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Post by dem bones on Feb 19, 2012 9:08:51 GMT
Robert Shearman - Alice Through The Plastic Sheet: Here goes, more of a running commentary with gaps than a review (i can't do 'em) ... will add a SPOILER WARNING but there's probably no need. My advice - get a copy of A Book Of Horror from the library or any place and read the story (and rest of book!) for yourself.
Alan, Alice, little Bobby and Sparky the dog are content to have Eric and Barbara as their next door neighbours even if they're not really the type of folk one would wish to show off as ones friends. Even so, the parents are mildly upset when Barbara informs them Eric suffered a fatal heart-attack some weeks ago and she has decided to move away. The new neighbours come as a culture shock. They keep their house in perpetual darkness, refuse to answer the door and belt out Christmas Carols on the stereo throughout the night, regardless of whether it is actually Christmas or not. During the day their dog, never seen but heard, very heard, barks perpetually. It soon becomes too much for Eric and Barbara, and when their retaliatory blast of Voulez Vouz (Alice's choice), Comfortably Numb (Alan's) and unidentified sweary rap (Bobby's) fails to drown out Bing Crosby, Eric places his stepladder under the noisy neighbours bedroom window actively seeking violent confrontation. His first glimpse of the troublemakers is as disturbing as it is - he will later admit to himself - strangely erotic. The mum and dad are engaged in some Carry On caper while the little boy chortles soundlessly from his cot - but they are all mannequins (if we were unkind, we would say they are very similar in this respect to Alan and his family). The fact that she's a shop dummy doesn't stop Eric from fantasising about the plastic-breasted dummy he's already christened Barbara.
And then Sparky is 'poisoned.' Alice and her increasingly foul-mouthed little boy demand retaliation. Alan dutifully deposits a nasty package through the enemies' letter-box. Hostilities escalate, until ... Sparky returns from the grave, none the worse for his adventure. Alice announces she is having an affair with the Eric doll and encourages Alan to take up with 'Barbara'. Loved this very strange modern fairy tale in much the same way I love Aickman's The Hospice, and have sidelined his contributions to the most recent Best New Horror's for urgent attention.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 5, 2012 21:03:18 GMT
OK, three stories in & I already feel I've had my money's worth (OK, OK, I paid a fiver for it second-hand, but you get my point...).
Peter Crowther has really done himself proud on this one I think. I recall his "The Longest Single Note" as a particularly grim collection but I reckon "Ghosts with Teeth" tops any of the entries in that grisly volume....
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Post by dem bones on Mar 6, 2012 11:00:12 GMT
£5 = superb bargain! i just renewed A Book Of Horror from the library so should finally complete Elizabeth Hand's novella featuring 'the next Tolkein' whose career went into a terminal decline of Gary Glitter proportions and for much the same reason. Was getting well into it until i got distracted, went into usual swinging from creeper to creeper thing, back and forth between the approx. 200 anthologies i have on the go.
Ghosts With Teeth is far and away my favourite of the (admittedly few) Peter Crowther stories I've read. Still keep meaning to schedule a rematch with his superstition-themed Narrow Houses anthology which, but for a handful of notable exceptions, I absolutely DETESTED at the time. Tastes change, so who knows?
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Post by andydecker on Mar 6, 2012 18:15:20 GMT
Now this is frustrating writer. I read a few of her sf-novels and found them hard going. But I really liked her novelisation of the first Millenium episode which ranks among the best novelisations I read - in the Alan Dean Foster Star Wars Alien range - and her Frankenstein´s Bride novel for the short-lived Dark Horse book range was sure, well, interesting.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 8, 2012 14:36:50 GMT
Now more than half way through & particularly impressed by "The Music Of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer" by John Ajivide Lindqvist. Much as described by The Demonik One earlier in the thread, an evil little number, using the always reliable setting of an isolated homestead in a vast Scandinavian forest where Terrible Things once happened.
I feel it worth offering special congratulations to the translator, Marlaine Delargy, for a very fluid rendering of the original Swedish. Sometimes switching languages results in (at worst) a story in Translatorese or (at best) a mutant hybrid style where the skeleton of the original language can be seen through the skin of the new one. This one flows smoothly.
So far, a cracking compilation.
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Post by erebus on Jun 14, 2012 13:38:38 GMT
Keep picking it up in Waterstones and glancing over it. I love the cover and the tales sound captivating. Theres only one left, so I think I'm going to have to fork out and go grab it this weekend.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 14, 2012 18:19:00 GMT
Definitely worth picking up. You won't regret it.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 15, 2012 7:27:06 GMT
Definitely worth picking up. You won't regret it. seconded. very seconded. Shrinkproof, have you read John Ajivide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In? I did, last week, and got so caught up in the thing that i abandoned my note-taking and just went along with the ride. Maybe it worked to my advantage that i've seen neither of the movie adaptations and didn't have a clue what to expect, but a 500+ page novel and i wanted it to go on for longer?!!!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 15, 2012 13:23:55 GMT
Definitely worth picking up. You won't regret it. seconded. very seconded. Shrinkproof, have you read John Ajivide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In? I did, last week, and got so caught up in the thing that i abandoned my note-taking and just went along with the ride. Maybe it worked to my advantage that i've seen neither of the movie adaptations and didn't have a clue what to expect, but a 500+ page novel and i wanted it to go on for longer?!!! Agreed - I'd seen both the fillums (the Swedish one twice) before reading it, and still zipped through it - intriguing comparisons. I've another of his books somewhere, wonder if it'll be as good?
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jun 15, 2012 14:40:34 GMT
Shrinkproof, have you read John Ajivide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In? I did, last week, and got so caught up in the thing that i abandoned my note-taking and just went along with the ride. Maybe it worked to my advantage that i've seen neither of the movie adaptations and didn't have a clue what to expect, but a 500+ page novel and i wanted it to go on for longer?!!! No, haven't read the book or seen the film. The problem I've found with this place is that every time I visit I encounter something that goes on my "to be read &/or seen" list. Which is now so long that I'll need to live to be 385 years old to work my way through it...
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