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London Gothic
In his fourth short story collection, an exploration of the dark side of modern London, Nicholas Royle redefines urban Gothic for the twenty-first century. Often writing against a background of film, art or literature, he unearths unease in the streets of Shepherd’s Bush, Hackney or South Tottenham, and creates uncanny effects with innovative, experimental forms.
200 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2012
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149 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Royle
70 books56 followersNicholas Royle is an English writer. He is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 22, 2020
This autumn, I feel decidedly haunted by the urban weird. Two of the most powerful and memorable books I've read in recent months are The Earth Wire, Joel Lane's debut collection (originally published in 1994, reissued this year) and London Incognita, Gary Budden's mythology of an alternative London. Now there's London Gothic, which feels like the missing link between them, a combination of the eerie, glimmering atmosphere and things-unsaid feeling of Lane's fiction and the teeming shadow-London setting of Budden's.
The stories are disquieting and often funny; they deal with displacement, disorientation and doubles. In 'Inside/Out', a man follows a woman he used to know to a peculiar house – one with two entrances that do not seem to align with its architecture. In 'The Neighbours', Simon spends time with his new girlfriend Anna, but is distracted by the sight of two familiar figures in a neighbouring house. Pleasingly, there's both a story titled 'L NDON' and a story titled 'L0ND0N'. The stories often incorporate elements of the city's culture: art, music and especially films. 'Empty Boxes' features another Simon (or perhaps the same one?) who has an unusual VHS collection. In the strange and compelling 'Trompe l'oeil' Toby, an arts journalist, is obsessed with the idea that an unseen woman is stalking him – but she somehow always manages to visit the same galleries ahead of him.
I have three favourites from this collection, and they happen to demonstrate its variety rather well. The first is 'The Old Bakery', written in the form of an article profiling two insufferable hipsters who've renovated a Hackney bakery, complete with the acerbic notes of a disgruntled subeditor. It's short, sharp and very funny. The second is 'Standard Gauge', which starts as the narrator bonds with an odd character, Marco, over a shared interest in Sinclair Road. It becomes a winding, captivating story about magic, filmmaking and ghost trains. The third is 'L0ND0N', which is largely responsible for that Joel Lane comparison above; it's a story in which what happens is less important than the mood, the way it feels, the sense of quiet uneasiness running through it. (Also very much made me want to read the imaginary novel that gives the story its title.)
London Gothic is the kind of collection that makes you feel – in the best way – that you've missed something. Did someone move out of sight around that corner, just a second ago? Was that figure in the painting there last time you looked? That feeling. In 'L0ND0N' the narrator's friend mentions the idea of mise en abyme, which is of course another way to identify the mirroring, self-reference, and theme of doppelgängers that run through London Gothic (as well as the other works I'm inclined to group it with). This is an enigmatic set of stories with endless potential to fascinate.
I received a copy of London Gothic courtesy of the author, Nicholas Royle, and the publisher, Cōnfingō.
The stories are disquieting and often funny; they deal with displacement, disorientation and doubles. In 'Inside/Out', a man follows a woman he used to know to a peculiar house – one with two entrances that do not seem to align with its architecture. In 'The Neighbours', Simon spends time with his new girlfriend Anna, but is distracted by the sight of two familiar figures in a neighbouring house. Pleasingly, there's both a story titled 'L NDON' and a story titled 'L0ND0N'. The stories often incorporate elements of the city's culture: art, music and especially films. 'Empty Boxes' features another Simon (or perhaps the same one?) who has an unusual VHS collection. In the strange and compelling 'Trompe l'oeil' Toby, an arts journalist, is obsessed with the idea that an unseen woman is stalking him – but she somehow always manages to visit the same galleries ahead of him.
