrote it!

But I'm glad you said he's still terrific - he certainly is! ;D

[dem bones]

I wouldn't have got into him at all if it hadn't been for Michel Parry's Mayflower Black Magic books. Up until then, I'd really struggled with him so badly that whenever I bought an anthology, I'd routinely skip the Ramsey Campbell contribution. Dolls, The Seductress and Liliths all clicked (they'd later turn up in Scared Stiff: still my favourite Campbell collection, although i understand i'm in a minority of one) and have generally got on famously with his work since then. Not too keen on the stories in Cold Print bar the horribly hilarious title story, but that's most likely 'cause i ain't big on the Cthulhu Mythos.

The similarity may be slightly superficial, but Obsession puts me in mind of another youngsters-live-to-regret-a-past-misdeed, Raymond Giles' masterly black magic chiller, Night Of The Vampire (Nel, 1970)

[carolinec]

Jan 30, 2009 20:27:13 GMT dem bones said:

Not too keen on the stories in Cold Print bar the horribly hilarious title story, but that's most likely 'cause i ain't big on the Cthulhu Mythos.

Ah, yes, I find his earlier, Lovecraftian stories the most difficult to get into. Funnily enough, "The Darkest Part of the Woods" does hark back to that kind of period in his writing, even though it's a more recent novel, so that could be why I struggled with it and never managed to finish it.

[andydecker]

I bought some of his novels and collections, but I never could get into him. I didn´t get a lot of his short storys plotwise. Maybe it is a sublety I don´t understand.

I applaud every writer who is in the game that long, still, he always seemed for me a more of a writer´s writer.

[andydecker]

The German edition by publisher Droemer Knaur, 1987. Droemer Knaur published horror for about ten years and had quite a good selection. They did Campbell and a lot of Barker, McCammon and a few one novel only from writers like Steven Laws, Steve Harris or Jorge Saralegui.