The Root of All . . .

Night at the Demontorium
by Naima Haviland

buy here at Smashwords


I normally don’t take much notice of ebook covers, but this one struck me as reminiscent of the sort of illustrations that featured in fiction magazines from the fifties and sixties, and this, I think, is oddly appropriate.
There is a growing quantity of short magazine stories from that period (and their illustrations) for free over at feedbooks. Reading them I’m struck by how accomplished the earlier generation of writers were. They seemed to have a better feel for the shape of the story and their straightforward, but not unsophisticated, narrative style is both easy to read and enjoyable.

These comments apply to Ms Haviland’s work. Allowing for the change in social mores, her stories could have been written and published at any time during the last fifty or so years. They wouldn’t be out of place in some old back copy of Argosy, by which I mean, they would easily be as good as any of the other stories.

The first piece in the Demontorium was the best for me (about a woman addicted to funerals), but they all contained ideas – not always totally original – but ideas, nonetheless. For instance, the disturbing nature of the world as seen through a deranged person’s eyes has been pretty thoroughly explored before. On the other hand, during the last story, I was genuinely startled by the condom that turns out to be a gateway to hell.

Some might contend that all stories, by definition, contain ideas. Probably they do. But there is a difference between a writer actively thinking about their world, rather than grabbing lumps of "stuff" from films and other people’s books (generally about vampires) and then sticking it all together with glutinous third-rate prose.

There are a great many – probably an infinite – number of the latter knocking around and it’s always a positive relief to encounter a writer who exhibits signs of active cognitive functioning. Ms Haviland passes that test with flying colours and covers all the requirements of quality a reader might expect when he/she pays for fiction. What I wonder is, does she provide the quantity the reader expects nowadays, when there is a vast and rapidly growing store of literature available on the net for free?

Five Star Hotel

Hotel Flamingo
by Patrick O’Duffy

Published 2010 and available here at Smashwords

Mr O’Duffy tells us in his bio that he’s tall – now I’ve always thought possessing an extra long reach is a great advantage to an author. Many’s the time I’ve quit for the day when the pen’s rolled under the sofa. But there’s a drawback too – he’s located in Australia, where, on account of the mighty redback, it is very dangerous indeed to blindly explore dark and sheltered places.

Which may account for the recurring motif of the spider. It often scuttles into this narrative as a metaphor for the horrible. To begin with, the Hotel Flamingo’s guests and staff are at the mercy of the building’s inherent weirdness, but actually, it’s a fairly benign weirdness. However, it soon transpires that the establishment, not to mention the universe, is being menaced with ultimate corruption by a skulking and spider-packed evil – in this case, a nexus of surpassing negation that has already infected a resident.

True, hotels in fiction (and at least one London hostel I stayed in once) are notorious for this sort of thing, but Mr O’Duffy’s creation is exceptionally clever. He’s a sort of skittish Borges, racing along with a quick-fire succession of intriguing and surprising ideas. The writing at times borders on the gnomic, but never fails to entertain. In fact, the more grey matter you happen to have, the more entertaining it is. The episodes – mainly deft character sketches – are short, but the quality of the language and imagery means they never feel perfunctory.

A caveat – the reader is told directly by the author (between parentheses) that stuff will happen so such and such a character in the future. This feels superfluous and was puzzling to see in such a skilled writer. The explanation may lie in the fact the story was published as a series of blog posts. The thing about blog readers is that they are fickle – understandably so. The gap between blog posts yawns so much wider and deeper than the paragraph space between the chapters of a conventionally published book. Maybe the author felt the need to reassure his blogees, if that’s the word, that he was determined to finish what he’d started.

Fortunately he did, and the result is well worth reading.