Epeolatry Book Review: A Christmas Ghost Story by Kim Newman
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Title: A Christmas Ghost Story
Author: Kim Newman
Genre: Ghost; Holiday; Horror
Publisher: Titan Books
Publication Date: 8th October, 2024
Synopsis: From the acclaimed author of Anno Dracula, the perfect gift for those who love the dark fantastic imaginations of Neil Gaiman and T. Kingfisher, this is a nightmarish tale of a haunted Christmas set deep in the British countryside not too long ago. Cosy traditions are made twisted and terrifying as a mother and son grapple with their painful past.
Warning for non-British readers: this is a very English ghost story—and I mean that in the best possible sense. The story takes place in the Somerset Levels, the wetlands west of Glastonbury where Kim Newman spent much of his childhood; a legend-haunted region, site of the Battle of Sedgemoor. The narrative is redolent of the British ghostly and supernatural tales broadcast in the 1970s, although all the modern trappings of a podcast, LED commercial Christmas are evoked in excruciating detail. The traditional BBC Christmas Ghost Story gets a full namecheck. In fact, the story is so rooted in its place and its community that the occasional references Newman makes to folk horror are fully justified. As the text says, “Six Elms House was literally being haunted by a Ghost Story.”
Christmas comes unglued this time at a remote house—Six Elms House, whose condition can be judged by the fact that its elms have all died off from Dutch Elm Disease. The house is a good way from an already remote village called Sutton Mallet, down a cut-off… aptly named. Angie, a local girl and somewhat successful self-published suspense writer, lives there with her son Russell, a.k.a. Rust, a teenage podcaster who rejoices in the fact that Sutton Mallet is reputedly the most haunted village in England. Angie, for reasons of her own, shuns anything overtly supernatural, but has more and more trouble avoiding paraphens (as Rust calls them) when unsettling Christmas cards start to arrive on 1 December—one for each day, and each day a freshly unpleasant rhyming message. And with each day towards Christmas day, the screw is turned tighter.
Closer to a novella in length (160 pages), the story is more stuffed with Christmas tropes and flavour than any turkey. Hardly a sentence goes by without a resonant image. And I think it might be hard for a non-British audience to fully appreciate. And naturally it’s about Christmas, where the expectations and disappointments and darker side of the season feed into Angie’s childhood memory of a Christmas ghost story she saw one night on TV—or did she? Just one aside that won’t concern everybody, but pleased me: the typesetting in ebook format has been done carefully so that the different fonts which are essential to some of the material are preserved. That’s a good job. And given that much of the story is also a screenplay taken from that memorable TV ghost story, it’s highly appropriate.
All in all, even with the plethora of seasonal horror stories out there, this one is rich entertainment, with enough genuine horror creeping through the thick icing of Christmas kitsch to bring true wintry chills. It might make – well, a very good basis for a Christmas horror screenplay.
/5
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Paul StJohn Mackintosh is a Scottish author, poet, journalist, games writer, and media professional. Born in 1961, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, has lived and worked in Asia and Central Europe, and currently lives in France near Geneva.
Paul’s first collection of short stories, Black Propaganda, appeared from H. Harksen Productions in 2016. His second story collection, The Echo of The Sea & other Strange War Stories, was published by Egaeus Press in 2017. His short novel The Three Books was published by Black Shuck Books in 2018. His short story “The People of the Island,” in Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales, from H. Harksen Productions, received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her Best Horror of the Year Volume Two list for 2009.
Paul’s acclaimed first poetry collection, The Golden Age, was published by Bellew Publishing in 1997, and reissued on Kindle in 2013. His second poetry collection, The Musical Box of Wonders, was published by H. Harksen Productions in 2011. His sonnet cycle The Great Arcana: Sonnets for the 22 Trumps of the Tarot, and his ballad cycle Black Ballads, based on traditional Scottish myths and legends, were both published in 2022.
Paul’s Lovecraftian and dark fiction, and criticism, has appeared in numerous formats and journals worldwide, including Occult Detective Magazine, Weirdbook, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, the Financial Times, the UK Independent, the Times Literary Supplement, Arts of Asia, Strange Horizons, A Broad Scot, and elsewhere. His co-translations from the Japanese, done with Maki Sugiyama, include The Poems of Nakahara Chuya (1993) and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (1995) by the 1994 Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe, which won a Japan Festival Award. He also co-translated Superstrings (2007) by Dinu Flamand from Romanian with Olga Dunca. Paul is a former Executive Committee member of the Translators Association of the Society of Authors of Great Britain. He was rated #1 of “The 12 Publishing Shakers You Should Be Following” by The Independent Publishing Magazine. He is also the official clan poet of Clan Mackintosh.
