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When a novel centres around child who has a hard life, I can’t help thinking that it’s a fictional take on the author’s own upbringing. I could find scant information on Noel Virtue, but his first novel, The Redemption Of Elsdon Bird (1987), would appear to have details hinting that the Elsdon Bird of the title is a riff on the author: both grew up in Wellington, have a passion for telling stories, and zookeeping gets a mention, too. That he has written a volume of autobiography called Once A Brethren Boy points in that direction, too.

But speculation aside, this novel dealing with a child growing up in rural New Zealand is a gem of a read and, while being reminiscent of novels like Ian Cross’ The God Boy and Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, it feels fresher because it’s told in the third person, and therefore the confusion of the main character in the world around him isn’t communicated via his naive narration, something that feels all too common in this type of novel.

Sacked from his job for trying to “save” his coworkers, Elsdon Bird’s father finds employment as a supervisor in a rural factory, a position that comes with a house. Elsdon is looking forward to the new place but he finds that things aren’t all that green on the other side. For one, his parents are hardcore Brethren and their rejection of all that’s fun in life confuses this enthusiastic ten year old, leaving him able only to confide in the animals around him. And as his parents’ fundamentalist values escalate, Elsdon becomes the focus of their frustrations, frequently ending up on the wrong side of uncalled for beatings:

…uncertain that Jesus could be his friend when his mum gave him hidings on His behalf - ‘The Lord’s so angry at you!’ his mum would yell as she beat his legs and bottom with the razor-strop - Elsdon found his world a confused, lonely place. No wonder he dawdled all the way home from school…

While life doesn’t get any better for Elsdon, the poor lad remains chirpy throughout. With friends, toys, and books all taken away from him, all he’s left with is his imagination. But with little inspiring it, it’s a wonder he can make it from one day to the next. Dealing with all that’s bad in life marks this short novel out as a wonderful read: the brutal removal of everything in the boy’s life proves Elsdon Bird is “pretty brave” as, with unflinching optimism, he pushes on.

Although it’s in the third person, The Redemption Of Elsdon Bird’s narration comes pretty close to telling the story from the boy’s point of view: the prose is light and easy to read and is shot through with local slang. Hidden behind its rustic charm, it tackles serious issues of religion, abuse, fanaticism, and tolerance, leaving the interpretation inferred from the story rather than being preachy, which, given Elsdon’s father and all the novel is against, would be hypocritical:

No one else on his mum’s side of the family went to the Gospel Hall. All his dad’s relatives went. His dad’s sister Aunt Biddy, who had never married, went to a Gospel Hall in Wellington. Then there was Uncle Judah, his dad’s brother, and his wife, Aunt Una. They lived up north in Masterton and were very strict.

Uncle Bryce didn’t go to any church and once told Elsdon that on Sundays he went to his best mate’s house at Titahi Bay and got shickered on beer. Elsdon pined for the day when he might be allowed to join them.

For a short novel, The Redemption Of Elsdon Bird packs a lot in, its themes popping up and recurring as life develops and then disintegrates for the Birds. The many rural locations in which it occurs give it a gothic feel, only substituting the Deep South for the southern hemisphere. Adding to this notion is the sense - and sometimes, admission - that its characters are “crook in the head”. So, for a novel that will delight and horrify in equal measure, it’s worth making a necessity of this Virtue.

Some books seem to capture the imagination and transcend the boundaries of fiction. Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black would appear to be one such novel, given that it’s been adapted for both stage and screen. In fact, the stage version has been playing in London for almost twenty years. There must be something about it that makes it such an enduring tale, so I decided to find out.

It begins with an elderly man, name of Arthur Kipps, listening to his stepchildren share ghost tales one Christmas Eve, as per tradition. When pressed to share his own story, he refuses. And then the narration reflects back to when Kipps was a junior solicitor and was sent to represent the firm at the funeral of a Mrs Alice Drablow, and, in the absence of heirs, to subsequently sift through her papers for information relevant to the now uninhabited property.