I have three favourites from this collection, and they happen to demonstrate its variety rather well. The first is 'The Old Bakery', written in the form of an article profiling two insufferable hipsters who've renovated a Hackney bakery, complete with the acerbic notes of a disgruntled subeditor. It's short, sharp and very funny. The second is 'Standard Gauge', which starts as the narrator bonds with an odd character, Marco, over a shared interest in Sinclair Road. It becomes a winding, captivating story about magic, filmmaking and ghost trains. The third is 'L0ND0N', which is largely responsible for that Joel Lane comparison above; it's a story in which what happens is less important than the mood, the way it feels, the sense of quiet uneasiness running through it. (Also very much made me want to read the imaginary novel that gives the story its title.)
London Gothic is the kind of collection that makes you feel – in the best way – that you've missed something. Did someone move out of sight around that corner, just a second ago? Was that figure in the painting there last time you looked? That feeling. In 'L0ND0N' the narrator's friend mentions the idea of mise en abyme, which is of course another way to identify the mirroring, self-reference, and theme of doppelgängers that run through London Gothic (as well as the other works I'm inclined to group it with). This is an enigmatic set of stories with endless potential to fascinate.
I received a copy of London Gothic courtesy of the author, Nicholas Royle, and the publisher, Cōnfingō.
May 2, 2021
“What’s it all about?” Joe asked.
“London. Holes in the fabric of reality. A crisis. a personal crisis. Also espionage, but that’s kind of in the background. And maps. Lots of stuff about maps.”
“Another one for the Richard and Judy book club,” Jane said straight faced.
London Gothic is a collection of stories by Nicholas Royle, published by small independent press Cōnfingō ("we create beautiful editions of new fiction, poetry and art in all forms.")
I first came across Nicholas Royle as the other ‘Nicholas Royle’ in the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching by a different, but with a confusingly similar background, Nicholas Royle (see my review for an explanation): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
And as an editor for Salt Publishing, notably of Simon Okotie’s brilliant Absalon trilogy, where Royle suggested the footnotes to the story: see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Royle is also known for compiling the annual anthology British Short Stories - see here for my review of the 2020 edition https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
But this is the first time I’ve read Royle as an author in his own right. The stories he selects in British Short Stories sometimes run a little to close to the conventional for my taste, but this collection is very different, off-beat and striking, rooted, as the title of the collection suggests, in the uncanny and the urban weird.
The collection consists of 16 pieces totalling 182 pages. 7 are brand new for the collection and the 9 others were published between 2000 and 2016, but they blend together well as a whole to paint a vivid picture of a different-to-usual side to modern London. Indeed I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed which was which but for Royle’s own helpful afterword explaining the origin of non-original stories.
One immediate comparator is the Goldsmiths winning M John Harrison, and one of the older pieces, Train, Night, was written in response to M J Harrison’s own story Not All Men (originally published as It Wasn’t Me) which can be found in the anthology You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts (see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
Constraints is a piece of constrained fiction in explicit tribute to the wonderful literary innovator BS Johnson and literary agent Giles Gordon, who had planned to collaborate with Johnson on his Beyond the Words: Eleven Writers in Search of a New Fiction.
Trompe l’oeil, based on the New British Art scene has some more accidental (I assume) echoes with the previous novel I read, Bolt from the Blue, by Jeremy Cooper, and is one of a number that touch on modern art, with Royle displaying clear knowledge but certainly not over-reverence; a story that starts as a seeming discussion of a small modern art periodical focused on immersive installations ends up as something rather different, perhaps a sinister piece of meta-performance art. Another is The Old Bakery, a take-down of a middle-class couple with a “revitalised live-work space and gallery” in a former bakery Hackney, cleverly told in the form of editor’s notes on a puff piece written about them.
Several of the stories - for example Welcome, Insight Out, L NDON and The Neighbours - have a sting in the tale that reminded me of Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the latter is one of a number of film directors explicitly referenced.
The longest piece in the collection, L0nd0n is also the oldest, but, to my earlier point about coherence, rather neatly pull the stories together, with its story of an agent, with seemingly secrets of his own, reading a novel submitted by a mysterious debut author, and from which the quote that opens my review is taken.
