M.V. Clark's Blog, page 9

Northern gothic - The Loney

I've just finished The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley, a gothic novel about religion dashing itself to pieces on the implacable landscape of the North of England.

The story follows a group of devout Catholics visiting a shrine on the Lancashire coast in the hope of curing a mute boy, Hanny. It is told through the eyes of Hanny's protective younger brother Smith.

Published in 2016, The Loney was rapturously received by critics. It won the Costa First Book Award and the British Book Industry Awards Book of the Year.

Hurley's writing is beautiful - it reminds me of Dylan Thomas and Ted Hughes whilst also having its own unique quality. You can almost taste each word.

Each characters is brilliantly drawn. Mummer, a passive-aggressive mother devoted to her disabled child and clinging to her religious certainties, is a masterpiece.

The plot is simple, but there's another more tangled plot beneath it which is only ever glimpsed. There are repeated suggestions a revelation is imminent, but it never arrives.

At first I was frustrated by the ambiguity, but by the end I began to enjoy it. It forced me to think like one of the characters. I wasn't sure how things joined together, I grasped for an explanation.

Some readers said The Loney is not particularly frightening. I disagree. I did not want to go down into that basement and when the narrative took me there I was genuinely distressed.

Others have complained that the end is unsatisfying. Although the whole story is about the unraveling of neat endings, I confess felt this too.

But after putting the book down I'm still thinking about it. So maybe Hurley knows exactly what he's doing.

If you've got to the end and you're puzzled too, there is a great discussion here (warning: SPOILERS).

How New York does Spooky

Yes, yes, yes, I know, Halloween is over. I've told my husband, who took these photos, all about news values but he says I'm just 'old media'. He is insisting I do this post so here goes.

We were in New York visiting relatives the week before Halloween. My husband took some great photos showing how inventive - or desensitized depending to your point of view - New Yorkers are around horror imagery.

My lovely, lovely, hardworking and super-competent cousin, a typical New Yorker, made these for her kid's bake sale. Why would one think twice about a four year-old biting down on a bloodstained axe? Where's your sense of fun?

Here we see a theme emerging - the weaving together of horror and shopping. This skull was as big as a boulder.

Self-explanatory, but BIG!

Back to shopping - this is a department store. You can buy that harness.

An authentic momento mori in Bloomingdales. Check out the way the skeleton is leering at the mannequin decked in its transient earthly goods.

Blimey these New Yorkers really have strong stomachs don't they! This isn't supernatural, it's just sadism! I don't know about you, but this made me think of Fred West, which is never pleasant.

Rewatching The Babadook

Rewatching The Babadook, it feels viscerally real, as if I've lived it.

It's the story of single mum Amelia and her son Samuel. Samuel's father died the night he was born and the family that remains is hopelessly haunted by this loss.

That loss eventually manifests through a mysterious children's book about an alarming character called the Babadook.

I'm sure there are plenty of families out there that have nothing particularly unmanageable in the cellar. But many do - I believe mine did - and this film is for us.

Often the short film that inspires a horror feature is actually better - Mama I'm looking at you. 

But the short film Monster that preceeded The Babadook shows how an archetypal scenario - which evokes little more than a powerful mood - can become more potent with the addition of specifics.

So potent that although the exact details of The Babadook don't apply to me, I still feel it's about me.

Anyone else?

Another Kuso Blog

My husband was shocked that I posted the trailer for Kuso in the blog post below because of the beaver shot on the freeze frame.

His reaction made me think. The film is aggressively shocking and it forces you to be 'in' or 'out'. I felt that it's brilliance justified its style a million times over so I was in. But on reflection I'm not sure you can be 'in' if you are a woman without a bit of discomfort.

Kuso is seductive. You want to be down with it, you want to celebrate it like it's celebrating itself. But then you find you are posting 1970s pornography up on your website...

This is problematic. It doesn't make the film less brilliant, but I'm not going to press it upon my girlfriends. They can find their own way to it if they are want to see it.

I've also removed the trailer, but here is Flying Lotus in his own words and it's pretty unmissable. No beavers either.

Kuso

So Kuso, a film by Steve. What was all that about eh? As we say here in the UK about anything remotely unusual.

Kuso - available exclusively on the excellent streaming service Shudder - is kinda hard to explain.

The title is apparently Japanese for 'shit' in the sense of 'the shit you find on the internet'. But there's plenty of literal poo, alongside sex and death and all that fun stuff.

I've been telling people that Kuso's like Eraserhead but in colour, with jokes and fabulous music. In fact there's much more to the film than that - it goes deep into race in a remarkable way for example.

I loved it. I have never seen actors exude more delight, despite being covered in boils and dealing with, ahem, lots of kuso. I can only presume that the director - Steve aka musician Flying Lotus - is an absolute joy to work with.

I thought the transdimensional beings (aka furry aliens) were a bit aggressive but when I found out what they were actually supposed to be I realised there are no gaps in the mad truth that runs through the film.

Kuso stays with you - after watching it I felt a great need to unburden myself of the experience to all and sundry. So much so that I'm hoping to have a Kuso girls night for some of my unitiated female friends.

Pop the champers ladies, Flying Lotus is a genius!

#MeToo

I applaud the bravery of all the women coming forwards on social media to talk about the sexual harassment and assaults they have experienced, following the revelations about film producer Harvey Weinstein.

I have to confess something, however, At first, when I saw all this #metoo stuff, it seemed over the top. I've come across plenty of women who are as awful as the worst men. I know lots of men who are honest, kind and fair.

But after a while of reading all these testimonies, I remembered what happened to me. So many times. The kind of stuff you shrug off and forget. Still, I cannot pretend I don't know what all the fuss is about. #metoo

Scary mountains - Thin Air by Michelle Paver

I am a BIG fan of Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Not much frightens me but even years after reading it, the central image still gets me in the viscera.

So I was delighted to discover she'd written a new novel in the same vein, Thin Air. Another period ghost story satirising the rigid masculinity, class prejudices and colonial superiority of 1930s British explorers.

Except this time it's about a team of mountaineers scaling a peak in Nepal, rather than a scientific expedition to the Arctic.

Paver writes brilliantly about extreme physical conditions, and about groups of men living on the edge of their nerves. The atmosphere of dread forms with crystalline and ineluctable clarity, like an icicle.

I loved the central relationship between the brothers on the climbing expedition. My only complaints would be that I would have liked a deeper exploration of this relationship.

Reading Thin Air, I was reminded of a film called the Dyatlov Pass Incident. I had it on my watchlist for a long time but ultimately it got away from me. It's about the true story of nine Russian hikers who were found frozen to death on Kholat Syakhl (Dead Mountain) after inexplicably fleeing their tents. I found the idea hauntingly sad and maybe that's why in the end I never watched the film.

But there's a whole sub-genre out there on those mountains. I hope Paver goes back to it, and others follow.