On arriving in the coastal town of Crythin Gifford Kipps finds the locals secretive, and it’s obvious they know more than they let on. Although he’s staying at a local inn, he finds himself spending most of his time at Eel Marsh House, Drablow’s creepy old home on an offshore island accessible only when the tide is recedes. And when Kipps represents the firm at Drablow’s funeral, he sights a mysterious mourner, a woman all in black, which leads the novel, and its main character, along a supernatural path culminating in a dramatic yet inevitable finale.

It’s no secret that Hill has returned to the stories of M.R. James when writing her ghost story, one of the chapters goes so far as to borrow a title. But thankfully, like the stories that open the novel, there’s little of the expected supernatural staples knowingly listed:

…of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains…

What there is, then, is a slow burning sense of menace. Sure, there’s ghosts and some spooky goings on - and a town unwilling to speak about them - but its the pages between visitations as Kipps tries to makes sense of his predicament and try to understand why such other-wordly goings on are, well, going on. Needless to say, an explanation is given but this doesn’t weaken the story as it gives substance instead - and there’s still the question of how such things are possible. Like all good supernatural fiction, they just are.

Hill’s prose throughout maintains a gothic tone that superbly captures a post-war village distanced from the world at large where common sense comes after superstition. Characters, when asked straightforward questions, rightly pause during speech to give the needed sense of foreboding, the and descriptions are sorrow-tinged and abundant in adjectives without being unpalateble:

It was indeed a melancholy little service, with so few of us in the cold church, and I shivered as I thought once again how inexpressably sad it was that the ending of a whole human life, from birth and childhood, through adult maturity to extreme old age, should be here marked by no blood relative or heart’s friend, but only by two men connected by nothing more than business…

While The Woman In Black isn’t a groundbreaking piece of fiction - and it doesn’t set out to be - it certainly invigorates my interest in the supernatural. Its gothic atmosphere didn’t seem forced and although it was grim, in a perverse twist, I found it enjoyable. And although there’s no doubt a mountain of ghost stories out there to be read, I’m happy to start with a Hill or two.

Patrick McGrath’s debut novel, The Grotesque, tells the story of Sir Hugo Coal, a paleontologist who, after a fall, has become a vegetable. Able only to watch the world around him, Coal sits in his wheelchair and relates recent events at Crook, the family home, although the thread of his narration is warped by his own bias and imaginings.

Prior to his fall, Sir Hugo, over the years, has been spending more time with his dinosaur bones and not been attentive to his wife, Harriet. But when the butler Fledge comes to Crook, Sir Hugo takes an interest in the man, mainly because the new employee would seem to be spending perhaps too much time with the lady of the house. Based on his actions (whispers here, smirks there) Sir Hugo believes that Fledge is out to usurp his place as head of the house. And when Sidney Giblet, fiance to Sir Hugo’s daughter, goes missing Fledge tops the list of suspects in Sir Hugo’s mind, although he’d rather not tell his worried daughter what he thinks, especially since there’s no real evidence.

The Grotesque is a piece of subtle fiction shot through with lashings of black humour. Perhaps not as subtle as the other McGrath I’ve read, Dr Haggard’s Disease, but there’s so much going on within the novel and the truth, once you realise that Sir Hugo’s account of life at Crook is not reliable, has to be discerned from careful reading between the lines. I’m sad to say that some of the details of the story were lost to me although that didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the story and I’m sure a reread will offer up new meanings and understandings. Like Lolita, it’s almost a novel that needs to be read again, if only to find all the seeds planted before you realised their relevance.

Gothic in tone, The Grotesque, is dense with description, yet is highly readable and the adjectives piled upon other adjectives in no way makes it a slog. And Sir Hugo’s voice maintains its charm for the duration without once slipping out of character:

So one afternoon I set off with a flask of whisky and a stout stick, and after tramping down a soggy cart track between thick growths of birch and alder I found myself beneath a vast gray sky with miles of flat, boggy fen before me and a lake in the distance. The air had a smoky, autumnal tang to it, I remember, and as I picked my way over the rough damp clumps of peat and moss, all tufted with marsh grass and bristling in the wind, and puddled between with rank, black water, my heart exulted at the stillness and desolation of it all. Wildfowl rose from their nests in the weeds and with a great honking flurry went flapping off towards the water, and I came squelching on through in my Wellington boots, with my thick tweed cap pulled low against the bite of the wind.

