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The Gate of Air
Jim Smith, ousted from his computer software company, retreats to lick his wounds in an old house in a remote farming county in the West of England. Though he knows nothing of country life, he takes on livestock and crops, a dog and a labourer named John Walker of mysterious and independent habits. One night Jim dreams of a beautiful woman. The dream figure seems to correspond with a portrait on the wall of a neighbour's house, of a famous model of the 1960's, Jean Lampard, who vanished in 1967. At dinner with the local magnate and his wife, Jim sees a ghost. All the certainties and reassurances of modern life vanish, and Jim must deal with forces as old as his fields and woods.
247 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2009
About the author
James Buchan
64 books17 followersJames Buchan is a Scottish novelist and historian who writes on aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 20, 2011
Lots of good reviews on the cover so I was disappointed by this book. Really didn't have a clue what was going on throughout or at the end. This book lost me, I ploughed on to the end but in hindsight would probably have been better to leave it. Found it in my village as part of the Guardian Bookswap, I left out The Constant Gardener for someone else to find (which was a great book).
August 4, 2011
I found this book complicated and difficult to follow at times. No your typical ghost story that is for sure, enjoyed some parts but was not that upset to reach the final page.
May 7, 2019
The book started so well. The mysterious stranger, the bleak and unsettling house, the sense of vague menace and uncertainty. But then, I just lost the plot, literally.
Some of the prose is quite lyrical and beautiful and when it reaches those heights, it's even more disappointing that that level of writing isn't sustained throughout.
I didn't get the love story aspect of it although I liked the feeling of primitive and primal England and it's ancient land, beneath the veneer of middle class/ middle England, but sometimes I couldn't get "it", the story, at all. And other times, the writer seemed to be suffocating under the weight of their literary pretensions.
The ending, supposedly, according to the blurb and quotes, was amazing and incredible, but if that was the case it went right over my head.
I wanted to love this book, but sometimes, the story, the descriptions and the characters just don't connect in my head to make a perfect whole and this was one of those times.
Some of the prose is quite lyrical and beautiful and when it reaches those heights, it's even more disappointing that that level of writing isn't sustained throughout.
I didn't get the love story aspect of it although I liked the feeling of primitive and primal England and it's ancient land, beneath the veneer of middle class/ middle England, but sometimes I couldn't get "it", the story, at all. And other times, the writer seemed to be suffocating under the weight of their literary pretensions.
The ending, supposedly, according to the blurb and quotes, was amazing and incredible, but if that was the case it went right over my head.
I wanted to love this book, but sometimes, the story, the descriptions and the characters just don't connect in my head to make a perfect whole and this was one of those times.
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November 10, 2022A strange little novel. The protagonist is a tech entrepreneur who retires to the country, though he is only a young man. There is an urban/rural tension here that left me bewildered in its details, for neither the urban rural culture depicted was familiar to me. Then the author begins new plots or subplots that he just as swiftly abandons: a mystery, a revenge conspiracy, a romance. The resolution of the book is fitting as an expression of neo-pagan thought, but left me feeling a novel might not be the right art form for neo-paganism. Some memorable images in the book, but narratively unsatisfying.
February 3, 2020
Buchan is always elliptical, but he always writes about elliptical experiences and you can work out what’s happening if you’re anxious about the details. This is a beautiful book if you give it a chance. Jim Smith, as he is known, must be a faintly autobiographical character — an emotionally autobiographical one — or else the narrator wouldn’t hint that that wasn’t his real name: Jim who then? Buchan. It’s okay not to like this book, but give it a chance: some of the sentences will take your breath away.
September 3, 2021
This was a recommendation. So even more of a disappointment.
Found it very difficult to follow but thankful that others found this too.
I have one other book by this same author on my books to read pile so will see if that's better but I am going to have to read something else with much better reviews to break the cycle of so many recent poor reads.
Found it very difficult to follow but thankful that others found this too.
I have one other book by this same author on my books to read pile so will see if that's better but I am going to have to read something else with much better reviews to break the cycle of so many recent poor reads.
