Epeolatry Book Review: Grotesquerie by Richard Gavin
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Title: Grotesquerie
Author: Richard Gavin
Genre: weird fiction, horror
Publisher: Undertow Publications
Publication Date: 1st September, 2020
Synopsis: Welcome to Richard Gavin’s “grotesquerie,” where fear and faith converge in eerie and nightmarish tales of transcendent horror from a truly visionary writer. The highly anticipated new collection of macabre delights, that explores dark realms of the fevered, fecund mind, and visits strange landscapes and vistas. These are grim and grotesque tales of terror — modern Mysterium Tremendums — that open new doors of perception and reality.
Richard Gavin has been working on his own particular, highly characteristic seam of weird fiction for at least two decades, and this is his sixth collection of short stories. He’s especially lucky, perhaps, in that, whereas other weird fiction authors cleave closer to fantasy or even pulp adventure, his chosen vein runs far closer to traditional horror in the manner of Machen and Blackwood. His website bears the masthead “Gothic Horror & Esotericism,” and though there may not be many ruined choirs and black bats in his stories, there is certainly much cobwebbed darkness and shadowy disorder.
Gavin has previously identified ambiguity and an oneiric sensibility as key features of his work, and they’re certainly in full evidence here. Dream logic rather than rationally explicable structures often knit his tales together. Some of the stories, shorn of an explicatory mythology, are closer to psychological horror, like “Scold’s Bridle: A Cruelty” or “The Sullied Pane”, a family reunion vacation with a decided difference. And talking of holidays, “Fragile Masks” is a Halloween story which works its individual twist on… well, you can guess the Halloween trope. In some, like “Banishments,” or “Cast Lots,” where nightmares cause a mysterious resetting of one’s entire life, the psychological shades over smoothly into the unnatural, so that the inexplicable phenomena nonetheless seem psychologically convincing.
There’s less chthonic nature horror in this volume than there has been in Gavin’s previous work, but many of the stories are down to earth in their setting – albeit not in a specially comforting way. Family ties and human relations often have very unpleasant ramifications, as in “Crawlspace Oracle”, where a wife is drawn into a grotesque new destiny. Others lean more towards folk horror, like “Notes on the Aztec Death Whistle,” where a gruesome ceremonial object catches up with those foolish enough to try to profit by its theft, or “Headsman’s Trust: A Murder Ballad,” which explores the uses and destinies of the headsman’s leavings. “Ten of Swords: Ruin” takes Tarot and cartomancy in some explicitly supernatural directions, so far that it could almost provide a horror movie scenario.
Quite a few of these stories have already appeared in themed collections. “Neithernor” appeared in the 2015 tribute anthology Aickman’s Heirs, edited by Simon Strantzas. “After the Final” originally appeared in the 2013 Ligotti tribute anthology Grimscribe’s Puppets, and is appropriately Ligottiesque. There are, however, a couple of original tales in this collection, and all of them are strong enough to be enjoyed outside the original context – if enjoyed is the right term for such unsettling work.
Evoking the liminal space of William Burroughs and Byron Gysin, Gavin has declared: “My aim is not to entertain you but to awaken you.” Readers will certainly close this book awoken – but awoken to what? Read and find out for yourselves. Highly recommended.
/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.
