Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction

Scary Ghost Stories of Christmases Long Ago

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“The first key to a Christmas ghost story,” writes Colin Fleming, “is a convivial atmosphere. People in these stories are well fed, they’re often hanging out in groups, you feel like you’re hanging out with them, and you do not wish to leave any more than they do. It is cold outside but warm in here, and it’s time to rediscover that sense of play that so many of us adults lose over the years, and which, when we are fortunate, we remember to rediscover at Christmas.”

He recommends five old stories to fit the bill.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Short Drop,’ by Matthew FitzSimmons

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Matthew FitzSimmons is a new author, and he seems to have hit a home run with his first novel, a mystery/thriller entitled The Short Drop.

The story’s hero is Gibson Vaughn, a young man with world-class potential who’s the victim of his own indiscretions. Years ago he was briefly famous when he hacked into the computers of a prominent senator, Benjamin Lombard, uncovering evidence of malfeasance. The whole thing blew up on him when further investigation revealed that the actual author of the malfeasance was Gibson’s father, the senator’s chief aid. Gibson’s father committed suicide, and Gibson himself barely escaped prison when he was allowed to enlist in the marines. On leaving the service Gibson learned that the senator, now Vice President, has neither forgotten nor forgiven. In spite of his skills, Gibson is unhireable.

Then he gets an offer from a security company to do a short-term hacking job. In spite of his desperation, he almost says no, because the head of the company is a man who used to work for Sen. Lombard. He played a major role in prosecuting Gibson. But Gibson changes his mind when he learns the purpose of the investigation. They’re trying to find out what happened to Suzanne Lombard, the senator’s daughter. She was like a sister to Gibson, and she disappeared as a teenager while Gibson was in jail awaiting trial. He joins the team to work with a male/female pair of operatives, and gets involved more deeply than anybody planned.

The story that follows must have been a nightmare to outline. Surprise follows surprise, good guys and bad guys change places, people die unexpectedly, and the plot twists around like a politician’s principles. The tension never lets up.

Highly recommended, with the usual cautions.

Authors, Fiction

The Night the Devil Stole the Moon

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Volzhskiy prospekt, Samara

Nikolai Gogol’s The Night Before Christmas is not the kind of Christmas story today’s readers expect to find on the holiday sale shelf.

The novella is unlike most Christmas stories. It opens with the devil flying above the small village of Dikanka, enjoying one last night of freedom before he must return to hell, when he decides to steal the moon and put it in his pocket in order to thwart the amorous designs of the local blacksmith, Vakula. In addition to being an excellent blacksmith, Vakula is also a talented painter, and his favorite theme is the vanquishing of Satan.

Micah Mattix writes, “perhaps no Russian writer is as foreign as Nikolai Gogol. He was even baffling to his own countrymen. ‘Gogol was a strange creature,’ Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote in his idiosyncratic biography of the writer, ‘but genius is always strange.’”

Fiction

Flash fiction: “The Slaying Song Tonight”

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(Phil and Loren Eaton have turned their skilled hands to flash fiction over the years. I never had a suitable idea before. But here’s one. Copyright 2015 by Lars Walker.)

The killer whistled a Christmas carol as he rinsed the blood from the knife. The stuff ran thick and dark at first, but grew thinner and clearer until the stream of water out of the faucet ran pure. The knife wouldn’t stand up to forensic analysis, he knew, but only the victims’ blood was there. And in any case, he himself was above suspicion. Still, he liked to leave things as clean and orderly as possible. It was a personal quirk.

The remote location of this house had been perfect for his purposes. The couple had screamed long and loud – they had known who he was and why he was killing them, and he had not let them die quickly. But he was methodical about his work. Now only the child remained, but that was a routine job.

He climbed the stairs and entered the room where the child lay sprawled on a bed. Her eyes went wide when she saw him. “You!” she cried. “It’s you!”

He unbuckled the straps that secured her to the bed frame. Tenderly he lifted her in his arms. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s all right. I’ll take you to your parents; then I’ll have to get to work. Lots to do tonight.”

The child wept great sobs and buried her head in his shoulder. He didn’t try to quiet her. It was good for her to cry. She would have to cry a great deal, and would need to talk to someone. But she would not die. Tonight this child would not die.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Everything will be fine. But you need to promise me one thing.”

“Wh-what?” she asked, through her sobs.

“Never tell anyone who rescued you. The children must never know of this – only the ones I rescue, like you. For most children, this is the happiest night of the year. For you it will never be the same. I understand that. You’ll have to help me carry my burden, to save the night for the little ones.”

“I will,” said the girl, holding tight to his red coat. “Does that make me one of Santa’s helpers?”

Fiction

Why #Ferrantefever?

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Orta San Giulio

“Why have Elena Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels—My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child—become such a phenomenon with American and British readers?” asks Fernanda Moore. “The prose, in Ann Goldstein’s translation, is artless, repetitive, and stale. There are too many characters to keep track of, and much of the quartet’s cultural nuance . . . whizzes right over non-Italian heads.” Plus the stories don’t remind us of the beautiful, romantic Italy we’ve seen in many movies.

Moore doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see the fuel behind #Ferrantefever. She doesn’t get the appeal of overly long novels with vague backdrops and confusing, if not actually confused, details.

Alan Jacobs, on the other hand, finds them “utterly compelling.” “I had been telling myself for some time that I simply no longer have the tolerance for contemporary realistic fiction. Then I started this story and thought: Oh. I just haven’t come across anything this masterful in a while.” He sees the four novels as a single long novel, and not about friendship, but profound hatred. (via Prufrock)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Laurus,’ by Eugene Vodolazkin

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Angels do not tire, said the Angel, because they do not scrimp on their strength. If you are not thinking about the finiteness of your strength, you will not tire, either. Know, O Arseny, that only he who does not fear drowning is capable of walking on water.

My friend Dale Nelson recently recommended this newly translated Russian novel to me. It sounded intriguing, so I read it. The book was Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin, a novel unlike any other I’ve read – and I expect you’ll feel the same.

On the surface, Laurus is a simple modern version of a traditional hagiography, a saint’s life. Arseny is an orphan born in 15th Century Russia. He is raised by his grandfather, an herbalist healer. Arseny becomes an herbalist too, and eventually surpasses his teacher. He gradually realizes that the herbs he uses are almost irrelevant; God has placed healing power in his hands.

But Arseny commits a great sin, which fills him with guilt. His whole life, and the course of his story, are afterward dominated by his passion to somehow do penance and gain salvation, if not for himself, at least for the ones he hurt. From being a renowned and revered healer he descends into amnesia, wandering in poverty as a “holy fool.” Then he becomes a pilgrim, on the road to Jerusalem. On that journey he meets an Italian friend, Ambroggio. Ambroggio is devoted to studying the problem of the nature of time – this is dramatized by the fact that he wholly believes that the world will end in 1492, but at the same time often has visions of events centuries beyond his time. He sees no contradiction in this.

After his pilgrimage, Arseny returns to Russia and becomes a monk, and then retires to the life of a solitary hermit (that’s where he is given the name “Laurus,” the last of several names he bears in his life). He dies very near the place he was born, reliving, in a higher key, the crisis of his early life.

Laurus is an eccentric book which operates on a number of levels. As in a medieval book, dialogue is not indicated by quotation marks. You have to figure out where characters’ speeches start. You might call the book Christian fantasy, but there are also elements of science fiction – speculation on the nature of time is central to the whole thing. Arseny doesn’t experience his life quite in sequence, and there are anachronisms – like plastic water bottles lying as litter in a medieval forest – that have been put there for a reason.

Theologically, Protestants like me aren’t going to be entirely satisfied with the story. The doctrine here seems to be that grace is not free – at least for great sins, one must first show penitence through costly sacrifices, and then – if God is convinced of one’s repentance – forgiveness may be granted. Arseny suffers greatly to serve others, denies himself about as much as is physically possible, works miracles, and yet is never sure of his salvation.

But that’s probably (I don’t know for sure) true to Orthodox theology, and so makes the book historically authentic. It’s certainly a moving story, though it can also be quite funny. The translation by Lisa C. Hayden is highly readable.

There’s some disturbing material, but nothing that should offend the average Christian reader. I recommend Laurus. It would reward repeated readings.

Fiction

Where Did You Go, Short Story?

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“The dullest short stories I read from the last fifteen years were winners of competitions,” writes Hensher, who sieved through journals, old and new, to source the material for these collections. He characterises the winning stories of contemporary competitions as “present-tense solitary reflections”, their protagonists “lying on their beds affectlessly pondering; major historical events were considered gravely; social media were dutifully brought in to indicate an eye on the contemporary”. It is a mistake to believe that competitions, rather than a system of commissions, payments, circulation and readers, will generate literary quality.

Philip Hensher has compiled two volumes for Penguin’s Book of British Short Stories. (via Prufrock)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Trent’s Last Case,’ by E. C. Bentley

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I’ll bellyache about my developing self-exile from all popular culture in another post. Suffice it to say, just now, that I’m thinking about trying to find good mystery stories from the past to read. In that spirit, I bought E. C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, one of the groundbreaking novels in the genre.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley has the distinction, not only of being the author of some seminal mysteries, but of inventing a form of light verse, a sort of short-cut limerick called the Clerihew. Here’s one of the more successful ones:

“The mustache on Hitler
Could hardly be littler,”
Was the thought that kept recurring
To Field Marshall Goehring.

On top of that he was a childhood schoolfellow and lifelong friend of G. K. Chesterton. So he comes highly recommended.

His novel, Trent’s Last Case, published in 1913, stars Philip Trent, a young artist who doubles as a crime reporter for a London newspaper. He is sent to a country estate in the wake of the murder of its owner, a predatory American financier. Faced with a confusing scenario – why was the victim dressed in mismatched clothes, and missing his false teeth? – he finally comes to a conclusion about whodunnit – which he suppresses for private reasons. But that’s only half the book. The second part involves a series of further revelations that confound all his conclusions.

It’s a clever book, in the English tradition (later established in the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction”) of the “cozy” puzzle mystery. But honestly, it’s all a little too clever for me. In order to fool the reader, the author (it seems to me) pushes and crosses the bounds of plausibility. He works hard to make it all seem consistent with real human nature, but he does not entirely succeed – in my view.

Also, the prose style somewhat irritated me. Granted the author lived before Hemingway, but when he gives us a short biography of each major character on their first appearance in the story, rather than showing us what they’re like through their words and actions, it seems like lazy writing to me. I mean, Conan Doyle was considerably older than Bentley, but he knew how to reveal a character.

I can’t condemn Trent’s Last Case – it’s an acknowledged classic. But for me it didn’t work very well. Your mileage will likely vary.

On the bright side, no content cautions at all are necessary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Greater Trumps,’ by Charles Williams

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Back in the 1970s, in the flush of an upsurge of interest in C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, Eerdmans Publishers brought out American editions of Charles Williams’ novels. One that came later than the others and (if my perceptions were correct) did not stay in print long, was The Greater Trumps. Williams is not a writer for everyone, and this book in particular was especially unsuited for Eerdmans’ market. I borrowed it from a friend and read it at the time. I recalled it over the years with bemusement and some affection. Recently I acquired a complete Kindle edition of all Williams’ novels (which oddly seems to have now disappeared from Amazon), and read it again. My reaction is mixed.

Prof. Bruce Charlton, of the invaluable The Notion Club Papers blog, has been posting about Williams quite a lot recently, and has brought out some information that was not well known in the past – even, apparently, to Lewis himself. Charles Williams was not the saintly, highly spiritual character his friends thought he was. Without judging his salvation, he seems to have carelessly crossed a number of moral and theological lines. He was serially unfaithful to his wife, and he dabbled in the occult. And that’s where the first, obvious problem with The Greater Trumps makes itself apparent. The Greater Trumps is a Christian fantasy centered on the Tarot, the occult system of fortunetelling through cards.

Mr. Coningsby (his given name, to his lifelong distress, is Lothair) is a Commissioner in Lunacy – if I understand correctly, that is a civil service position delegated to evaluate the competence of people in the commitment process. He is a stuffy and unimaginative man, but not malicious. He has a sister, Sibyl, a middle-aged maiden lady who long ago renounced the flesh and devoted herself to loving everyone and everything around her, as expressions of the great Love (that is, of God). He also has a daughter, Nancy, who recently become engaged to a strange young man named Henry Lee. Henry is descended from Gypsies (spelled “Gipsies” here), and – although he genuinely loves Nancy – he has an ulterior motive in their relationship. Mr. Coningsby recently inherited, from a friend, a valuable collection of antique playing cards. Among these packs, unknown to him or to anyone except for certain Gypsies, is the very first, original Tarot pack. This pack was created by a great mystic ages ago, and partakes of the very nature of the universe itself, along with the mystical powers that control it. For that reason, the cards not only can tell the future, but can be used as magical talismans to manipulate nature. Continue reading ‘The Greater Trumps,’ by Charles Williams →

Fiction

Scientists as Superheroes

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Super Science Friends! is a developing animated series from Tinman Creative Studios, which boasts “just the right amount of smart, just the right amount of stupid.” In it, Winston Churchill has assembled a team of scientific greats, Telsa, Curie, Darwin, Einstein, and Freud and a few others to combat scientific evils and well as those who would use them for their own ends. Unfortunately, it’s not for kids. Which is odd.