March 29, 2024
I am not sure what to make of this story. I may not have started to read if I had noticed the words "A Ghost Story" on the cover as that is not my usual preferred genre. A wealthy businessman leaves behind his life in London for a small rural community and has a number of unexplained encounters.
December 7, 2012
I didn’t get on with this. On the front cover it declares itself “a ghost story” but anyone expecting a shivers down your spine-type experience is likely to be disappointed. It has a cerebral feel to it and is altogether too intelligent for common or garden spookiness. Supernatural events are few and far between and largely confined to dream sequences. But if it wasn’t a ghost story I’m not sure what else it was supposed to be.
From an early stage I had the feeling that whilst the plot probably played itself out fully in the author’s head, only a small fraction of it found its way onto the page. I kept turning back and re-reading sections, convinced I had missed something...the piece that would make it all make sense. But no. We simply stumbled between disjointed events, many of which suggested an interesting direction in which the story might head, but then off we would go on another tangent. There was a chapter in the first half where Jim Smith, the uncharismatically named central character, attends a party at the home of his rich neighbours and is treated rudely. There were moments of drama, moments of humour, and he got to sit next to someone called Glory Gainer who I fully expected to burst into a rendition of “I Will Survive” at any moment, and I thought I was really going to like this book. It’s not as though the quality of the writing is bad – quite the opposite. But it’s writing that gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Soon we were heading off on another incomprehensible dream sequence before an archaeology plotline attempted to gain ascendency. But of course that also shuddered to a premature halt.
Looking back, I wonder whether I really “knew” any of the characters. Jim himself I wrongly supposed to be in his fifties. Fair enough – the first page states that he’s in the “prime of life” but as that’s a phrase I have often heard used to patronise those past middle-age I made incorrect assumptions. Later....much later... I discovered he was younger than me, the rascal. Having mentally placed the waistband of his trousers a few inches below his armpits I had to mentally readjust that and everything else. It was most troubling. It was the same, only worse, with the rest of the cast who are seen in tiny snippets and never feel as important to the reader as they apparently are to the story. It comes to something when one of the most rounded characters is the dog. (He’s called Argos. “What? Like the catalogue-store on the ring road?” Jim observes in a rare moment of real-world clarity)
Having staggered through to the end my head is full of questions, but they are only questions about why things happened the way they did in the story, why did so-and-so say that, how was such and such a character able to guess such and such a thing etc, they aren’t questions that broaden my understanding of any real world topic. I never leave books unfinished, but sometimes ...I really am tempted.
From an early stage I had the feeling that whilst the plot probably played itself out fully in the author’s head, only a small fraction of it found its way onto the page. I kept turning back and re-reading sections, convinced I had missed something...the piece that would make it all make sense. But no. We simply stumbled between disjointed events, many of which suggested an interesting direction in which the story might head, but then off we would go on another tangent. There was a chapter in the first half where Jim Smith, the uncharismatically named central character, attends a party at the home of his rich neighbours and is treated rudely. There were moments of drama, moments of humour, and he got to sit next to someone called Glory Gainer who I fully expected to burst into a rendition of “I Will Survive” at any moment, and I thought I was really going to like this book. It’s not as though the quality of the writing is bad – quite the opposite. But it’s writing that gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Soon we were heading off on another incomprehensible dream sequence before an archaeology plotline attempted to gain ascendency. But of course that also shuddered to a premature halt.
Looking back, I wonder whether I really “knew” any of the characters. Jim himself I wrongly supposed to be in his fifties. Fair enough – the first page states that he’s in the “prime of life” but as that’s a phrase I have often heard used to patronise those past middle-age I made incorrect assumptions. Later....much later... I discovered he was younger than me, the rascal. Having mentally placed the waistband of his trousers a few inches below his armpits I had to mentally readjust that and everything else. It was most troubling. It was the same, only worse, with the rest of the cast who are seen in tiny snippets and never feel as important to the reader as they apparently are to the story. It comes to something when one of the most rounded characters is the dog. (He’s called Argos. “What? Like the catalogue-store on the ring road?” Jim observes in a rare moment of real-world clarity)
Having staggered through to the end my head is full of questions, but they are only questions about why things happened the way they did in the story, why did so-and-so say that, how was such and such a character able to guess such and such a thing etc, they aren’t questions that broaden my understanding of any real world topic. I never leave books unfinished, but sometimes ...I really am tempted.