As with almost all story collections not every story will be a success for every reader, but this was a strong collection and one that inclines me to seek out more of Royle’s writing as well as his editing,
4 stars
“London. Holes in the fabric of reality. A crisis. a personal crisis. Also espionage, but that’s kind of in the background. And maps. Lots of stuff about maps.”
“Another one for the Richard and Judy book club,” Jane said straight faced.
London Gothic is a collection of stories by Nicholas Royle, published by small independent press Cōnfingō ("we create beautiful editions of new fiction, poetry and art in all forms.")
I first came across Nicholas Royle as the other ‘Nicholas Royle’ in the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching by a different, but with a confusingly similar background, Nicholas Royle (see my review for an explanation): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
And as an editor for Salt Publishing, notably of Simon Okotie’s brilliant Absalon trilogy, where Royle suggested the footnotes to the story: see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Royle is also known for compiling the annual anthology British Short Stories - see here for my review of the 2020 edition https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
But this is the first time I’ve read Royle as an author in his own right. The stories he selects in British Short Stories sometimes run a little to close to the conventional for my taste, but this collection is very different, off-beat and striking, rooted, as the title of the collection suggests, in the uncanny and the urban weird.
The collection consists of 16 pieces totalling 182 pages. 7 are brand new for the collection and the 9 others were published between 2000 and 2016, but they blend together well as a whole to paint a vivid picture of a different-to-usual side to modern London. Indeed I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed which was which but for Royle’s own helpful afterword explaining the origin of non-original stories.
One immediate comparator is the Goldsmiths winning M John Harrison, and one of the older pieces, Train, Night, was written in response to M J Harrison’s own story Not All Men (originally published as It Wasn’t Me) which can be found in the anthology You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts (see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
Constraints is a piece of constrained fiction in explicit tribute to the wonderful literary innovator BS Johnson and literary agent Giles Gordon, who had planned to collaborate with Johnson on his Beyond the Words: Eleven Writers in Search of a New Fiction.
Trompe l’oeil, based on the New British Art scene has some more accidental (I assume) echoes with the previous novel I read, Bolt from the Blue, by Jeremy Cooper, and is one of a number that touch on modern art, with Royle displaying clear knowledge but certainly not over-reverence; a story that starts as a seeming discussion of a small modern art periodical focused on immersive installations ends up as something rather different, perhaps a sinister piece of meta-performance art. Another is The Old Bakery, a take-down of a middle-class couple with a “revitalised live-work space and gallery” in a former bakery Hackney, cleverly told in the form of editor’s notes on a puff piece written about them.
Several of the stories - for example Welcome, Insight Out, L NDON and The Neighbours - have a sting in the tale that reminded me of Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the latter is one of a number of film directors explicitly referenced.
The longest piece in the collection, L0nd0n is also the oldest, but, to my earlier point about coherence, rather neatly pull the stories together, with its story of an agent, with seemingly secrets of his own, reading a novel submitted by a mysterious debut author, and from which the quote that opens my review is taken.
As with almost all story collections not every story will be a success for every reader, but this was a strong collection and one that inclines me to seek out more of Royle’s writing as well as his editing,
4 stars
July 19, 2022
I'd been intending to savour this excellent collection of short stories, but as it turned out I read it voraciously in under two days, constantly returning as though being pulled by an undertow. Royle's writing is clinically exact, his depiction and delineation of a suggestively alternative London just the right side of off-kilter to appeal; details as vivid where places exist as to where they don't. The stories themselves deal with obsessive oddballs, not dissimilar to ourselves, their preoccupations taken to (ill)logical conclusions. There's a dark aspect - not forced, but inherent - to these tales, although the underlying theme seems to be a desire for understanding. I finished this at 4am on the hottest night of the year, breaking at 3am for a tuna fish sandwich. Unless I slept. This is a solid, strong collection that - like all Royle's work - I heartily recommend.
