Alex Hamilton - Splinters

[dem bones]

Alex Hamilton [ed.] – Splinters: Stories Of The Macabre (Arrow, 1970: originally Hutchinson, 1968)

Alex Hamilton – Introduction

Jane Gaskell – Jane
Michael Baldwin – The Ice Palace
Hugh Atkinson – The Language Of Flowers
Derwent May – Grace Note
William Trevor – Miss Smith
Anthony Burgess – An American Organ
John Brunner – The Biggest Game
Richard Nettell – The Way That Ladies Walk
Patrick Boyle – Home Again, Home Again, Jigetty-Jig
Montague Haltrecht – Indoor Life
John Burke – Don’t You Dare
J. A. Cuddon – Isabo
Peter Brent – Mewed Up
Alex Hamilton – Under The Eildon Tree

Blurb:

"I staggered to my feet. I put out a placating hand to stroke her hair; a strand clung like unspun silk to my fingertips, and the fragile scalp came with it, torn like tissue. I tried to press it back. Her forehead broke under my thumb, as if it was moulder's sand. My fingers fumbled to plug the mealy edges; an eyebrow, her cheek disintegrated on my palm ...."

Hamilton's introduction is more helpful.

... It is... the variety, of treatment as well as theme, which has pleased me .....J. A. Cuddon is a Catholic novelist and he has explored his Church’s current reaction to a case needing exorcism; John Burke transfers an ancient pagan notion of possession and supernatural justice into a modern setting; Jane Gaskell’s snake can be the symbol of any petted monstrosity which ultimately dooms a complaisant family. Michael Baldwin's story is concerned with compulsory diets and the loss to the brain of giving up dumplings. Peter Brent, who has in the past been much interested in the instability of identity, builds his story around the shifting relationship of jailer and prisoner, while Montague Haltrecht exploits the strange logic of a character tethered by his umbilical cord. William
Trevor charts the progress of a childish passion; Richard Nettell‘s passionate ghost story is childlike and wistful. Hugh Atkinson has a story of vegetable malice; John Brunner shades away from his usual science fiction into a world where the hunting of trophies is a bizarre refraction of scientific detachment. Patrick Boyle distils the bleak suspicions of old age; Derwent May makes an exuberant anecdote of Nemesis coming for a perfectionist in his prime. There is, luckily for me since I backed unwritten stories on the basis of admiration for their authors, a unity in this book. At the same time, as the first detached reader, I am entitled to say that they stand on their own. Finally, as a reward for having done the administrative work, I have indulged myself by including a story of my own. It is a pastiche of sixteenth-century witchcraft, which I have included because some people might feel witches ought to appear somewhere.

John Brunner – The Biggest Game: Royston, a conscience-free womaniser responsible for at least one suicide, is stalked by blank-faced men in black as he hones in on wealthy divorcee, Mrs. Arnheim, who has accidentally let slip that she is "wallowing in alimony." Wait 'til she invites him back to her pad!

Richard Nettell – The Way That Ladies Walk: " ... a small town Orpheus." West Brook, Wessex. Lust in the mortuary. Lonesome Ronnie betrays his childhood sweetheart - the 300 year old ghost of Lady Anna Dessiatine - with the corpse of recently drowned Millie, the playground tease from his schooldays. Not the least creepy ....

Jane Gaskell - Jane: West Kensington. Girl prone to fits returns home from two years at "special school" to find the family pet boa-constrictor has not gone unfed.

Hugh Atkinson – The Language Of Flowers: On his retirement from the bank, keen gardener Adolph Herman is gifted an orchid from grateful customer, Colonel Cleary. So obsessed is Herman with Vanda Coerulea that he neglects shrewish wife and even his beloved garden. The scheming orchid manipulates Adolph towards self-destruction then fits up his Mrs. Herman with his "murder."

Anthony Burgess - An American Organ: Narrative of a disturbed man who trades in his late mother-in-law’s ornaments for a keyboard. Recovering from the initial surprise, impossibly understanding wife suggests he give a recital while she takes a bath. The woman is a Saint. She doesn’t baulk even when he asks what Crippen played to his victims.

[dem bones]

"What a dreadful little boy that James Machen is!' Miss Smith reported to her husband. "I feel so sorry for the parents."
"Do I know him ? What does the child look like?"

"Small, dear, like a weasel wearing glasses. He gives me the creeps."

William Trevor - Miss Smith: A disturbed, eager to please schoolboy's attempts to win his teacher's affection take a turn for the alarming.

John Burke - Don't You Dare: Robert defies hateful late wife Laura to remarry swiftly as decency permits. The dead spouse is not to be disobeyed. See Mary Danby's 65 Great Tales of the Supernatural.

Derwent May – Grace Note: Man-parrot piano recital ends in tragedy.

Michael Baldwin – The Ice Palace: Following a time and motion survey, the shop floor embark on a crash diet en masse to increase productivity. The anti-obesity drive is soon abandoned, but too late to prevent four members of staff pursuing a course that culminates in an orgy and mass poisoning. Too annoying in the telling for this reader who lost interest and just wanted story to stop. Sweary and references Cilla Black.

[Shrink Proof]

"Michael Baldwin's story is concerned with compulsory diets and the loss to the brain of giving up dumplings."

That sentence alone makes this a must buy...

[Swampirella]

Jun 1, 2019 16:03:34 GMT Shrink Proof said:

"Michael Baldwin's story is concerned with compulsory diets and the loss to the brain of giving up dumplings."

That sentence alone makes this a must buy...

It's available to borrow on the Internet Archive if you're interested....

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jun 1, 2019 15:04:52 GMT dem bones said:

Derwent May – Grace Note: Man-parrot piano recital ends in tragedy.

Man-parrots! Brr!

[Shrink Proof]

Jun 1, 2019 16:06:02 GMT Swampirella said:

It's available to borrow on the Internet Archive if you're interested....

Thanks, I'll chase it up.

[helrunar]

All right, this goes too far. I've witnessed every shade of human depravity, conceivable and inconceivable, in these ancient cobwebbed halls. I've seen the dead rise from their sepulchres to reach out with dreadful, bony claws to clutch at warm living flesssshhhh. I've read tales of pert-bosomed maidens ripped to shreds by the ravening jaws of Mrs Pierce Nace's luncheon club, and I've sat through descriptions of the debauched revels of the living dead without turning a hair.

BUT... "sweary and mentions Cilla Black"? I have to draw the line somewhere, and this is it.

H.

[helrunar]

"The Language of Flowers" sounds like an apt entry for the "monster plant" thread, btw.

H.

[dem bones]

Patrick Boyle - Home Again, Home Again, Jigetty-Jig: Mahoney is set upon by his own bedclothes. The traumatic lot of those who live with an abusive alcoholic. Good story, just not "macabre" (unless I missed something).

Montague Haltrecht – Indoor Life: Manipulation. Now that Celia Landauer has landed that dream home in Hampstead Garden Suburbs, she has no intention of again setting foot in the outside world. The next step is to make prisoners of husband and infant son.

Jun 1, 2019 16:07:37 GMT Jojo Lapin X said:

Jun 1, 2019 15:04:52 GMT dem bones said:

Derwent May – Grace Note: Man-parrot piano recital ends in tragedy.

Man-parrots! Brr!

On reflection, perhaps that should read "man and parrot piano recital ...."

[dem bones]

Peter Brent – Mewed Up: Pitched somewhere between Erckmann-Chatrian's The Three Souls and C. Barker's Dread. Embittered University Lecturer waylays and imprisons celebrated poet in vague hope of absorbing his genius. A bit high falutin. Much chamber pot action.

From my pov, way better is the editor's closing novella:

Alex Hamilton – Under The Eildon Tree : Cute black comedy set in the Berkshire countryside circa 1670, chronicles the short life and mischievous capers of Sarah Powell, bastard daughter of an unlikely Lady of Court and a Spanish Ambassador. From childhood Sarah's intuitive grasp of herbal remedies has made her hugely popular with the village folk to the point where greedy physicians fear for their livelihoods. Fortunately for them, witch persecution - very big on the continent just then - hits England just as Sarah is coerced into joining a Satanic coven by Mother Harriet Fungus. Condemned as a witch, Sarah is swum, tried and duly perishes at the stake. Which, admittedly, doesn't sound particularly cheerful but ... [if you've not read it] you'll have to trust me on this one.

Story also features Master Edmondes, Exorcist to the Queen, who rids a goose of an evil spirit. This is him warming up:

"Hear therefore thou senseless false lewdspirit, thou mobled wittol, thou pervicacious and spuming moiler, thou fellifluous and metastatic mome, that compounds with curmudgeons and leavers, thou seely beast, thou deceiver of bad angels, may thy crankled liver draw till it become as an umbel, thou immiscible and string-shanked gargoyle, thou morrising mohock, return with thou compotators to play at Hot Cockles in Hades for know, thy beast of all beasts, that thy foxship is limed ...."

[helrunar]

Kevin, that final quote tipped me over the edge. I found a copy of this book at a very cheap price from an online vendor, and I have ordered it. 

Thank you for your clever, witty, spicy notes about all these gems. Your posts are always a highlight of my week.

Cheers, Steve

[dem bones]

Bless you, Steve. Here's a proper review:

The bulk of the authors represented in SPLINTERS: A NEW ANTHOLOGY OF MACABRE MODERN FICTION (Walker & Company, $5.95) certainly seem to have it in for the ladies. Offhand I cannot think of any other collection wherein the fair sex is so enthusiastically chastised and maltreated. There’s hardly a full-grown woman in the book who escapes punishment, and most of them are clearly shown to be the sort who’ve earned their drubbing well. The book starts out with a story concerning a female which is literally a snake, goes on to a mass murderess, trips from there to a deadly rivalry between a nagging wife and a lady orchid (the author sort of passes over the fact that every lady orchid is also a gentleman orchid), and concerns itself elsewhere with a vicious dead wife who destroys her husband's second marriage, a vicious living wife who destroys her family by sealing them off from the world, a cruel teacher who bullies the wrong ugly little boy, and an unfortunate woman who is possessed by an extremely nasty demon. Even when the girls are trying to behave, and I think that last one was trying to behave, they get it from the fellows, you bet. Heads bashed in, burnt for witches, shamefully treated by gigolos, and one poor creature is even violated on her slab in the morgue. Of course there are some stories not concerned with killing or being killed by females (three), but two of these have subtle implications, if you’re disposed to look for them, and after the rest of the collection, you’re disposed to look for them. I have not mentioned until now that the book contains some really excellent stories, nor that I think anyone interested in the macabre would enjoy reading it, and I do so now. I highly recommend it. But they really ought to bring out a sequel where the lads get it in the neck.

Gahan Wilson, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1970

[helrunar]

That's a great review, Kev. Misogyny in horror: could it be a theme? Why, could it be a topic that has given birth to enough academic theses to stuff a few bays of shelving down in the stacks? Could it indeed. That's an awful lot of ... theses.

cheers, Steve

[helrunar]

(Tired old joke shamelessly swiped from that marvelous 1966 Avengers story, "A sense of history.")

H.

[dem bones]

Jul 2, 2019 13:41:40 GMT helrunar said:

That's a great review, Kev. Misogyny in horror: could it be a theme? Why, could it be a topic that has given birth to enough academic theses to stuff a few bays of shelving down in the stacks? Could it indeed. That's an awful lot of ... theses.

I can't say offhand if its "an anthology where the lads get it in the neck", but Alex Hamilton's previous anthology was The Cold Embrace: Stories of the Macabre (Corgi, 1966), which, far as I'm aware, was among the first supernatural anthologies to feature an all-female line up.