January 6, 2015
This is another self-consciously arty book. It's obvious the author went to great lengths to ensure every metaphor and description was original and unusual - to the point where I had to keep stopping to work out what they meant. The constant need to stop made reading this novel a very lumpy experience.
I assume the oblique style and lack of explanation was meant to create an air of tension and mystery, but all it did was annoy me.
For most of the book, the story just meanders along without much happening. I couldn't work out the character of the hero at all. Then the resolution comes in a great rush and is totally unbelievable.
By the way, the blurb on the back is false advertising - it's not about ghosts, it's about Graeco-Roman goddesses.
I assume the oblique style and lack of explanation was meant to create an air of tension and mystery, but all it did was annoy me.
For most of the book, the story just meanders along without much happening. I couldn't work out the character of the hero at all. Then the resolution comes in a great rush and is totally unbelievable.
By the way, the blurb on the back is false advertising - it's not about ghosts, it's about Graeco-Roman goddesses.
April 17, 2015
I wish I was not shown others' reviews before I write my own. My thoughts fly out of my head because I want to have argument with everyone.
Thoroughly atmospheric and mysterious. I'm not entirely confident I understood everything (and that's okay), but I'm so disturbed by the book (in a good way; it's what it intended to do) that I don't know if I want to figure it out. Treat the reading as a piece of poetry and be left with the feelings it inspires. I'm not even going to try to make sense of it.
Thoroughly atmospheric and mysterious. I'm not entirely confident I understood everything (and that's okay), but I'm so disturbed by the book (in a good way; it's what it intended to do) that I don't know if I want to figure it out. Treat the reading as a piece of poetry and be left with the feelings it inspires. I'm not even going to try to make sense of it.
February 12, 2012
Doesn't have very good reviews but intriguing! Didn't take very long to read, but I actually quite enjoyed it. It was hard going at points, and I had to read back a few times to check out what was going on, but he does write very poetically. I have come across the idea of the Gate of Air before, a point where life crosses death, and spirits can move freely from one world to another. If I hadn't got confused at some points it would have got more stars!!
July 19, 2016
I reviewed this just ahead of publication, and I'm still not sure what I think of it years on. Basically, it's an undeniably well-written, but dull, ghost story, starring a man who can learn ancient Greek and Latin in one night off the Internet. The 'everyday tales of rural folk' bits are more fun than the supernatural parts in the end, which feel tacked on.
It's a really strange book, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It's a really strange book, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
April 8, 2014
Attempts much within few pages: a web of obliquely sketched characters drift across time; issues of change, history, society, materialism and masculinity (among others) are raised; a mystery that is simultaneously supernatural, social and psychological unfolds.
Some work is expected of the reader to piece all this together. Personally, I consider the effort worthwhile.
Some work is expected of the reader to piece all this together. Personally, I consider the effort worthwhile.
October 14, 2011
Dreadful. Couldn't finish this book, made it to half way but could see no improvement. Not what I'd call a ghost story.
July 4, 2014
A man buys a country retreat and gets entangled with ‘mystic things’.
I found this book confusing. Certain parts / scenes rang true, but overall it was disappointing and I struggled to finish it.
I found this book confusing. Certain parts / scenes rang true, but overall it was disappointing and I struggled to finish it.
October 16, 2014
An easy read. The suspense is not forced and the climax was satisfying. It lives up as a horror story when the ghost reveals its intention. A good book.
May 7, 2015
Pity just no atmosphere in this. Could not connect with this story. Loved title!
April 6, 2016
I couldnt finish this book. The premise is good but it is a drag getting there. Shame, because it sounded great from the blurb.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews