Three new books here that will keep you deliciously spooked
For this weekend and the time of year, there are three new books here that will keep you deliciously spooked. There’s also a bio of a rather spooky individual with more money than sense, and a thriller that starts off in 2007, when rumours of an imminent banking crash are being whispered about, but nobody believes them.
Twiggy Woman, Oein DeBhairduin, Skein Press, €14.99
This anthology of ‘ghostly folktales’ as it’s described on the cover, is in the shops this week and it’s well worth the small investment. There’s something charming about an illustrated book for adults and Helena Grimes’s superb sketches here really feed the imagination. Oein DeBhairduin won two awards for his first book, a children’s storybook titled Why the Moon Travels. The story was taken from the oral tradition of the author’s Traveller community. And he’s drawn from that same well with this collection of 10 stories, each with a supernatural slant.
I particularly liked the story about a young scallywag taking a ring from a dead woman’s finger and suffering the consequences, even when he’d thought better of it and returned the ring. A story titled ‘The Lantern’ is a fable about what can happen if one laments the dead for too long. The title story, Twiggy Woman, is another fable about the monstrous outcome of being a monstrous parent. DeBhairduin’s prose style is clean and unembellished and yet it’s intensely lyrical. This is a real treat of a book.
Tales of the Other World, Compiled by Anne Doyle, Gill, €24.99
In her introduction to this varied anthology of ghost stories, former broadcaster and news anchor Anne Doyle describes a childhood in Wexford steeped in myths, piseogs and superstitions. Her grandfather believed in ghosts, as did most of his contemporaries. My own grandparents had some wonderful stories about doors being knocked before a death in the family but there being nobody there, or about stepping on a stray sod, or hearing banshees. Doyle relates some odd experiences she’s had, unexplainable and mysterious incidents. This is a gorgeous, wide-ranging collection, from superb contemporary authors like Roisin O’Donnell and Deirdre Sullivan to the likes of Bram Stoker, Le Fanu, Yeats, Wilde and Dundalk’s literary treasure Dorothy Macardle, who always had a taste for the supernatural and produced some fabulous books.
Some of these stories are well known, like Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost, and others more obscure, like Lord Dunsany’s Where The Tides Ebb and Flow, but all of them offer thrilling chills as the dark nights descend on us for another winter. It’s beautifully produced and would make a perfect gift.
Once a Monster, Robert Dinsdale, Macmillan, €25.99
The myth of the Minotaur is resurrected and reimagined in this dark fantasy set in Dickensian London, where young mudlark Nell, only 10 years of age, spends her days dredging the Thames for anything she can sell – bits of coal or scrap metal that might have fallen off the barges. Nell has been on her own for four years now, since her mother died. On the day she finds the body of what looks like a man, a very tall man, she alerts her fellow mudlarks. She’s not particularly scared, since she’s come across corpses before. Her colleagues – if we can call them that – urge her to take his boots and rifle his pockets but as she approaches the body, she realises the enormous half-man, half-monster is still alive. She must make a decision. And the decision she makes will change her life forever.
The writing is gorgeous and Dinsdale’s descriptive passages are impressively evocative. Victorian London is cold and wet and miserable, the thick mud of the Thames is ankle-deep, the darkness is as black as a blackguard’s heart. But the real monsters in this story are the humans, not the monster, who’s called – rather unimaginatively – Mino. However, that’s the only unimaginative feature in this wildly inventive, heady mix of historical and fantastical fiction.
Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, €25.99
The writer of the definitive bio of Steve Jobs has now turned his considerable talent to profiling this man-child with an ego the size of the universe; the same universe he seeks to conquer. Isaacson spent two years, with Musk’s permission, shadowing his subject, sitting in on meetings, reading his emails, conducting endless hours of interviews and the result is quite a tome. Musk is desperately afraid that ‘civilisation will never become multi-planetary’ and indeed that kind of thing also keeps me awake at night…
The story of Musk is the story of what happens when childhood trauma goes unchecked, but it’s also a story about a person who’s missing the empathy gene. The once bullied child is determined to prove himself, to get his own back. It’s utterly fascinating, and the more you dislike Musk, the more you should read it. You won’t like him any better, but you’ll certainly gain some insight and understanding of him. Bang goes my Twitter account…
The Crash, Robert Peston, Bonnier, €16.99
Well known British journalist, acclaimed broadcaster and ITV’s political editor, Robert Peston, turns his hand to fiction soaked in fact in this story about Gil Peck, a London journalist observing the high life of 2007 and worrying that it might not last. He has kept tabs on some movers and shakers within the privileged classes who have the power to topple the entire economy, but nobody wants to know what they’re up to, including his bosses at the BBC. And then a northern bank goes broke. And then his girlfriend, a banker in London, commits suicide. Or does she?
If you think money is probably the root of all evil, or if you still find it objectionable that we lowly taxpayers were forced to bail wealthy bankers out, or if you suffered as a result of the crash of 2008, you should probably read this. Because there are truths embodied in fiction that are, ironically, simply not permissible in factual reports. It’s a great read.
Footnotes
You’d be hard pushed to avoid a Spooktacular event this weekend! They’re everywhere, in every county. If you just Google what’s on near you, something will pop up. Enjoy the fun and for god’s sake go aisy on the punkin’ pie.