The three stories in this collection were originally published as separate “Kindle Singles” but they complement each other very well. Despite their different settings, they share some overlapping themes. More importantly, they all express the atmosphere of old-fashioned eeriness evoked by the well-chosen title Fireside Gothic. This is not blood-and-gore horror, but the type of other-worldly terror which creeps under the reader’s skin. I’ve read a blurb comparing these stories to Andrew Michael Hurley’s brand of folk horror, The Loney in particular. Even this is widely off the mark. If anything, these works are more similar to the ghostly tales of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries or the sort of pastiche (used in its most positive sense) which you would expect from contemporary authors such as Susan Hill.

A perfect example is the opener – Broken Voices. Set in the years prior to the First World War, its protagonists are two teenage students at a Cathedral school who unexpectedly get to spend the Christmas holidays at their school, lodging with a retired teacher. Inspired by ghostly tales about a long-dead composer haunting the cathedral, the boys set off on a nocturnal hunt for the lost score of an anthem, supposedly the composer’s masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea.

The story’s ecclesiastical and scholarly setting is one which M.R. James or E.F. Benson would have found familiar, and reading it gave me the same sort of shivers up the spine which I get from these authors. It helped that I was reading Broken Voices on the first (cold)ish Saturday in my part of the world, and that on the same day I was due to take part in an early Christmas concert. I always savour these types of serendipities which complement the content of a story I’m reading and help me delve into its atmosphere. (I remember the same type of feeling when I was reading Charles Palliser’s The Unburied in December a couple of years back). Indeed, Broken Voices is my favourite in this collection, despite its anticlimactic ending.

The premise of The Leper House is markedly different but, despite its modern trappings (a broken-down car in a remote coastal area with no satnav or phone coverage), it also harks back to a classic trope in ghost stories: on a stormy night, the male narrator visits an old house and meets its intriguing (female) inhabitant but then cannot find the building when he returns to look for it in the sobering light of day. (A similar narrative device is used in Oliver Onions’s The Cigarette Case, a ghost story whose details are strangely identical to a “real-life” incident recounted about an old house in Valletta, Malta. I wonder whether this is a case of art imitating life, or the other way round. But I digress…) I will not give away any further plot details, except to state that Taylor takes this premise to unexpected, genre-bending conclusions.

M.R. James used to say that sex is distracting in a supernatural tale. However, at the heart of The Scratch, is a torrid infatuation between Clare, a middle-aged mother who is more-or-less-happily married to Gerald, and Gerald’s orphaned nephew Jack, who has just returned from Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The story is narrated by Clare, and her guilty musings about this sudden passion for her disturbed lodger are as involving as the work’s supernatural elements. Elements which, one must say, are vague and, possibly, just the result of the protagonists’ feverish imagination – a scratch on Jack’s arm that refuses to heal, Jack’s unnatural revulsion towards his relatives’ pet cat, and his obsession with a phantom big cat which seems to be roaming the nearby forest (although it’s never actually seen except by Jack himself). This is possibly the most original and off-beat of the three stories but, for me, its effect was dampened by the vagueness of its ending – literally a page-load of questions raised – and left unanswered – by the narrator.

Despite these reservations, the collection was right up my street, and I heartily recommend it to fans of classic ghost stories.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/11/fireside-gothic-Andrew-Taylor.html ( )

The three stories in this collection were originally published as separate “Kindle Singles” but they complement each other very well. Despite their different settings, they share some overlapping themes. More importantly, they all express the atmosphere of old-fashioned eeriness evoked by the well-chosen title Fireside Gothic. This is not blood-and-gore horror, but the type of other-worldly terror which creeps under the reader’s skin. I’ve read a blurb comparing these stories to Andrew Michael Hurley’s brand of folk horror, The Loney in particular. Even this is widely off the mark. If anything, these works are more similar to the ghostly tales of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries or the sort of pastiche (used in its most positive sense) which you would expect from contemporary authors such as Susan Hill.

A perfect example is the opener – Broken Voices. Set in the years prior to the First World War, its protagonists are two teenage students at a Cathedral school who unexpectedly get to spend the Christmas holidays at their school, lodging with a retired teacher. Inspired by ghostly tales about a long-dead composer haunting the cathedral, the boys set off on a nocturnal hunt for the lost score of an anthem, supposedly the composer’s masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea.

The story’s ecclesiastical and scholarly setting is one which M.R. James or E.F. Benson would have found familiar, and reading it gave me the same sort of shivers up the spine which I get from these authors. It helped that I was reading Broken Voices on the first (cold)ish Saturday in my part of the world, and that on the same day I was due to take part in an early Christmas concert. I always savour these types of serendipities which complement the content of a story I’m reading and help me delve into its atmosphere. (I remember the same type of feeling when I was reading Charles Palliser’s The Unburied in December a couple of years back). Indeed, Broken Voices is my favourite in this collection, despite its anticlimactic ending.

