Breakfast At Libraries

When I bought Naomi’s Room by Jonathan Aycliffe, I had some vague idea that it was a dark, creepy but ultimately realistic psychological thriller about a man trying to unravel the mystery of his missing child, not least because the cover describes it as 'the psychological masterpiece'. 

Turns out I was wrong, though. Naomi’s Room is a full-on terrifying horror story, complete with ghosts and gruesomeness.

Charles Hillenbrand, an ageing academic living alone in a large Cambridge house, is tortured not only by the loss of his five-year-old daughter Naomi twenty or so years previously but also by the relentless haunting of his home. As the novel proceeds, we begin to learn what happened to Naomi and why Hillenbrand still lives alone, dogged by the oppressive, malevolent ghosts who torment him daily.

From the moment Hillenbrand begins to talk of strange noises and odd happenings in Naomi’s old nursery, I was pleasingly  unsettled: the ghost story elements of this novel are extremely well-executed and for me, among the most frightening I've read. Most of the novel relates what happened at the time of Naomi's disappearance, and does so very effectively, but for me it's the present-day narrative, the story of Hillenbrand living by himself and unable to find peace, that really does have the fearfully oppressive, claustrophobic feel of the most terrifying ghost stories (another excellent example of this is Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, probably the most frightening book I've ever read) - although there are certainly elements to the 1970s chapters - most notably the intervention of a photographer whose pictures prove chillingly revealing - that also made me shiver.

Where I found Naomi's Room a little less successful were the points at which things escalated into gore and violence. There are times when Aycliffe leaves particular things unsaid, planting terrifying images in the reader's mind through hints and allusions, and this is highly effective (not to mention skilled). But there also one or two sections in the book that are explicitly gruesome and edging into sadistic territory. There is perhaps a degree to which these were necessary, as - without giving too much away - a certain shock value is required at certain moments in the story, but I found myself wondering if some of the horror might have been more skin-crawlingly eerie and less Grand Guignol if Aycliffe had just reined it in a little. I also felt that some of the characters were rather under-explored, which in some ways made their fates seem more gratuitous. I'd like to have seen them developed into more than victims.

All in all, though, Naomi's Room is incredibly scary in places and, unlike far too many horror novels, well-written in terms of the quality of Aycliffe's prose and with a tautly efficient, tension-building structure. Just be wary of reading it in the house alone...

Jeremy Dyson is the member of The League of Gentlemen team who doesn’t appear on screen. He’s also the co-writer of the stage hit Ghost Stories, a deeply unsettling play in the ‘portmanteau’ format beloved of British horror films of the 1960s and 70s, in which several separate stories are told within a overarching narrative. Like his fellow Gentlemen Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss, Dyson seems to have a frame of horror interest that’s incredibly similar to my own, heavily influenced by pre-1975 films, short story anthologies and slightly cheaply-produced books called things like ‘The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts’. If he’s got a pack of vintage Horror Top Trumps knocking around, used to collect Armada Ghost Books, always chose the Dracula ice lolly and got Shiver & Shake annual for Christmas every year, he’s probably just me in a parallel universe in which I am inexplicably a successful northern  male writer.

The Haunted Book, then – also in the ‘portmanteau’ format, and presented as a work of non-fiction in which Dyson is commissioned by the mysterious Aiden Fox to compile a collection of mostly contemporary British ghost stories – should by rights have been the perfect read for me. And, as I would have expected, a lot of it did certainly resonate with me.

Each story-within-the-story (and there are many) is a gem. Some of them are ghost stories in the conventional sense. A man is haunted by a ghostly voice from a disconnected phone, for instance, and an evil spirit stalks an old library. Some of them, however, are something different, and ultimately more unsettling: the one that has continued to nag at my subconscious since I finished the book over a week ago features no actual ‘ghosts’ at all, but rather a family trying to find an abandoned amusement park they once visited but have never been able to locate again. It’s a story where what remains unsaid and unexplained is more disturbing than what is. And most – perhaps all – the stories have a strong psychological undercurrent that suggests that what we’re really frightened of most of all is ourselves.

There’s more to The Haunted Book than just a collection of stories. However, it’s almost impossible to go into much detail about what is arguably the most interesting aspect of the book without giving away the end, and the experience of reading it does rely somewhat on that end coming as a surprise. It’s probably enough to say that the title of the book is no accident, as Dyson (in his fictional guise as the protagonist, at least) discovers books within books within books, all written by authors with curiously significant names. Those who went to see Ghost Stories may remember what happens to Dr Goodman, the rationalist sceptic and professor of parapsychology (played by Andy Nyman in the production I saw) who tells the stories themselves, and also the degree to which the audience were drawn into the production. Perhaps elements of The Haunted Book will come as less of a surprise to them.

Without giving any further explanation, I’ll just say that while the end of The Haunted Book is undeniably a clever one that elevates the book above a straightforward ghost story collection, I also found its high-concept artifice a little distancing. The element of the novel that’s supposed to really draw the reader in was, for me, the very thing that made me feel as if I was taking a step back and losing contact with the chilling undercurrent of the book overall. Perhaps the fault lies with me, and I was too  busy looking out for it, too keen to analyse. But all that said, I can’t help but admire the way Dyson brings the novel together at its conclusion for its sheer ingenuity. It's an ending that will stay with me for some time, and I suspect it will stand up to repeated re-readings.

If you have even the slightest interest in ghost stories, I'd recommend The Haunted Book. And if you’ve read it, do let me know what you think.

