To mark Armistice Week Vulpes Libris is running a series of five features and reviews linked by the common theme of  ‘war’ – followed on Saturday by a little light relief from the final frontier  …

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Opening the week on Monday, Jackie contemplates love and loss in wartime France in Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks.

On Tuesday, we have Blackadder Goes Forth: Michael survives the Great War, 1914-1917. Wait … bugger!

On Wednesday and Thursday we are running a two-part interview with popular Vulpes guest Renate Benedict, who tells us about her remarkable parents and what happened to her and her family in Nazi Germany before, during and after Kristallnacht, November 1938.

Then, on Friday, in the last of our Armistice-themed pieces, Lisa loses herself in Libby Cone’s haunting War on the Margins.

Kirsty changes the mood completely on Saturday when she boldly goes ahead and tells us why she loves the original cast Star Trek films – and why Spock is one of the great fictional creations.

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(The striking image of Canada Bereft, from the Canadian National Vimy Memorial is courtesy of itmpa on Flickr, and reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.)

I must say straight up that Bristlecone Pine Press who kindly sent me the eBook version of Hidden Conflict for review also publish two of my own books in e-format so you must judge my prejudices as best you may. I shall endeavour to be impartial. I’m also pleased to report that I read this book on my wonderful brand new Sony eReader, which I love to bits and (unlike my previous eReader from another company which shall remain nameless) is so far working like a dream, hurrah. The book is also available from Cheyenne Publishing as a paperback, however, so those of us of a more delicate persuasion do not need to panic.

Anyway, Hidden Conflict consists of four GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender) historical fiction novellas, where all four of the main characters are homosexual men. I’m not a huge fan of historical GLBT fiction, though I do acknowledge that there are one or two writers who do it extremely well; on the whole I prefer my heroes to be a little more contemporary. But I am a big fan of GLBT writing, so I was delighted to be asked to review this collection.

The first story, “Blessed Isle”, is by Alex Beecroft, a fact that gave me great pleasure when I saw her name as, frankly, I think that these days Beecroft can do no wrong. She’s in the top grade of those one or two good historical GLBT writers I mentioned above. Indeed I’ve already reviewed her latest novel, False Colors, on this site. Very favourably too.

“Blessed Isle” is set in the 1790s and purports to be the long-lost diary of Captain Harry Thompson who wrote his diary entries at night whilst, in the morning, his lover and former lieutenant, Garnet Littleton, would add his thoughts and commentary. Through this dialogue, we hear the story of the ill-fated voyage of the HMS Banshee, its mutiny, the escape of the two men, and ultimately, how they overcame all odds to build a life together in Rio de Janeiro. It’s an interesting premise that we already know the ending before we begin but, hey who cares, as what a fabulous beginning it is:

I look on the man sprawled face down among tangled bedclothes. The night air is sticky, almost as hot as the day. I’m sat here at the desk, sleepless from the heat, as I will be until dawn brings a breeze from the sea, the scent of tar and ships, and a faint cool. I’ll sleep then. For now, I’ll light a candle, take out this journal and write. And look at him.

It’s a typical Beecroft beginning as we’re right there, placed well and truly in the setting, with the two main characters strongly introduced, and we know exactly what’s going on. There’s something about the way Beecroft writes that draws you instantly into the centre of the frame and is at the same time very seductive. Neither does it let you go. Naturally, Beecroft’s descriptions of life at sea, the battles and the mutiny are all magnificent; with her, that really goes without saying. But I was equally impressed with the way she takes the traditional diary format and makes it into something lively and strangely interactive; the two men use it as a way of reassessing their past and how they came to be where they are now. It’s also a sharp method of contrasting their very distinctive voices – Harry being the conservative and cautious figure; and Garnet being more impulsive and recklessly courageous. After all, who else but Garnet would confront the sea-captain, Edwards, who discovers the two men in a compromising position (sodomy being a hanging offence at the time, of course) in this way (told from Harry’s viewpoint):

“We thought you might like to watch, sir,” he said.
Edwards’ disapproval flickered for a moment. Something intense went through it, fast as lightning. It looked to me a lot like panic.

Fabulous – Garnet assumes he’s going to die now anyway, so what the hell, and just cocks (as it were) that wonderful snook to it all. Great stuff. The diary format is even used as a way of revealing facts to each other that they hadn’t, for a variety of good reasons, been able to talk about directly. Clever indeed. Even their names are appropriate, with Harry being the lower class man made good, and Garnet being the more sophisticated and socially acceptable of the two.

There are however two sections where Beecroft, like the good Homer, nods. I didn’t like the overemphasis on the journal being read in the future by a society more liberal-minded about homosexual relationships. It was unnecessary and, to be honest, I don’t believe it’s the way people actually think. Or perhaps I’m just a narrow-minded, self-absorbed, sociopathic Essex Girl who doesn’t really care two hoots about what the generations to come might be like? It has been mentioned before … And I also believe that the first meeting between Harry and Garnet is ridiculously overwritten and would never, in a thousand voyages, be the way Harry would see it, let alone write it. Thankfully, Beecroft makes a magnificent recovery after that mistake, and the rest of the story is top class. I can thoroughly recommend it.

The next offering, “Not To Reason Why” by Mark R Probst, is set in 1876 and tells the story of Corporal Brett Price, who together with his married fellow soldier, Sergeant Dermot Kerrigan, is part of the 7th Cavalry following Custer into his final battle with the Sioux. The trouble with it is that I don’t think either of the characters ever comes fully alive, and their relationship, or lack of it, certainly doesn’t. What’s more, the journey towards the terrible massacre (or great rout, depending on your point of view) was really rather dull in parts. I just wanted them to get there and get on with it. Once they did, I do have to say that the battle parts were exciting and well described. However, I don’t think that the end, which introduces a whole new character, works at all in the context of what has gone before. In fact, I would have preferred to start with the actual battle, and then bring that new character in sooner, which would give Probst a chance to work up the relationship between this new man and Brett much much more. That in essence felt like the story that needed to be told, rather than the one that actually was. If you see what I mean. Still, I was impressed with the fact that quality time is given to the welfare of the horses – this strikes me as very realistic for a cavalry man, and is something that doesn’t often appear within, for instance, the gay cowboy genre of GLBT literature. The horses, after all, are hugely important to such people. I did also wonder if part of the reason for my lack of positive interest in the majority of this story was to do with the fact that, to my knowledge, Probst writes mainly in the Young Adult GLBT field, and I’m not a fan at all of children’s or YA literature (Harry Potter? Who? Never heard of him, and I’ve certainly never read him …). It may be that younger readers than I would get more out of this tale therefore.