The premise of The Leper House is markedly different but, despite its modern trappings (a broken-down car in a remote coastal area with no satnav or phone coverage), it also harks back to a classic trope in ghost stories: on a stormy night, the male narrator visits an old house and meets its intriguing (female) inhabitant but then cannot find the building when he returns to look for it in the sobering light of day. (A similar narrative device is used in Oliver Onions’s The Cigarette Case, a ghost story whose details are strangely identical to a “real-life” incident recounted about an old house in Valletta, Malta. I wonder whether this is a case of art imitating life, or the other way round. But I digress…) I will not give away any further plot details, except to state that Taylor takes this premise to unexpected, genre-bending conclusions.

M.R. James used to say that sex is distracting in a supernatural tale. However, at the heart of The Scratch, is a torrid infatuation between Clare, a middle-aged mother who is more-or-less-happily married to Gerald, and Gerald’s orphaned nephew Jack, who has just returned from Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The story is narrated by Clare, and her guilty musings about this sudden passion for her disturbed lodger are as involving as the work’s supernatural elements. Elements which, one must say, are vague and, possibly, just the result of the protagonists’ feverish imagination – a scratch on Jack’s arm that refuses to heal, Jack’s unnatural revulsion towards his relatives’ pet cat, and his obsession with a phantom big cat which seems to be roaming the nearby forest (although it’s never actually seen except by Jack himself). This is possibly the most original and off-beat of the three stories but, for me, its effect was dampened by the vagueness of its ending – literally a page-load of questions raised – and left unanswered – by the narrator.

Despite these reservations, the collection was right up my street, and I heartily recommend it to fans of classic ghost stories.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2019/11/fireside-gothic-Andrew-Taylor.html ( )

Content
A collection of three gothic stories

BROKEN VOICES

“The emptiness of the place enfolded us like a shroud. The air was cold and smelled faintly of earth, incense and candles.” (Quotation page 44)

The narrator remembers one special Christmas, more than forty years ago. He is fifteen years old and has to stay in school over the holidays, together with a boy named Faraday, who is two years younger. Mr. Ratcliffe, an old, long retired teacher, takes care of them and during the evenings, he entertains them with ghost stories about the nearby Cathedral. Some of the stories have real backgrounds, such as the fate of Mr. Goldsworthy, two hundred years ago, and the beautiful anthem he wrote, since lost. Therefore, the boys plan to climb the tower of the Cathedral and search for the lost sheet of notes.

THE LEPER HOUSE

“There’s always a next time.” (Quotation page 159)

After the funeral of his sister, the narrator is on his way to visit a client in Ipswich and afterwards he would drive home to London, where he lives. But there are roadworks, the day changes into a dark, rainy, stormy evening when the traffic stops again. Therefore, he follows some local drivers, taking a narrow road, when one of the tires of his car is punctured. He leaves the car, starts to walk and suddenly he sees a light and arrives at an old cottage by the sea.

THE SCRATCH

“Two things happened that afternoon which were both important, though I didn’t realize their significance until later.” (Quotation page 176)

Clare and Gerald live in a rural area, near the Forest of Dean. Jack, Gerald`s young nephew, just back from the army in Afghanistan, is going to stay with them for some time. He dislikes their cat Cannop, because he generally does not like cats. He is sure that there must be wild cats in the Forest, because sometimes he notices a big, dark shadow on his daily walk through the forest. One day Clare sees a big scratch on his arm.

Conclusion
Three stories, modern versions of the well-known traditional gothic novels, a perfect read for rainy, dark afternoons and evenings. The gripping, suspenseful plot starts from normal daily situations, which makes everything that happens plausible. There are always more solutions and explanations, left open for us readers to think about and find our own ideas. Just relax, light some candles and enjoy the high literary quality of stories and the eerie fascination. ( )

Subtitled: "Three tales of fear, retribution and death". The first, "Broken Voices", is set a few years before WWI. Two neglected boarding school boys who have nowhere to go are left in the care of an elderly retired teacher over the Christmas holiday. Narrated by the older boy, he tells the story of their isolation and the younger boy's desperate need to go looking around the school's cathedral in the middle of the night.
The second story is narrated by a man on the day of his sister's funeral. The siblings had been unable to get along throughout their lives, and the fact that his sister hated him even as she was dying weighs heavy on the man's mind, playing a part in his getting lost between the funeral and his hotel. Driving for hours in the rain, he has a flat tire on a backroad along the coast. He walks toward the only light he sees, and arrives at a cottage among the ruins, with the woman there making it clear she doesn't want to be bothered.
The last story is narrated by Clare. She and her husband Gerald have a nice life in the Forest of Dean. Their children are grown and on their own and Clare enjoys working in her art studio. After little communication over the years, Gerald's young nephew calls to ask if he can stay with them for a while, as he's been discharged from the army for an unspecified nervous condition, and with both his parents dead, he has nowhere else.
Taylor is an author I'll seek out more from. His stories are truly Gothic, walking a line of apprehension that the reader worries will tip into horror. His characters are often alone and grieving in their loneliness, there's rain or snow, darkness- in other words, the perfect Gothic settings. ( )