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Post by jkdunham on Apr 2, 2008 17:31:19 GMT
Picked up a Pan edition of James Herbert's The Secret Of Crickley Hall recently and, even given that it's a 600 plus page novel, the actual book is twice the size it needs to be. By coincidence I started reading this the other day. Not having read a book all the way through for ages, this may have been a bit ambitious at, as dem mentions, some 600 pages but I've been meaning to have a go at it for a while and must say that I'm fair flying through it. Still, in my mind, 'the new James Herbert', even though it came out in 2006, it's Herbert's latest attempt to do something new with the traditional ghost story. The story itself doesn't seem to have that much to it on the face of it, and initially I found myself wondering how he was going to spin it out over the length of the book. Now I'm well into it (just under halfway through) and the more I read, the more involved I'm becoming with the characters to the point where I don't really mind where he's going with it. I'm just enjoying reading about everything, or anything, that happens. The ghostly part is really pretty much what you might expect. It's all in here; an old, dark house... pale, fleeting shadows... rattling doors and bumps in the night... sudden powercuts... faces at attic windows... a sinister cellar... a dark figure... mysterious wet patches... unexplained footsteps... children's voices... whimpering pets... I presume they're all included deliberately. He even has a knowing scene in the local pub where one of the main characters, the father of the family who have rented the long vacant Crickley Hall, expects the landlord to go into a "so you're the folks who've moved into the old hall, there's been some strange goings on up there..." routine. It's the portrayal of the family at the centre of the story, the children as much as the grown-ups, which I've found so believable and so involving. It seems like Herbert has put a lot of himself - as a husband, as a father, as a Catholic - into this book. I'd go so far as to say that it's really a book about family, about having and keeping faith, and coping with loss and life in general. The ghostly happenings work because of the characters' reactions to them rather than the events themselves. The haunted hall acts as more of a catalyst than anything. Despite, or more likely because of, a considerable amount of detail describing the life of the family, the book moves along quite nicely and stays readable. It's certainly turned out to be a much easier read than I thought it might be. Herbert keeps the writing reasonably uncluttered, give or take a few ungainly sentences here and there (much like some of the ones in this post), and doesn't overcomplicate things. I imagine he sees this as a fairly 'serious' book though, and he examines some weighty stuff along the way while managing to keep the shadow of Crickley Hall looming ominously in the background. As someone who keeps a copy of The Rats by his bed at all times, and who has struggled a bit with some of Herbert's later experiments, 'the new one' has certainly got my attention as well as making me want to have another go at some of his more recent work. By the way, I wasn't sure where to post this. The Rats and Lair have threads in the Nasty NELs but surely the man deserves one of his own, if not a sub-board to himself. After all where would we, and British horror, be without James Herbert?
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Post by dem bones on Apr 2, 2008 19:24:40 GMT
By the way, I wasn't sure where to post this. The Rats and Lair have threads in the Nasty NELs but surely the man deserves one of his own, if not a sub-board to himself. After all where would we, and British horror, be without James Herbert? Thanks muchly for the review, WD - there's far more likelihood of me attempting it now. The only reason why he's not had a sub-section to himself yet is because, for all the JH fans on here, he's not received that many reviews - same with the popular Graham Masterton. I've given Ramsey Campbell, GNS and RCH sub-boards not necessarily because they're more "favourite" than other authors (RCH probably isn't!), but more as a convenience thing. By rights, Basil Copper, who's work has also inspired a number of separate threads, should have one too. I need to give this whole 'sub-boards' issue more thought ....
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Post by carolinec on Apr 2, 2008 19:26:38 GMT
Nice to see this review, Steve. I was wondering whether to try this novel myself. I've read "The Ghosts of Sleath" - which also has a ghostly theme as you might expect - and thoroughly enjoyed that one. Other Herbert novels I've read and enjoyed are "The Others" and "The Fog". Might give this one a try now too ... ;D
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Post by jkdunham on Apr 3, 2008 15:09:08 GMT
Thanks for adding the cover, dem, and for the encouragement, Caroline. I'll try and keep updating this as I go, as and when anything occurs to me which seems worthy of note.
To summarise so far; no shortage of ghostly goings on but nothing terribly original storywise (creepy old house, bad things happened there, family move in who 'aren't from round here', bump bump, drip drip, shudder shudder, etc.). To be honest, this isn't the most suspenseful and terrifying novel of the supernatural that you're ever going to read. How well you get on with it will depend heavily on how involved you become with the family, and how much you care about what has happened to them and what will happen to them. As I say, I did find myself becoming involved, largely because I felt Herbert was being sincere in writing this. It's not the most elegant prose - Herbert is basically a 'pulp' writer, no more no less, but I don't feel that he's just hacking this one out by any means. I think there's a particular reason with Crickley Hall why he goes to so much trouble to provide detailed background for each character. Characters who, unlike some of his earlier work, are going to survive for more than one chapter.
This detailed approach doesn't always work admittedly. There are times when he really labours the point and repeats himself unnecessarily, and this does tend to slow things down. Around the halfway mark, as he starts to introduce new characters and there's no real sign of the plot developing in any major way, the book seems to lose its way a bit. Can he really keep this up for another couple of hundred pages?