The characters in The Grotesque, as told by Sir Hugo, are all lively and believable, their Dickension names adding to the humorous gothic atmosphere. Who they are and what they want is of course hard to define since we aren’t given a clear depiction of them. But it’s fairly easy to read them based on their actions despite the presentation given. Fledge, the main concern of Sir Hugo, is the biggest concern of Sir Hugo and it’s rather plain to see that his disdain for the man is not due to any fear of the man but denial of his own feelings towards him.

Although I enjoyed The Grotesque I didn’t appreciate it as much as Dr Haggard’s Disease and felt that there was much left unsaid. That may just because I didn’t read between the lines well enough. But this tale - this comedy, even - is a masterpiece of prose, something that McGrath obviously takes great care with when writing novels. So while there’s unplumbed depths as far as I’m concerned, it’s well worth reading. Just don’t believe a word of it.

For months now, a number of people have been reading Patrick McGrath and talking him up. The novel they’ve usually read is Asylum but, just to be contrary, I thought I’d try a different introduction to the man. Thus I chose Dr Haggard’s Disease, McGrath’s third novel.

Set in pre-war London, the novel is based around a monologue from the eponymous Dr Haggard. Haggard, a general practitioner living in a house on the southern coast of England, is a man who has loved and lost. But, when the son of his former lover pays him a visit old feelings are renewed, former loves remembered, and madness begins to show from beneath the cracks.

Crucial events in Dr Haggard’s Disease, being those that shape the later narrative, happened years before in Haggard’s life when he was a promising young surgeon under the tutelage of Vincent Cushing - a nod perhaps to a couple of actors well known for playing doctors in low-budget horror movies - and under the spell of the senior pathologist’s wife. But it’s the events now, as recalled by Haggard, that drive the narrative on. And, being just ever so slightly mad, there are many moments in which you doubt his version of events, if not everything he has to say. And rightly so. He’s crazy! But ever so poetic with it.

The tone is a modern take on the Gothic, so while there are no clanking chains, ghostly castles, and other supernatural happenings as in previous centuries, there are grim hospitals and dark, rugged coasts with waves crashing against the cliffs. The language here is exemplary and showcases McGrath’s ability to turn a phrase. As an example, one only has to look at the novel’s opening:

I was in Elgin, upstairs in my study, gazing at the sea and reflecting, I remember, on a line of Goethe when Mrs Gregor tapped at the door that Saturday and said there was a young man in the surgery to see me, a pilot. You know how she talks. ‘A pilot, Mrs Gregor?’ I murmured. I hate being disturbed on my Saturday afternoons, especially if Spike is playing up, as he was that day, but of course I limped out onto the landing and made my way downstairs. And you know what that looks like - pathetic bloody display that is, first the good leg, then the bad leg, then the stick, good leg, bad leg, stick, but down I came, down the stairs, old beyond my years and my skin a grey so cachectic it must have suggested even to you that I was in pain, chronic pain, but oh dear boy not pain like yours, just wait now and we’ll make it all - go - away -

It’s testament to McGrath’s ability that he manages to continue this style for nigh on two hundred pages, right up to the gruesome denouement, making the book an absolute delight to read despite the dark subject matter. The characters, while we only have Haggard’s account of them, are strong and easily envisaged - both as the doctor sees them and as we, looking between his words, see them. But however certain Haggard is about his story, as readers our reflections upon them will always be cast in doubt.

As a portrait of a man falling into madness brought about by the ignition of past passions, Dr Haggard’s Disease does no wrong (and if it did, I was too busy enjoying the prose) and its dark tone, tinged with erotica and horror, create an almost perfect novel. Almost, because there were times when I did find the lengthy paragraphs overwhelming, despite their quality. But, now that I’ve joined the ranks of those gushing over McGrath, I know that the next time I need to get away from my usual fare, I’ll be running for Asylum.