“No Darkness” by Jordan Taylor brings us into twentieth century history and is the story of Lieutenant Darnell and Private Fisher who are trapped in a root cellar after being shelled behind the First World War trenches on the Western Front. While their lives hang in the balance, and in their increasingly desperate bids for escape, they begin to form a bond that neither expected. I very much liked the start of this one, as we’re straight into the action with Darnell being given a fool’s mission to search a house that’s already been searched countless times before:

Now most of the soldiers were standing around the barn and house, smoking and waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. They had pulled off their haversacks and unslung the rifles from their shoulders. Darnell resisted reprimanding them for this since he had left his own rifle and pack leaning against a kitchen wall of the small house. He slogged through the mud to the cellar door, standing open from a previous search. The wood of the door was warped and beginning to rot; just like everything about this abandoned farm site; just like everything about this war.

I also thought the scenes of Darnell and Fisher being trapped in the cellar, facing a long slow death and in considerable physical pain, were bleakly and powerfully described. I could feel the cold, the sense of being abandoned and the increasing desperation of both men very well:

As time passed, Darnell found the work of clearing away rubble more and more difficult, not only because of his throbbing, burning hands, but because it had now been over thirty hours since he’d eaten anything. His brain seemed frozen, as dead as his mangled hands were becoming. His head throbbed almost as hard as his hands did. His back, legs and shoulders were on fire. The muscles seemed to have reached some sort of maximum capacity he had not known they could.

In fact, I do think that the descriptions and the driving force of the escape and survival plotline are so very strong that the fairly minor scenes of the attraction between the two men are not in fact necessary. The novella would have been far stronger if just Fisher was gay, and Darnell remained distinctly straight throughout. That would have been a better story, to my mind, and more realistic. Then the emotional journey of Darnell as a straight man of his era coming to terms with the fact that Fisher is a man still worth saving in spite of his sexuality would have been interesting to explore. That said (SPOILER ALERT …), I was impressed with the fact that we do lose one of the two main characters at the end in spite of all they’ve been through by then. That was a brave decision. Still, I didn’t like the final scene that took us out of the war zone and back into civilian life – it spoilt the power of the narrative and that loss. The story should have ended earlier.

For the final novella in the collection, we have “Our One and Only” by E N Holland. Here, the focus is on the life of Philip Cormier in the aftermath of the death of his closest friend and lover, Eddie Fiske, who is killed in France during D-Day in September 1944. What’s fascinating here is how the story covers a forty year arc, told in decade-long intervals, that chronicles Philip’s slow resolution of his grief.

And I must say it started off in rather a clunky fashion with a minor character being given a viewpoint on the day Eddie is killed – a character whose viewpoint we never get again. It would have been much stronger simply to have started with Philip. He is where the story lies. Neither was I very impressed with the glimpse we get at an early stage of how things were between Philip and Eddie before Eddie went to war – the love scenes here are somehow rather bland and strangely distancing.

So far so disappointing. But, my goodness, Holland then takes my assumptions by the scruff of their neck and shakes them up in ways I’d never expected at all. It’s a gripping and unusual choice to tell the story of a love affair after one of the participants is dead and, as I mention above, over a period of forty years in the life of Philip. I actually found myself slowly falling in love with Philip and looking forward to seeing what he was up to every ten years or so, almost as if he was a personal friend who lived abroad. Which was a very strange feeling indeed. His interactions with Eddie’s mother and family are both moving and realistically described, and I did enjoy watching the shifting relationships as time went by.

I also appreciated the way significant moments of remembrance are not sugar-coated. Here’s Philip at the end of a conversation with a high-ranking army officer who asks who he is at a memorial service in 1954:

“I’m Philip Cormier,” Philip said simply.
“PFC Fiske’s brother…relative…?”
“Friend,” Philip said shortly. “Close family friend.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Well, thank you for coming. I hope to see you at the Mayflower. Of course, Mr. Cormier, you are invited too.”
He turned and left, Philip watching his broad shoulders as he walked away from them. He realized he had never felt so invisible in his life.

The terrible issue of the official lack of acknowledgement of an unacceptable partner to a dead war hero is subtly put here, I think. In addition, when Philip finally gets to see Eddie’s grave in the 1980s, I thought the first visit to the war cemetery was very powerful, as it is not seen in soft-focus in any way. Not only does Philip and the woman friend he is with, Phyllis, have to put up with some hugely irritating official interference, but his reactions when he’s finally able to get to Eddie’s grave are not what he expected at all:

“Why did you leave me?” he asked softly. “Why did you go and get yourself killed?” Another deep breath. His throat felt tight. “You could’ve let that officer get shot instead, you know. Why did you have to be a hero? I never wanted a hero …”
He felt a rush of hot anger in his chest and his hand tightened into a fist, as if to hit some invisible opponent.

In fact Philip is so angry with Eddie, after forty years of not being so, that he has to leave and it’s only on his second visit on the following day that some kind of closure begins to be reached. I have to admit that I did find these scenes very moving, and realistic – especially in terms of the emotions of graveside visits never being those one imagined one would have.

The tracking of the love affair between Eddie and Philip was also cleverly brought into full clarity in these final sections, with Phyllis acting as a listening ear for how the two men really began and experienced their relationship. It was interesting that Eddie suddenly came into much clearer view at this point, in a way that he never had earlier in the story. Which supports my opinion that we don’t need the scenes between Eddie and Philip that didn’t work at the start. Sometimes less is more, and it’s worthwhile making the reader wait.

I also thought that the brief sex scene between Philip and the male hooker in the hotel is particularly worthy of mention. Powerful and ultimately bleak indeed. Finally I must also say that there’s a very good twist at the end of this story, which in this case, unlike in the previous two novellas, worked beautifully and had me punching my fist in the air and shouting Yes! Which certainly startled my husband, for one. Good for Philip is what I say.

So, in conclusion, Hidden Conflict is perhaps something of a mixed bag offering in the historical GLBT genre, but nonetheless the jewel of Beecroft’s story and the surprising slow-burn power of Holland’s are both well worth the price of battle.

Hidden Conflict, by Various (Cheyenne Publishing (paperback) & Bristlecone Pine Press (eBook), 2009), ISBN: 978-1-60722-009-1

[Anne writes and reads in the GLBT fiction genre with enthusiasm, but thinks the present is difficult enough without worrying about the past too. To catch up with some rather more contemporary angst-ridden gay men, please click here.]

In the interests of a totally transparent review, I’m stating up-front that Trilby is a fellow Bookfox.  I’m also going to admit that I read a very early draft of Medina Hill a long while ago, although as in all early drafts the book is much changed now.

Whew… now that’s done, I can get on with sharing my love of Medina Hill.

This is a very different book to the ones I’ve been reviewing recently.  It’s been all werewolves and vampires and teen angsty stuff and I’m not really sure how that’s happened.  It certainly hasn’t been deliberate.  At the moment the marketplace is flooded with all these black and red covered teen romance novels, some of which I love, some I… well… don’t! So,when the opportunity arose to read something completely different, I jumped at the chance and was enchanted.