November 16, 2020
London Gothic is Nicholas Royle’s fourth collection of short stories, published by Confingo Publishing. It contains 15 stories, covering a period between 2000 – 2020, and includes seven original tales.
I first came across the fiction of Nicholas Royle in 1988, after reading The Dandelion Woman in the debut issue of Fear magazine. He’s a very clever writer, in that he manages to make his stories amusing as well as deeply unsettling, hinting at far more than his words actually say. This process of suggestion sometimes also requires the reader to bring something to the story, adding to the sense of involvement and disorientation. There’s a dreamlike quality to the prose, with a clever use of repetition, of overlapping strands or converged characters. In a Nicholas Royle story, nothing is as it seems. His misdirection and carefully layered writing deserves attention, because the accumulation of seemingly innocent phrases can suddenly take on new meaning, often in a startling fashion.
Unsurprisingly these stories are set in London, however there’s a contemporary feel to them, pushing back against the gothic aspect of the book’s title. They often deal with subjects like film, art and literature, sometimes mocking characteristics of modern city life, such as gentrification and pretentiousness. There’s an unsettling undercurrent to the stories. Many of the characters are disturbed individuals, often haunted by emotional spectres from their past. As with reading anything by Nicholas Royle I always come away from the book with a list of notes, references to particular aspects of cultural mentions, which sometimes serve as touchstones to the story; obscure coincidences or precisely described details which dovetail into the narrative. Several of the pieces are experimental in form, but always effective. Particular favourite stories from this collection were L NDON, Trompe l’oeil, Standard Gauge, Train, Night, Artefact, Guys, L0ND0N and The Vote. According to the publishers, Royle is also planning on projects devoted to Manchester and Paris. I, for one, can hardly wait. As it’s one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years, this one comes highly recommended.
I first came across the fiction of Nicholas Royle in 1988, after reading The Dandelion Woman in the debut issue of Fear magazine. He’s a very clever writer, in that he manages to make his stories amusing as well as deeply unsettling, hinting at far more than his words actually say. This process of suggestion sometimes also requires the reader to bring something to the story, adding to the sense of involvement and disorientation. There’s a dreamlike quality to the prose, with a clever use of repetition, of overlapping strands or converged characters. In a Nicholas Royle story, nothing is as it seems. His misdirection and carefully layered writing deserves attention, because the accumulation of seemingly innocent phrases can suddenly take on new meaning, often in a startling fashion.
Unsurprisingly these stories are set in London, however there’s a contemporary feel to them, pushing back against the gothic aspect of the book’s title. They often deal with subjects like film, art and literature, sometimes mocking characteristics of modern city life, such as gentrification and pretentiousness. There’s an unsettling undercurrent to the stories. Many of the characters are disturbed individuals, often haunted by emotional spectres from their past. As with reading anything by Nicholas Royle I always come away from the book with a list of notes, references to particular aspects of cultural mentions, which sometimes serve as touchstones to the story; obscure coincidences or precisely described details which dovetail into the narrative. Several of the pieces are experimental in form, but always effective. Particular favourite stories from this collection were L NDON, Trompe l’oeil, Standard Gauge, Train, Night, Artefact, Guys, L0ND0N and The Vote. According to the publishers, Royle is also planning on projects devoted to Manchester and Paris. I, for one, can hardly wait. As it’s one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years, this one comes highly recommended.
January 6, 2021
My own nightmare. Gestalt real-time reviewing is a breeze by comparison, especially when dealing with special harvestable provocative books like this one, a book that eventually may be found in one of our future hotels-without-guests — left inside an otherwise empty voting box?