However, once more of the titular secrets of the hall are revealed things soon pick up again. Things also get a lot darker and nastier. During the first half of the book you're not going to have a great deal of trouble sleeping with the light off, and I've still not really found myself looking over my shoulder or checking behind the curtains much, but we are firmly back in horror territory. The main embodiment of evil in Crickley Hall, Augustus Cribben, may seem a faintly ridiculous figure, doing his haunting stark-bollock naked, wielding a cane and reeking of carbolic soap... but as we, literally, start to see more of him, he becomes an effectively sinister presence with his signature swish-thwack!. A lot of his evil clout comes from the fact that he doesn't just embody some nebulous kind of wicked dreadfulness, he also embodies religious bigotry, anti-semitism, child abuse and other all too real evils. There's a memorable sequence involving two local bullies who break into the mysteriously flooded hall in order to exact a spot of revenge involving a dead rat, and get more than their comeuppance when they encounter a bare-arsed, cane-swishing Cribben and 'something' lurking in the cellar. Even the less elaborate ghostly happenings, such as an incident involving the youngest daughter and a swing, seem to take on more of an edge.
Certainly appears to be back on track now, and if Herbert can keep it up and come up with a reasonably satisfying conclusion, I'd say this one is well worth a read.
(And Swish-thwack! must be a contender to become the new Click-click-clickety-click...)
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Post by eddempster on Apr 14, 2008 22:51:02 GMT
I read this book last year, and I started out liking it - the easy to read style, the plodding pace, the atmosphere being created, but by the time I reached the end of the book I felt exasperated by it.
Utterly predictable. The mother of all info dumps at the end, with the recap of (edit) somebody's life and the 'surprise', which wasn't a surprise at all. I was left feeling cheated. 600 pages was about 300 too long, IMO.
Some good moments, but a hell of a lot of padding, I thought. So irked was I at the end that I was moved to write a full review and post it on Amazon - something I have never done before, or since.
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Post by jkdunham on Apr 15, 2008 0:08:07 GMT
I know what you mean. Shortly after that last post, I took a break from Crickley Hall and its secrets and haven't been back since. I will finish it at some point but it was all starting to get to me a bit. With the end in sight, I'd assumed that there'd be a few more surprises in store to keep me going, but such surprises as there were... well, they didn't really come as that much of a surprise to be honest. I actually started feeling quite depressed by the whole thing. Mind you, it doesn't take much to set me off. It's still to Herbert's credit that I kept going as long as I did. Me reading several hundred pages of anything just at the moment is an achievement in itself. I might change my mind once I've completed it but, for now, I'd say that if you're a fan of James Herbert, you should read this to see what he's up to these days. It's not a complete waste of time by any means and it does have its moments. Don't be surprised if you find yourself struggling a bit with it at times though - it can be a page skipper as well as a page turner. And some of the child abuse got quite wearing I found - I don't expect a ghost story to have a particularly high feel-good quotient but have horror stories always been so bloody miserable? I can't remember...
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Post by eddempster on Apr 15, 2008 8:38:45 GMT
I get the impression this is a trunk story, TBH. One that Herbert might have written in the 1980s and has been persuaded to revive. If he's written this one recently, then his writing hasn't progressed in twenty years. This is a 80s style novel, IMO, and things have moved on since then.
I've talked with people online who really enjoyed this book. I liked parts of it, but on the whole I think there were too few enjoyable moments for the word count. It was over written in every sense of the word, IMO.
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Post by erebus on Feb 24, 2009 18:53:14 GMT
Superb book. It is a lenghty read with plenty of padding. And he tends to go over the same things again but the book is damn right creepy. Herbert does ghost story wonderfully and I believe its his strength. He also gives us a quaint old English feel which sadly we are loosing in books nowadays. I mean they have an old style 70s 80s feel to them too.
The subject matter of this is also disturbing too. Shame Herbert is not prolific now as we need more from him. The fella writes a great novel.
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Post by doomovertheworld on Feb 27, 2013 19:37:41 GMT
I finished this book yesterday evening. what we have here is a fairly bog-standard haunted house story. the heart of the story, is as other posters have noted, the family and the tragedy that has befallen them rather than the haunting. However, I will give Herbert kudos for managing to make a story, which has as it's ghost a naked self-flagellating man, fairly ho-hum. It is also far too long. If I was going to pick a James Herbert ghost story to go for I would recommend Haunted instead
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Post by ripper on Feb 28, 2013 17:45:16 GMT
I thought The Secret of Crickley Hall was an okay read, but was a tad overlong. I did wonder when I read it if originally it had been even longer. Herbert seemed to be setting something up with regard to the school bus driver but it didn't lead anywhere, so it made me wonder if Herbert had carried out some pruning and removed a sub-plot concerning the driver. I have also read Haunted and Ghosts of Sleath and Haunted especially is a much tighter read.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 28, 2013 19:14:32 GMT
Haunted is very under-rated, though not, it seems, by our readers, who know a good Herbert when they read one. He always was better when he kept it lean. The Pan edition of The Secret Of Crickley Hall is such a paving slab of a beast, it exhausts me just looking at it.
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Post by doomovertheworld on Mar 1, 2013 8:34:31 GMT
I agree that James Herbert is at his when he keeps it lean. If you read his early stuff in comparison with either The Secret of Crickley Hall or Ash it is like comparing chalk and cheese. Less, for him, is certainly more. It is definitely no threat to my favourite books, The Spear, Fluke & Haunted, by him
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Post by antosang11 on May 14, 2013 2:15:12 GMT
Thanks muchly for the review and for the encouragement,I'll try and keep updating this as I go art-tech
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