Medina Hill is set in 1935. Eleven year-old Dominic Walker has lost the power of speech, his mother is ill and his father has no job. Lively, oddball Uncle Roo arrives in the midst of this downtrodden family and whisks Dominic and his young sister, Marlo to Cornwall. There, Uncle Roo and his wife run a boarding house full of lovable, eccentric residents. Dominic, discovers a book called Incredible Adventures for Boys: Colonel Lawrence and the Revolt in the Desert, and his sister, Marlo, discovers a love of cooking. During the summer months the pair find a way of life completely removed from the hardships and stresses they faced in London. Dominic becomes obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia and he gets caught up in a village war against a band of travellers after silently befriending Sancha, a one legged gypsy girl.  When Dominic eventually finds his voice he discovers that it not only sets him free but it has far reaching repercussions.

Medina Hill is a superbly written historical novel for middle grade readers.  It’s marketed for teens, however I think it would appeal to readers 10 years and older. Think Michael Morpurgo or Enid Blyton-esque adventures. It’s an old fashioned tale but the concepts and ideas resonate well with children of today.  It’s about friendship, loyalty and sticking up for what you believe in.  All relevant lessons for our youngsters.  The characters in Medina Hill are absolutely wonderful, they leap off the page and I was just slightly disappointed the book wasn’t longer so we could get to know them all a bit better.  But then, I am a nosy grown-up and I do think the length was probably perfect for children.  One of the things that especially stood out for me reading Medina Hill was that it’s a book that involves every sense.  I could smell the Cornish countryside, hear the wildlife and when Marlo is on a cooking frenzy and bakes every single recipe in her book, I could taste her delicious creations…

Everything was coated with flour – even my sister. Pots, pans, and mixing bowls were piled up in the sink; breadboards, whisks, rolling pins, and labels were strewn across the counters: and on the refectory table, dozens of plates displayed a multitude of treats the likes of which I had never seen before.

“Those are blackberry tarts, next to the fairy cakes… and those are coffee biscuits, with rosebud madelines. Those are just boring old blueberry muffins,” explained Marlo, with surprising authority.

“And that?”

“What, the apricot flan? Or the butterscotch cake?”

“That one,” I pointed.

“Chestnut galette.  And chocolate loaf, lemon gateau, rubarb crumble, spice cakes… treacle duff, tipsy cake… plum pudding, cinnamon buns…” Marlo raised a finger thoughtfully to her lips, frowning. “The gooseberry clafoutis doesn’t quite look like the picture.  Or the Maderia cake.”

“Is that a Victoria sponge?”

“Mm.”

“What about that one with the cream?”

“Peach cream pie. Or these? They’re called profiteroles. That’s rosemary shortbread.”

“And trifle?”

“Raspberry,” nodded Marlo.

It was truly a majestic medley, each and every item turned out in its Sunday best.

… okay, who’s hungry now??

Medina Hill is a glorious read, full of warmth and extraordinary, vibrant characters. After picking it up, I didn’t put it down until it was finished.  If you’re looking for a book with a compelling story to give your children or grandchildren this Christmas, then look no further.  It’s all here… and it makes a refreshing change from books with black covers.

Medina Hill by Trilby Kent. Published by Tundra Books.  ISBN: 9780887768880.

Celebrating Guy Fawkes Night
In America, Nov. 5th is just another day. That’s why I was partway through this book before realizing it was about the events leading up to what the British celebrate with bonfires. To be fair, though, Guy Fawkes is a secondary character who rarely appears.
Set in the London of  1605, at the beginning of James I’s reign, the story centers on Francis Quoynt, his father “Boomer” and Kate Peach, his former lover. Quoynt, a fifth generation ‘firemaster’ (or explosive expert) has returned from soldiering on the Continent. After a mysterious warehouse explosion, Quoynt is hired by Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State, to look into it and other suspicious activities. In doing so, he infiltrates a group that includes Fawkes and reluctantly agrees to make 40 barrels of gun powder for them.
In an atmosphere of religious persecution, where simply wearing a crucifix can get a person arrested, there’s a lot of suspense in this novel, especially since all is not as it seems. The story shifts from Kate to Quoynt and back again as the lovers reconnect and drift apart. Instead of ending the book with Fawkes plot thwarted and arrests made, Quoynt wanders aimlessly around London trying to hear news of the culprits, before returning home to a surprising conclusion.
It was a satisfying mystery and I found the historical aspects realistic. Though there was some famous characters such as Sir Francis Bacon, it concentrated on the ordinary people. The details of gun powder making and a fireworks display was fascinating, the book is well worth reading for those descriptions alone. So if you appreciate a good suspense novel or intriguing historical fiction, pull this one off the shelf.

Harper 2008    544 pp.   ISBN 970-0-06-156826

Review by Sam Ruddock

The essence of good travel writing lies in duality: in the balance between the external journey through a physical landscape and the personal journey which takes place alongside it. It is not enough simply to travel through a country meeting people and visiting places, then recounting anecdotes so as to shed light on the nature and culture of that society. To do so is to forever remain an outsider looking in. Rather the best travel writing interrelates the landscapes, cultures and people to the parallel emotional journey of the writer so that the terrain of one moulds, shifts, and reacts with that of the other.

So it is with Red Dust, a book subtitled ‘A Path Through China’ but as much a tale of Ma Jian’s quest to find himself as an artist and a man as anything else. Because of this, his panoramic, three year tour of China provides a wonderful insight into the nature of that vast country and the people who live there. Through it all, from the emotional highs and moments of tranquillity surrounded by outstanding natural beauty to the lonely lows, near death experiences and horrendous acts of barbarism, he retains a clear perspective and reports what he sees and feels in a remarkably impartial manner. He is honest about his faults and those of his country, unapologetic about their successes. His is a search for answers to three specific questions: who is Ma Jian? what is China? And how do they relate to each other.

It all begins in 1983 as Ma turns thirty. Recently divorced, his ex-wife is now seeking custody of their daughter; his current girlfriend is sleeping with another man. By day he works in the Foreign Propaganda Department in Beijing, photographing the country in order to create books of images which will be presented to foreign diplomats. At night he moves in an artistic milieu of painters and poets whose gatherings have to take place quietly under cover of darkness to avoid detection by the police. These gatherings consist of lots of impotent jokes – a kid asks his dad, “Dad, why do we have a picture of Chairman Mao but no picture of the Communist Party?” And his dad says, “Because the Communist Party isn’t human” –poetry recitals, camaraderie, and life drawing exercises. All of which means that despite his best efforts Ma is very much on the state radar. With his long hair, gregarious lifestyle and denim jeans he does not fit the standards expected of a healthy young socialist. Economic development may be beginning to open up the country but with the newly launched Campaign Against Spiritual Pollution he can feel the authorities breathing down his neck.

Everything is starting to change. China feels like an old tin of beans that having lain in the dark for forty years, is beginning to burst at the seems…Six years have passed since the death of Mao Zedong and the end of the cultural revolution. Deng Xiaoping is back in power, calling for ‘Four Modernisations’, private enterprise and foreign investment. He has liberated the economy, but continues to clamp down on all forms of dissent. When the activist Wei Jingsheng said the Four Modernisations were meaningless without the Fifth – democracy – he was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to fifteen years in jail.

Despite artistic promise he does not have the political astuteness that is required of someone in his line of work. He causes a furore when failing to notice a patch of flaking paint in the foreground of a photo of Yangzi Bridge in Nanjing. He receives a heated ticking off when he chooses a yellow font on the front cover of a magazine. “You are trying to suggest that we are a federation of pornographic trade unions!” exclaims the irate section head of his work unit. It is all told with straight faced satire, an absurd situation which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so terrible.

Creatively stagnant, restless, and fearing arrest any day, he resigns his job and spends most of his money on a train ticket to the westernmost border of China. It is a journey which requires some forgery but which would have been near impossible only a few years earlier. And so begins his three year shoestring budget, 13,000mile plus tour of China. He survives thanks to the kindness of those he meets, and by making a bit of money by selling short stories and poems, or doing odd jobs in cities he passes through. Much of the time he walks vast distances alone. Sometimes he goes days without eating, or months without washing. He is absurdly ill-prepared for the journeys he takes, and seems unwilling to learn that it is not wise to set off across a desert at night with only a compass, small back pack and a couple of bottles of water. He treats his escapades with almost flippant disregard, yet his survival instinct and slippery loner tendencies demonstrate a man of rare tenacity. He is a man existing for existences sake, travelling for the sake of travelling, searching for himself everywhere he goes without a plan of where to go next. He is an engaging, amazing, enthralling character.

Most travelogues are written by foreigners travelling the country with a purpose in mind, usually to uncover the hidden heart of a place so as to advance understanding of it. It is so refreshing to view China from the inside, from a native who has spent their whole life there and yet still finds shocks and surprises on an almost daily basis. Ma Jian has the cultural understanding of a native but the wide eyed amazement of an outsider: he is both. He gives us an insight into how an educated Han is perceived in different areas of the country, from indigenous tribes of the Burmese border to the intellectuals he meets along the way. And because he is travelling in a country where people do not travel, he remains perpetually on the outside of life, viewed with amazement, welcome and distrust wherever he goes.

It is not a criticism per se, but it is his footloose approach to his travels which I found most difficult about Red Dust. It is not the most purposeful of books to read, there is no narrative arc or sense of where it is going at all. While it is subtitled ‘A Path Through China’ Red Dust would perhaps be better conceived as ‘Paths around and around China.’ It sat by my bedside for almost a month as I read five or ten pages per night before bed without ever becoming fully engaged. It reads as an endless series of encounters set within a greater spiritual journey but which has no discernable sense of progress. He is in search of Buddhist enlightenment and dreams of travelling to Tibet but never seems to make much effort to get there. His wanderings are captured in an anecdote he recounts when visiting a village in remote South Western China. There they tell him about an American pilot who landed there in the 1940s and was kept as a slave by the local tribe for 9 years before finally escaping and going home.

The American pilot was able to stay here all those years because he had a goal in life: he wanted to go home. I have no such goal, so I must keep walking.

So it is. The lack of purpose is the greatest strength and most awkward weakness of this fascinating, though not always easy to read, book. There is an occasional tension between past and present tenses which irritated me and provided another barrier to a smooth reading experience. But in the end, he does learn something of himself. At last, after nearly three years of travelling and an enthrallingly terrifying journey through the borderlands of Burma he reaches Tibet. There he seeks Buddhist enlightenment only to find disappointment. Buddhism, he concludes, cannot solve the problems of man. “From now on I will hold to no faith. I can only strive to save myself. Man is beyond salvation.” The answers he has sought throughout his travels do not exist. It is the most enthralling, poignant and rewarding part of the book. It rectifies any flaws in the structure and leaves you with a cathartic sense of culmination, or the start of a new passage in his life. His journey has come full circle. The answer to the great myth of life has taken the form of another question. And all he can do is hope.

In the middle of the night I lie awake on the metal bed under two thin quilts, shivering with cold. A wind howls through the rain and snow outside. This stinking body no longer belongs to me, my mind is as empty as a plastic bag caught in the high wind. Suddenly, I think of Beijing, and realise that although it is crammed with police, at least there is a bed and pillow waiting for me there. I came to Tibet hoping to find answers to all my unasked questions, but I have discovered that even when the questions are clear, there are no clear answers. I am sick of travelling. I need to hold onto something familiar, even if it is just a tea cup. I cannot survive in the wilds – nature is infinite but my life has bounds. I need to live in big cities that have hospitals, bookshops and women. I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people’s beginnings and ends. I have stopped here, not because the Himalayas stand in the way, but because my inward journey has reached its end. In fact, we all tread a path – the gold-digger, the coil-remover, Myima who left her turquoise behind and rose to the sky. We are just travelling in different directions, that’s all.

Vintage.  2002.  ISBN-13: 978-0099283294.  336pp.

Sam is a former bookseller who now works for Writers’ Centre Norwich where he helps promote, develop, and explore the artistic and social power of creative writing.  As well as writing a popular monthly review for Vulpes Libris, he also has his own blog,  Books, Time and Silence.

Comrades!  Today Bookfox Kirsty is joined by an honoured guest indeed:  actor Stephen Greif.

Stephen is a familiar face (and voice) to generations of TV viewers, cinema fans, theatre goers and audio book listeners.  His screen credits range from Citizen Smith and Blake’s 7 through Eastenders and Holby City to Casanova and Boogie Woogie.  On stage, he has most recently appeared in Epitaph for George Dillon and Fallen Angels.  No prizes for guessing what Kirsty wants to talk about first…

KM:  Maybe I could start by asking: did you enjoy working on Citizen Smith?

SG:  The short response is that I wanted to enjoy myself; and to qualify that fast food answer let me relate the circumstances that led me to do it on and off for three seasons and nearly a fourth.

During the spring and summer of 1977 I’d spent two gruelling months in Corsica and London filming five episodes of Treasure Island for the BBC, immediately followed by two more weeks in Elstree Studios and on location on an episode of Return of the Saint and then straight into four episodes of the first of the Armchair Thriller series for Thames playing the leading role in  Rachel in Danger. A schedule that required me almost every day for about six weeks on location and in the studio.   I was punch drunk by the end of it all, and when I was offered a friend’s mother’s house in Cornwall for a week’s rest I jumped straight into my car and  drove off down to Flushing.    Driving through St. Just in Roseland, where I had often stayed, I saw the familiar red telephone box ahead of me that seemed to pulsate a signal to my shredded brain to step inside it and phone my agent.  That  inexplicable but compelling summons had to be surrendered to, so I swiftly pulled over and made the call.   Before I had any chance to fob off a feeble excuse for ringing them (just wanted you to know I’ve nearly arrived safely, as if they cared, or some such infantilism) Barry, my agent, said excitedly: “Stephen, thank god you’ve called. The BBC want to see you tomorrow at noon for a regular part in a new sitcom directed and produced by the legendary Denis Main Wilson  (he  discovered Tony Hancock).  It’s four episodes plus a possible Christmas Special.”   “Christmas Special”:  those words  sparkled like the tinsel that I imagined would adorn the opening credits. “ Oh bollocks… I mean,   tell ‘em I’ll be there. By the way, when does it start ?”  “In four days, and it’s location filming first on Barnes Common. They’ll give us a Yes or No after the meet.”

On the stroke of noon the following day I walked into Denis’s office on the fourth floor of White City Centre.   He was famous for having his office appointed opposite the BBC  Club, most likely due to his urgent passion for regularly checking the quality of alcohol was of a high enough  standard.  I was knocked out by his energetic and old English almost military style of welcome and warmth, and together with knowing that he’d discovered  one of my heroes, Tony Hancock, I was already pretty well disposed to a project I knew nothing about.  I was introduced to the shy, rather plump young scriptwriter, called John Sullivan, and my part was outlined as a shady but expansive pub owner called Harry Fenning,  who had two permanent body guards and who delighted in terrorising the Tooting Popular front leader Wolfie Smith and his cohorts in any way he could.   A pilot had previously been made and,as a result, a series of 7 or 8 episodes greenlit by Billy Cotton Jr. and Head of Comedy John Howard Davies.    Robert Lindsay , Mike Grady, Tony Millan and Cheryl Hall (Robert’s real life wife) were signed, as were Peter Vaughan and Hilda Braid as Cheryl’s parents.  I was a huge admirer of Peter’s and also had worked with Cheryl years earlier on the movie of No Sex please , we’re British.   In fact I later heard that it was Cheryl who had suggested me for Harry by waving my Spotlight picture in front of Denis and John saying “Him ! Its him you want ! Him !”  God bless her.  I love her.  It sounded fun, and I  felt that the abandonment of my holiday for the chance of doing this was worth the risk.   I didn’t have to wait too long.  – a glance from Denis to John and back again was Denis’s cue to offer me the part if I liked the scripts, which they gave me there and then to read in an outer office. I laughed a lot at this odd medley of characters in bizarre situations, and a few days later pitched up on Barnes Common to do the first filming day, which consisted of yelling at Wolfie and co out of a van window where they, it is revealed by way of a slow camera pullback,  are towing my van by hand along a main road.  Madness.

A memory I have of that day’s filming was of the manic singlemindedness of Robert, Michael and Tony to try and extract as much out of these short moments as possible. There were no laughs that day…  comedy being a serious business don’t you know!   I wasn’t comfortable with it . I had had no time to nail the character of Fenning and his interaction with the other characters, who had at least had some period to get to know each other.  I yelled over and over again as Denis asked,  but it was acting by rote and  in at the deep end with concrete shoes and blinkers. Now… I  do realise that  I’m  looking at this a little too “seriously”,  but what kind of man harnesses three kids to a van and terrorises them into hauling it along a  main road ?  I was put in mind of “Mad” Frankie Fraser and Ronnie Kray, whom I’d met, but these guys were far too gritty and real for a sitcom;  also I came to see that there was something about Harry that careered between villainous charm and light hearted silliness … even naivety .  I recalled a large actor in a comedy thriller that I saw when I was a kid whose voice and manner suggested these characteristics.  Deep toned and sinister looking, but at the same time childlike at times, and that seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, to be a base to work from…

KM:  Your description of Harry makes perfect sense to me, because that is very much how I perceive him and it is undoubtedly what makes him such a fascinating character in my eyes.  Did you feel that this dichotomy between villain and comic relief was a problematic aspect in the writing, something you had to overcome in your performance?  In other words, to what extent do you feel Harry Fenning was a creation of Stephen Greif, the actor, as opposed to John Sullivan, the writer?

SG:  Yes… The Villain /Comic relief aspect was hard to balance . I hadn’t done much sitcom, and certainly not a recurring character, so my focus, as always, was on making the part believable.  The absurd situations that John Sullivan had contrived for the Harry/ Wolfie relationship were challenging .

Harry was not written with any actor in mind, so inevitably whoever played him would bring their own personality to the mix. I guess I was cast because of my vocal and physical difference to the Tooting popular front.  My way of dealing with the situations John put Harry in was to have Harry “toy” with Wolfie as a kind of amusing avuncular distraction to his other more alleged serious activities, and as a consequence Wolfie,  through guile, would befuddle the big bad bear by slipping alcohol in his honey.    BTW… I loved calling Wolfie “What a wally!” and so incidentally did Robert.  It always made us chuckle. Even on the take.

When Denis stopped  directing and Ray Butt took over, he wanted Harry played  more realistically.. Less flashy clothes and more down to earth. Ray later produced sterling work on Only Fools and Horses, but I was fiercely loyal to Denis’ approval of the way Harry was played and disinclined, perhaps even unable, to make the switch.  The BBC were very upset with me for not doing the fourth series after having sent me, I blush to say, eulogistic letters from John Howard Davies and Denis to try and get me to change my mind .  I was adamant.  I’d had enough and I didn’t work for them again for two years.

KM:  Of course, by the time you were cast as Harry Fenning you already had quite a pedigree in TV and film.  Dixon of Dock Green, Treasure Island, Play for Today, the first of the Armchair Thriller and Killers series; and of course the famous Blake’s 7 was filmed in the same period as Citizen Smith…  I have to admit to being a Blake’s 7 newbie as I only recently saw any of it, in preparation for this interview, but I am hooked!  To steal a line from my fellow Fox, Moira, do you feel that Blake’s 7 helped your career or hindered it?  And do you ever get sick of people talking about it?

SG:  I don’t think B7 hindered me . I only did four and a half episodes but because the character became popular I suppose it seemed like more. It gave me greater profile which is not bad for an actor in terms of negotiations. I think if anything hindered me it was me, because I turned down so much work over a five year period around that time for personal reasons, including ten more episodes of B7 in series 2.    I had a ball doing B7, made lasting friendships, attended dozens of conventions and still receive letters and royalties to this day , so, no I don’t get sick of people talking about it . It would be foolish to.

KM:  I’m interested to see that one of your earliest roles was in Nicholas and Alexandra, in 1971.  Any chance of a word about that?

SG: Nicholas and Alexandra was a big budget movie adapted by James Goldman and the playwright Edward Bond from Robert Massie’s best selling book.  It was quoted in the press as having the cream of the RSC and the National in it.  I was called in (having been at the RSC, albeit residing along the bottom of the milk bottle) by Maude Spector, along with Miriam Brickman, the most powerful casting director in movies, to see  Hollywood mogul Sam Spiegel for the role of Rasputin, which Peter O’Toole was going to play; but his contract with Sam had run out, and Peter couldn’t have been happier to be free of it. Maud was wonderfully supportive and told me I was going to be a big star.  She will have said that to all the boys!

Sam was the image of my dad; they were both Austrian Jews and both larger than life.  We got on famously, and I was re-called to see the Director, Franklyn Shaffner, who had just finished shooting Patton with George C. Scott.  I was called in a third time to see Sam again, who told me regretfully that Franklyn thought I was too young for Rasputin, but I was definitely  in the picture  playing  Martov, the leader of the Menshevik Party, if I cared to.  I did.   Wonderful experience. A month in Madrid just before Christmas, living with a model for Yves St Laurent and working with some hugely talented people.  What a life for a young man and what a shame the picture didn’t turn out well.  The press were very cruel misquoting lines like  “Hello, I’m Stalin. Have you met Lenin? This is Trotsky!”   I’m still in touch with Brian Cox, who played Trotsky.  Fine actor and a great guy.  The personnel in that movie was quite something.   Olivier , Redgrave, Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm, Irene Worth, Michael Bryant, Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman as Nicholas and Alexandra and photographed by Freddie Young (who won 3 Oscars on David Lean and Sam Spiegel pictures) .  Tom Baker eventually played Rasputin as a result of Olivier recommending him to Spiegel over supper in Madrid.  And who took over from Tom when he left the National Theatre to do more movies?

You guessed it.  Yours Truly.   Life is truly strange sometimes.

KM: What a great reminiscence of Nicholas and Alexandra.  I saw it years ago, when I was a student in my fourth year at Cambridge and it was on late at night.  When Tom Baker was working his magic as Rasputin, suddenly the floor shook and my bed started moving across the room; I was well and truly freaked out (being somewhat sleep deprived from essay writing) but it turned out it was a very rare and very well timed earthquake.  Other than that, I must admit I didn’t think much of it (being a Russian historian and a Trotsky specialist, as any fule kno by now).

Can I ask you then:  How did you prepare the role of Martov (who was placed in a rather strange and unhistorical situation in Nicholas and Alexandra)?  I would be interested to know what you made of him.

SG:  Well, that’s a wonderful and fearful moment of yours and clearly the powers of Grigory Rasputin still linger in the ether.  Tom had actually been a monk for a period in the 60s, and that might have helped a  bit with his portrayal, but not I think with that extraordinary bit of timing.  As a Russian historian and  Trotsky specialist you might be interested to know that Richard Burton played him in a not too memorable film about his final days in Mexico called The Assassination of Trotsky;  it’s probably available on DVD for a few quid. What a fascinating subject, Russian History and Trotsky and c1917.  Quite a landscape.

KM:  I have indeed seen it, but will reserve my hatchet (icepick) job on it for another time…

SG:  To answer your question, because of the sprawling nature of the script – which was being rewritten every day by poor Edward Bond, who was bludgeoned into submission by Sam S. – us Revolutionaries were not given much dialogue or screen time with which to develop a character.  I will tell you,  and I blush to do so, that in my idiotic youthful ignorance, knowing that Rasputin had still not been cast even while we were about to start filming, I got the make up man to make me look as sinister as possible before going in to see Sam in his office in the Madrid studios, for final costume and make up checks with him before we did our first days shooting in three days’ time. I took full responsibility for this.  Sam took one look at me and in his thick and most forbidding Austrian Accent  said to the poor make up man:  “Martov is an introverted , shy, unprepossessing  intellectual.  DOES HE LOOK LIKE THAT!!”

What on EARTH was I thinking of ?  Anyway , that was enough for me in terms of character, given the bare bones nature of our scenes.  Massie’s book was of no practical use and all us lot – Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Pankratov (Steven Berkoff with just one line of dialogue to his part and right royally pissed off about it) – just sketched in whatever little colour we could with what we knew about the characters historically.  (Lenin positive, Stalin secretive, Trotsky questioning, Martov philosophical, Pankratov pissed off.)    That was the problem with the movie.  It never decided if it was a love story set against the back ground of Revolution, or vice versa, or a story of one man’s power over the Tsarina or indeed simply the story of  The Romanov Royal Family during tumultous social times.  In the end it became a bit of everything , a sort of patch work quilt which  never satisfied in any department and fared badly at the box office despite some Oscar nominations.

KM:  You mentioned the National Theatre earlier, and you have a long and impressive theatrical CV.  Do you see yourself primarily as an actor of the stage, who also happens to work in other media? I do hope this isn’t a stupid question.

SG:  Absolutely NOT a silly question.   That is exactly how I saw myself throughout drama school and for the first twelve years of my career.  Most of us emerging into the profession back in the late 60s and throughout the 70s felt that, for a serious actor, the tried, true and tested path was the theatre for at least some years before venturing into any other medium.  How else could you properly learn your craft (by doing and watching others) which might then possibly lay the foundation for future film and TV work?  I , perhaps to the cost of instant recognition just two years out of drama school ( I’d declined a Hollywood offer after one year but that’s another story),  turned down  playing the leading role in what turned out to be 39 episodes of a popular TV series in favour of going into a regional repertory company to do a Shakespearean part (Hotspur) that I had always wanted to play.  There was never a scintilla of doubt in my mind that I was making the right decision.  TV and films could wait for when I was ready for them.  Talk about hubris!    Doing a soap like Coronation Street or Emmerdale Farm or Crossroads would have felt like selling out, or heaven forbid dumbing down. Not now of course, but that’s the way it was, believe it or not, with most of my colleagues.  Theatre was always first priority.  Also, I  would never have realised my drama school dream of  being a “National Theatre Player” at the Old Vic under the wing of my great hero and inspiration for being an actor, Sir Laurence Olivier.  That was the promised Land . Shangri- La . The Dog’s Bollocks. (sorry)

That is not the way it is now for me, nor has it been for quite some time. I go wherever the work is , whenever it is, whatever it is. And generally, to my heart’s ache, it is not theatre work . If you are lucky enough to have a family and are the only earner (which I was for a very long time) then the bills that you have elected to incur are not going to be paid by a theatre salary . (Private incomes, family or other benefactors or lottery and premium bond wins aside)

So, I’m now a media actor who from time to time happens to work on the stage.

KM:  Bookfox Moira’s question seems to fit pretty well at this point, so here it is:

In ‘Epitaph for George Dillon’ you had a little zinger of a part – as Barney Evans the provincial producer who almost literally explodes onto the stage in Act 3. It was a terrific performance – but I’ve always wanted to know … and you don’t have to name names here … did you base it on anyone? I had a feeling it might have been drawn from life …

SG:  I ‘m really pleased to be able to answer that one, as I did as much research on that part as any I’ve played.  Clearly John Osborne had based him on someone he knew, rather than Tony Creighton with whom he wrote the play, and after I read every biography and autobiography of Osborne it emerged that  Barney was a kind of  an amalgam of a poshly spoken producer friend of his and one or two agents he’d come across.   It was also suggested that he might be based on a colourful agent called Vincent Shaw, who it was rumoured had a bit of a reputation for backing  salacious pieces that played around the country in cheap touring dates, so I researched him thoroughly.  I also asked various actor colleagues who’d been in the theatre in the 50’s and  another tatty producer emerged which led to more calls etc,etc.  Of course, in the end you can go nuts trying to put all the bits together only to find you’ve created a kind of Frankenstein monster.  So having assimilated all this, I sat down and wrote an imaginary background for “Barney” based on what I knew of a well known West End producer, who I had worked for and who might well have gone down the “Barney” path if he hadn’t succeeded so well in London.

Gradually a character emerges that inevitably contains a colour or two of ones own personality and speech rhythms,but supported by the pile of little gold nuggets left after constant sifting.  I came to grow reasonably fond of Barney despite his appalling outspokeness and bigotry.  There was no side to him .  He simply was what he was.

I can tell you, for what its worth, never again will I wait all evening to come on in the third act to deliver what amounts to a 6 page monologue. The effect on my nervous system was truly ‘orrible.   Thank God for Joe Fiennes, who, being the brilliant and sensitive actor he is, was a pillar of concentration and support to me in that scene. I can also tell you that I would never wish to work for that director again. He gave us not only word inflections but syllable inflections too. The kind of direction I despise and abominate and which never liberates you or makes you happy. Certainly not me.

KM:  Thank you very much, Stephen, for your time and generosity in having this little (not so little) chat with us here at VL.  We usually ask our guests to recommend five books, with a brief word about each of them.  Would you mind doing us the honour?

SG:  I love biographies of my Heroes, especially the “early years”  part of them, so my recommendations are:

(1)  Arthur Miller’s  Timebends.  He’s my favourite playwright and this book allows you into his remarkable life .

(2)  Laurence Olivier’s Confessions of an Actor.  He’s my idea of what truly great stage acting is all about. He was also an employer, a friend , and my inspiration for being an actor.

(3)  David Remnick’s King of the World, about the greatest sportsman who ever lived, Muhammed Ali. It matters not a jot if you don’t like boxing, this is about triumph over adversity .  He’s Superman and Batman, but twice as good as both put together because he’s real.  He’s the hero to all of us.

(4)  The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.  Just a joy to dip in and out of.

(5) John Gielgud’s Letters, edited by Richard Mangan.  OK,  I’ll come clean. One of those letters is to me, and I’m as proud as can be because that kind of thing doesn’t happen too often.  Its also a chronicle of an Extraordinary Artist.

Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Greif.

Stephen’s professional website is here; to find out more about Blake’s 7, check out the official fan club.

This novel is the first in a trilogy about the colonisation and settlement of Mars. It is somewhat out of my comfort zone; I prefer fantasy and paranormal fiction and the science fiction I have read has been mostly Earth-based, for example, PD James’ The Children of Men. I approached Red Mars with a certain level of trepidation; its subject matter was unfamiliar and its size somewhat daunting (it runs to 658 pages.)

I very quickly found the latter comforting and familiar as it put the novel much more on a par with the nineteenth century classics I know and love so much. There are many advantages to a long novel, in terms of the space they allow the writer to build up a whole world to offer the reader. Long novels can, and are produced by windbags who simply don’t know when to stop. They can also be written by an author with a big story to tell, and one who is generous to his or her readers. I’m pleased to say that Kim Stanley Robinson falls into the latter camp.

The narrative begins in 2027, suggesting a timeline that probably looked more feasible in 1992 than it does in 2009. A group of astronauts and cosmonauts on board the Ares succeed in reaching orbit around Mars. They are the first Martian colonists later to be known as the first 100, a form of celebrity that has its drawbacks as well as advantages. They are a diverse bunch – Russians, Americans, a Japanese biologist, a French psychologist and a handful of others, their disciplines range across the sciences – biology, physics, engineering, chemistry, geology, human medicine, and this is one of the major stumbling blocks for the reader, because to begin with, they have the sense of being overwhelmed with science, far more of it, than fiction. However, it is all part of the writer’s vision of the credible world he is attempting to build up. Mars and those who go to live there are completely alien to each other and the ways in which that becomes evident are manifold.

Moreover, the difficulties they encounter are not just physical and environmental. They are all individuals and all clever people who have passed a test to allow them to join the mission. Their brilliance, rather than their veracity got them through the test and so here they are, with their cultural, political and emotional baggage, in a whole new world, while nothing about them has really changed. Not everything can be left behind, as we see through the character portraits of the various personalities. We encounter the histrionic Maya Toitovna, her pragmatic friend Nadia Cherneshevsky, the intense American Frank Chalmers, who finds himself on the outside of a love triangle, Arkady Bogdanov, for whom the colonisation represents a chance to frame a whole new society and Ann Claybourne, who wants to protect Mars from what she sees as human invasiveness. Not only have all of these people lied (consciously or otherwise) to be included in the mission, they all have an agenda. Sometimes, it is upfront, as in the case of Arkady, for others, it is kept out of sight. We do not know what the enigmatic Hiroko Ai and her team of biologists are up to till well into the narrative. The multiplicity of agendas, the political and social inequities that begin to arise and the pressures from Earth, which is falling apart under the weight of its own problems , all create a fascinating narrative, with elements of a thriller and a detective story. The individual storylines and character arcs give the novel elements of a family saga, so that in spite of the hugeness of the plot and the themes, we never lose touch with a more intimate perspective.

The crux of the characters’ dilemma is that there is no going back. Even more than the early European settlers in the Americas and Australasia, the physical difficulties of a return would be enormous and the political and social ones would be even more so. The first 100 become famous in a way that we recognise in 2009 from reality TV. Years before Big Brother and its imitators, Robinson has his characters on a television feed to Earth, where their discussions, problems and disagreements are laid out for billions of people to see. It is hard to see how, or where they would fit back into normal life on Earth, if indeed, such a thing really exists anymore. Those who came after them include the many for whom their own planet no longer has a place. They are housed in the Martian equivalent of a favela and forced to do back-breaking work in return for bed, board and the slimmest hope of a return home. Their presence enhances the comparison with Dickens’s slice-of-life doorstops; Robinson’s approach to Mars is similar to the one Dickens took in describing London, in for example, Our Mutual Friend. He wants to offer the reader as rich and full a view of the world he has created as possible. Ultimately, the many pressures, political, environmental, personal and economic, from both within and without culminate in a tragedy of the most horrendous proportions. Those who remember the events of September 11, 2001 will find these scenes both riveting and horrifying to read.

Although the narrative is often less than optimistic, the beauty of the writing lifts it above sheer pessimism. There are a few stylistic glitches – repetition of phrases that could and should have been ironed out at the proof-reading stage, while editing could have spared the reader the gaucheness of the love scenes. However, what stuck in my mind when I had finished the novel is how beautiful Mars is. Kim Stanley Robinson doesn’t see it as merely the Red Planet. It is all colours, with a wide variety of terrain and geography. Preserving that beauty, while creating a physical and social environment in which humans can live, may indeed become an issue for our beleaguered planet in the future.

Harper Voyager. 1992 (this edition 2009). ISBN 978.0-00-731010-6. 658pp

We’re seeing red as VL  heads into an explosive week. We have Stephen Greif and Guy Fawkes, war and Wall Street. Plus, adventures in China and on Mars. November on VL starts with a bang.

In celebration of Poe’s 200th birthday and of course, Hallowe’en
The Raven is such a cultural icon that it’s worthy of revisiting from time to time. But upon reading it, one is left wondering how much of it is real & how much is from Poe’s drug & alcohol fueled imagination. He was like the Jim Morrison of his time.
The setting is late one night in an empty house where the narrator is woken from a nap by mysterious noises, an investigation reveals a raven at the window, who comes into the room and makes himself at home, endlessly croaking “Nevermore.” It all sounds so minuscule, doesn’t it? But the atmosphere and open interpretation is what has made it last, it’s not an adventure in bird watching.

Ravens are good mimics and can indeed say words. They are the largest member of the Corvidae family, which includes crows, but differs from them in their size(nearly a meter long) & shaggy feathers about the throat. They fly like hawks more than crows, with a mix of wing beats and soaring, so having one land on your windowsill would be startling indeed, especially since ravens are diurnal(daytime) birds. An owl would’ve been more logical and less weird, but of course weird was what Poe wanted.

Ravens will eat most anything, including carrion and in the past were known to feed on fallen soldiers on battlefields. This is the aspect which Poe focuses on throughout: the raven is there as a representative of death to take him there or bring a message.Poe’s overreaction could also be due to the raven as a symbol of his fear or possibly his conscience, though that is done much better in The Tell Tale Heart.

The raven turns up long after Hallowe’en, on a night in December, a month usually associated with the joys of Christmas and Hanukkah. But it’s also when the long nights of winter sets in.The narrator is trying to divert his mind from “the lost Lenore”, (presumably a lady love who has died) by reading, but I suspect he’s had some liquid refreshment.When he opens the window to see who’s tapping, the raven comes in and lands on a statue of Pallas, the Titan god of warcraft.Poe sits down on a velvet cushion and proceeds to have a staredown with the bird. He asks the bird it’s name and the bird says “nevermore”. While I doubt anyone expected “Polly”, you must admit that’s a strange name for a bird, or anything, really. Nevermore is a word originating in Medieval England about 1200 that means “never again”. The raven repeats it 7 times in the poem.Obviously a bird of few words.

I’ve heard of people panicking when a sparrow has gotten into the house, so I can imagine the effect a larger bird with a larger, sharper beak would have. But thinking the bird is a messenger from the underworld still seems like going a bit too far. But the narrator insists that the raven is bringing him a message from Lenore, though he never finds out what it is. Again, a carrier pigeon would be more logical. Perhaps the raven won’t divulge his secrets because Poe calls him “ungainly fowl” and other insulting names?

The narrator becomes hypnotized by the raven’s shadow and the poem ends with him either falling back to sleep or dying, with the raven stealing his soul. My guess is a return to his nap, since I can’t imagine the narrator not going on and on about the afterlife had he died.

Originally published in 1845 and reprinted many times since in various mediums, I read it this time online at Bartleby.com

In his introduction to Bloomsbury’s striking new edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination Neil Gaiman says:

Poe’s stories – even his humorous tales, even his detective stories – are populated by amnesiacs and obsessives, by people doomed to remember what they desire only to forget, and are told be madmen and liars and lovers and ghosts. They are powered by what remains untold as much as by what Poe tells us, each of them split and shivered by a crack as deep and as dangerous as the fissure that runs from top to bottom of the gloomy house inhabited by Roderick and Madeline Usher.

… which is probably as fine a description of Poe’s stories  as you’re ever likely to encounter.

I read Tales in its entirety thirty-five years ago at college  and although I’ve dipped into them occasionally since then, I’ve never – until now – revisited the whole collection.

My teenage self found them hard going – dark,  ovewrought, over-written and just plain odd.  One or two of them – like The Masque of the Red Death – simply went straight over my head.

It was, therefore, an enormous surprise to return to them  and discover an entirely different book and an entirely different author.

If you have no taste for the Gothic, then Tales of Mystery and Imagination is not the book for you; but if you’re prepared to put your rational mind on ‘hold’ and accept the world that Poe invites you into … you can easily  get lost in the dark web he wove.  He was a man who knew how to mess with your brain – how to plug into your most primitive fears and ratchet up the tension to snapping point.

Being buried alive – one of the most primaeval fears of all -  features prominently in  The Fall of the House of Usher,  The Premature Burial and The Cask of Amontillado and even when it’s NOT central to the story, it’s still there, in the suffocating and claustrophobic atmosphere that suffuses so many of the tales.

One of the (many) things that my older (and one hopes wiser) self found most surprising was the dark  humour in some of the stories, a thing that completely escaped me before.  Like the narrator of The Oblong Box thinking that his friend was overly attached to the ‘artwork’ in the eponymous container – especially as the box is six feet long by two-and-a-half-feet wide …

Many people – who know Tales of Mystery and Imagination only slightly, or by repute – would, if asked, probably tell you that they’re all horror stories – but that term doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it.  The collection  contains what many hold to be the very first detective story – The Murders in the Rue Morgue – as well as that strange and nightmarish story of what Poe called ‘ratiocination’ – The Gold Bug.

The Premature Burial is an exercise in psychological screw-turning.  The Pit and the Pendulum certainly piles horror upon Gothic horror, but it too is more of a masterclass in psychological manipulation.

There is actually very little gore in any of the stories.  People and animals do die terrible deaths, but they aren’t dwelt on.  Poe creates vivid pictures in your mind and  leaves the rest to the power of your own imagination …

And then, there’s The Masque of the Red Death, about which there has been more debate than almost anything else Poe ever wrote.

Most  believe it to be an allegory about the inevitability of death – but Poe was on record as saying that he didn’t like allegory and had no time for literature that lectured its readers … so what does it mean, if anything?  I confess to having absolutely no idea  (and I’d be delighted to hear any theories that you might have) because it does appear to BE an allegor, and makes sense as such – but the story is so supremely well written, I really don’t mind.  The privileged guests in the abbey, barricaded against the plague; the diseased mind of Prospero with his windowless, single-colour rooms;  the ebony clock that stills the revels every time it strikes; the febrile atmosphere  … they’re all the products of a writer with an extraordinary imagination and a tight control of his craft.

The myth of Edgar Allan Poe – the insane, drunken, drugged crazed, possibly homicidal  paedophile  (a  misrepresentation for which we mostly  have to thank a little charmer called Rufus Wilmot Griswold) – has for many years obscured the more normal – and infinitely sadder reality of the man and his life.

He wrote the Tales of Mystery and Imagination not because he was pyschologically damaged, but simply because they were  what the public wanted to read.  He was trying to make a living from writing, and he knew what sold.   But,  being a true professional and a master of his art, he wrote them as well as he possibly could.  The fact that they are still in print, and still demand one hundred and sixty years after his death is all the proof you need that he got them triumphantly right.

Bloomsbury Publishing.  October 2009.  ISBN: 978-4088-0343-1.  334pp.