I’ll come clean: I’m wary of self-published fiction. This is because I’ve had so many people promote self-published novels to me, and when I’ve read a few sample pages, I’ve been immediately put off by things like glaring spelling and grammar errors in the first few pages, or writing that’s just plain bad. When there are many thousands of great books out that that have been through some form of quality control at least, I’m reluctant to risk hours of reading time on something that hasn’t benefited from that process. I’m sure this is unfair: after all, there are some traditionally published books that are utterly dire, and doubtless some self-published ones that are brilliant. But by and large, as a general rule, there’s a minimum standard, at least, for a traditionally published novel, but no such minimum standard exists for self-published work. Given that my reading time is precious, I’m rarely willing to risk wasting it.

Black Is The Colour is somewhat different though. For a start, the author Helen Howe tells me that a well-known literary agency has already picked it up and is seeking a traditional publishing deal for her while making her work available on Amazon in its current form to build up some interest in her work. I didn’t know this until after I read the book, however, so it was still something of a leap of faith for me when I decided to give it a go. It came to my attention when the author referred to it on Twitter and mentioned that it namechecks a favourite folk band of mine. Out of curiosity, I read a few sample pages and found them to be happily error-free and well-written enough to hold my attention, so I took a risk and downloaded the book to my Kindle. At less than two quid, I certainly couldn’t argue that I’d have wasted much money if I hated it, after all, and the premise of the novel interested me: a psychological thriller with a backdrop of folk music and self-sufficiency. (Yes, I’m a folk fan. Yes, I like jumpers and real ale. I’m still working on growing a beard, but being a girl I’m finding it tricky.)

I’m delighted to say that I’m not sorry I took a chance with Black Is The Colour. The story begins with Lauren, the narrator, falling head over heels for Jay through a haze of dope and fiddle-playing at a summer folk festival. Still smarting from her break-up with a married man, Lauren agrees, on impulse, to move into Jay’s isolated country cottage: they’ll raise chickens, grow their own veg and form a band, she imagines. But the cottage is a rundown 60s bungalow, there’s no phone reception or internet connection, and the band members are handpicked from Jay’s standoffish clique of local friends. And worse, it soon becomes obvious that Jay has something to hide. What happened to his previous partner? Why is he so inextricably tied to Dumpy, his sly, charmless, sullen best friend? How is he connected to the death of a girl at a local quarry? And what lies within the bungalow’s mysteriously locked room?

Black Is The Colour certainly stands up well against plenty of other psychological thrillers I’ve read as a gripping page-turner and a good holiday read. It’s dark and creepy with many a chilling moment and plenty of mysteries to puzzle over, and the characters are believable and well-drawn. There’s a hint of modern gothic in the mix, with a brooding, secretive love interest whose life seems peppered with eerie reminders of a darkly glamorous former wife (all very Rebecca), a strange mute child (one of my favourite characters in the novel), oddly hallucinogenic moments and claustrophobic rural isolation.

The folk-scene backdrop is convincing but not over-described and certainly shouldn’t put off non-folkies, and the pace – this is a pretty short read – is good. The main plot is skilfully executed and takes turns that, while unexpected, are mostly convincing. Bar a few tiny (and I do mean tiny) proofreading errors in this edition, the quality of Helen Howe’s prose easily ranks with many a bestselling thriller writer – Lauren’s narrative voice flows well and strikes a suitable balance between the colloquial and the atmospheric according to requirements.

It’s fair to say that I did have some issues with the book. The main problem I encountered was really that the plot of the novel is rather dependent on Lauren repeatedly making decisions that struck me as downright daft. For a woman who is clearly intelligent and independent, she seems remarkably willing to move in with a cute guy on a whim and to remain there despite some tremendously obvious warning signs that something is terribly wrong. If you’ve ever watched a horror film and been annoyed with a woman for creeping into an unlit basement at night to investigate a ghostly sound, then you’ll find there are many occasions during Black Is The Colour when you’ll want to shout at Lauren, no matter how much her actions are explained by the blindness of love (and in any case, Jay is frankly no Max de Winter). Moreover, her keenness to impress her sister Lou at apparently any cost and the importance she places on the appearance of the house, redecorating and refurnishing at a crazy pace despite Jay’s reluctance, seems infuriatingly superficial at times (although perhaps understandable at others, within the wider context of her circumstances). Without giving too much away, the success of the ending of this book rather relies on the reader being shocked at Lauren’s actions, but for me,  there was a sense in which they seemed rather inevitable – so, while I can’t deny that Helen Howe has done a fine job of keeping Lauren in character, this paradoxically slightly reduced the impact of the denouement in my eyes. Only slightly, though  - and it’s a subjective gripe on my part, albeit one that did niggle a little.

My only other issue with Black Is The Colour was that I felt there were perhaps a couple of elements to the plot that were unnecessary and didn’t quite sit well with the rest of the story – primarily a particular incident involving Lauren’s sister, and also an ambiguous nod towards the supernatural. In fairness, I did enjoy the latter, but just felt it could have been more deftly woven into the story: as it is, I felt there was a slight lack of cohesion. Taken in isolation, this element was well-executed, however – I can imagine Helen Howe writing a cracking ghost story one day.

Overall, though, I found Black Is The Colour an enjoyable read, one that I had no problem racing through from start to finish on a long journey. The psychological themes of obsession and control were cleverly explored and the plot and characters memorable – I could happily see this as a gripping TV drama. As far as I’m aware, this is Helen Howe’s first novel, and it’s impressive as a debut thriller. Any forthcoming publishing deal will be, in my eyes, deserved.