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
August 27, 2023
When compared to the inimitable melancholy of Joel Lane, the phantasmagorical gore of Conrad Williams or the equally brilliant prose-styling and storytelling of Adam Nevill, Nicholas Royle probably doesn't seem to be the most interesting phenomenon to arise over the past few decades within the shadowside of UK fiction. However, he has developed a reasonably distinctive niche of often experimental minimalism that tends to carry the intimation of horror's effects while rarely ever capitulating to the genre itself.
The opener, "Welcome", illustrates this sort of dark suggestiveness in a more obviously sardonic way; Royle gets far more subtle and unconventional than this, though. Take one of the stories original to this collection: "Artefacts", an effectively nonlinear narrative-puzzle which merges the derangements of memory and technology into an evocative enigma that reminds me of M. Kitchell's "Cable TV". Further references to film media take place in many other of the less pointedly uncanny tales; "Empty Boxes" seems to be the most notable, with its fragile promise of a budding romance between two cinematic memorabilia enthusiasts twisting cynically at the very end.
I would be remiss to forget those especially brief pieces that display the author's disarming sense of humor. "Guys" functions via the implied dialogue of a guided tour of Dennis Nilsen's former habitation; here, Royle quite cleverly conveys how the commodification of crime deflates the assumption of criminal mystique (think serial murderer trading cards). Really though, "The Old Bakery" is the real comedic masterpiece as it is a total takedown of the narcissistic hipster lifestyle by way of a resentful proofreader's notes on a vapid local culture article.
While those who have been following the trajectory of Royle's engagement with the Uncanny shouldn't have a problem appreciating this first instalment in his city-inspired series, newcomers would be better served by the relatively more conventionally uncanny works collected in the Swan River Press publication, The Dummy; this being said, Confingo has produced a book of physically superior design and quality for about the same price as the aforementioned book.
The opener, "Welcome", illustrates this sort of dark suggestiveness in a more obviously sardonic way; Royle gets far more subtle and unconventional than this, though. Take one of the stories original to this collection: "Artefacts", an effectively nonlinear narrative-puzzle which merges the derangements of memory and technology into an evocative enigma that reminds me of M. Kitchell's "Cable TV". Further references to film media take place in many other of the less pointedly uncanny tales; "Empty Boxes" seems to be the most notable, with its fragile promise of a budding romance between two cinematic memorabilia enthusiasts twisting cynically at the very end.
I would be remiss to forget those especially brief pieces that display the author's disarming sense of humor. "Guys" functions via the implied dialogue of a guided tour of Dennis Nilsen's former habitation; here, Royle quite cleverly conveys how the commodification of crime deflates the assumption of criminal mystique (think serial murderer trading cards). Really though, "The Old Bakery" is the real comedic masterpiece as it is a total takedown of the narcissistic hipster lifestyle by way of a resentful proofreader's notes on a vapid local culture article.
While those who have been following the trajectory of Royle's engagement with the Uncanny shouldn't have a problem appreciating this first instalment in his city-inspired series, newcomers would be better served by the relatively more conventionally uncanny works collected in the Swan River Press publication, The Dummy; this being said, Confingo has produced a book of physically superior design and quality for about the same price as the aforementioned book.
May 8, 2021
I've been reading these stories in those between times when I didn't have time to get stuck into a novel but wanted something good to read. They did not disappoint. The very first story made me laugh out loud at one point, but that doesn't mean it wasn't also unnerving and unsettling. This was true of most of the stories - they didn't all make me laugh out loud but there was humour in every one, as well as the gothic.
May 1, 2024
Something of a mixed bag, but the good stuff here I really enjoyed. At times, it reminded me of Roald Dahl’s ‘grownup’ stories - always a background hum of darkness and a couple of stings in the tails too. Definitely worth savouring one story at a time…I’d be keen to read more from this author if I come across it.
May 2, 2021
As with most collections, it’s a mixed bag, but mostly very good. Royal writes with lots of loose ends and uncertainties, leaving you on edge, but in a very realistic way. I always love his movie references, and for those who love London this is a good collection.
April 13, 2024
What a great collection!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews