'Suddenly the silence was rent by a terrible, piercing scream. It was so terrifying, so searing, that despite my previous resolve I ran back into the salon.
It was dark inside. A moment ago it was awash in streams of light, and now it was shrouded in a thick pall of darkness. The electric lights were off; gone was the glitter of the fantastic girandoles. The scream stopped abruptly. Into the room seeped hollow, stifling silence.'
I was pointed to CB Editions by Rob of The Fiction Desk, and you can read his thoughts on another of their publications, Days and Nights in W12 here. I recommend a look at the CB Editions website; there aren't many books on the list yet but the ones they have are interesting. The books themselves are simply presented but very attractive. I can also recommend their efficiency; I ordered In Sarah's House on a Thursday night and it fell through the letterbox Saturday morning!
The book I ordered is a collection of tales by a Polish author who died in 1936, Stefan Grabinski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga). I had never heard of him, but as the tales are of the eerie and supernatural it was a natural choice. It was very interesting to read a collection of eerie stories not written by an English speaker - I have realised that I have very few.
One of Grabinski's collections contained stories set in the world of the railway and a couple of the stories in this collection have this setting. The Dead Run is about a man's obsession with a piece of railway track that was decommissioned when a quicker route was built. The story is psychological, exploring the power that the dead run and the railway as a whole have over this man and how his pride in it is a way of fulfilling his dreams, while simultaneously refusing to face the truth that it is a sham job; it explores the effect that this duality has on him and is a very powerful story.
Another powerful psychological story, again set in the world of the railway, was Szatera's Engrams which describes a man's horror of the way life slips away minute by minute and how he discovers a way to catch hold of the past. His descent into obsession is horrifying and captured beautifully in such a short story. This story also deals explicitly with the theme of split personalities and doubles that are explored by a number of other writers (e.g. Bram Stoker in Crooken Sands, or Dostoevsky in The Double).
It is the title story, In Sarah's House, that caught my imagination the most. It begins with a man meeting an old friend who used to be the life and soul of the party but who is changed, drained of his youth and exuberance and firmly blaming it on a relationship he has formed with a strangely long-lived woman called Sarah. The story then traces the narrator's struggle with the woman. Although framed as a vampire story, this is very much about the fear of man of the effect of sexual obsession for a woman and how dangerous women can be to men's life and vitality. I found this story fascinating but quite a blunt instrument; Grabinski's own love life was not happy and this story appears to be an articulation of his anger and fear of women, and is perhaps an attempt to do on paper what he felt he could not do in life - resist them and thereby nullify their power.
This theme was also in The Black Hamlet, a piece which has the quality of a dream. Again there is a femme fatale who lures the narrator with her false charms. As a woman I found these stories beautiful but felt pity that someone could have such a dark view of my sex. I felt like a curious outsider, dispassionately looking into this man's mind and wondering why it had become so twisted. Despite the anger in them, I don't think they are threatening stories, just sad.
There are also a couple of more straightforward chillers; White Virak, the first story in the collection, is about chimney sweeps who disappear while sweeping out a disused brewery chimney. The Grey Room is a story about the ability of buildings to 'remember' strong events or presences, an idea common in occult and paranormal literature and nowadays known as the 'stone tape theory'.
A number of the stories are written in the first person in quite a simple style, but the descriptions in the stories are at times beautiful. The stories are set, as the best supernatural tales always are, in a recognisable world. It is the modern age, full of trains and medical opinions, but still the other side permeates through the veil and touches ordinary people in unexpected and devastating ways. Obsession is a major theme in this collection, be it for a woman, or a dream of what life should be. Whatever an obsession is for, though, it is always shown to be destructive.
It is an interesting and varied collection that appears to have been written by a man whose strong feelings come through in the stories very clearly. Grabinski is a writer who deserves to be remembered more than he is; I can highly recommend this collection.
It was dark inside. A moment ago it was awash in streams of light, and now it was shrouded in a thick pall of darkness. The electric lights were off; gone was the glitter of the fantastic girandoles. The scream stopped abruptly. Into the room seeped hollow, stifling silence.'
I was pointed to CB Editions by Rob of The Fiction Desk, and you can read his thoughts on another of their publications, Days and Nights in W12 here. I recommend a look at the CB Editions website; there aren't many books on the list yet but the ones they have are interesting. The books themselves are simply presented but very attractive. I can also recommend their efficiency; I ordered In Sarah's House on a Thursday night and it fell through the letterbox Saturday morning!
The book I ordered is a collection of tales by a Polish author who died in 1936, Stefan Grabinski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga). I had never heard of him, but as the tales are of the eerie and supernatural it was a natural choice. It was very interesting to read a collection of eerie stories not written by an English speaker - I have realised that I have very few.
One of Grabinski's collections contained stories set in the world of the railway and a couple of the stories in this collection have this setting. The Dead Run is about a man's obsession with a piece of railway track that was decommissioned when a quicker route was built. The story is psychological, exploring the power that the dead run and the railway as a whole have over this man and how his pride in it is a way of fulfilling his dreams, while simultaneously refusing to face the truth that it is a sham job; it explores the effect that this duality has on him and is a very powerful story.
Another powerful psychological story, again set in the world of the railway, was Szatera's Engrams which describes a man's horror of the way life slips away minute by minute and how he discovers a way to catch hold of the past. His descent into obsession is horrifying and captured beautifully in such a short story. This story also deals explicitly with the theme of split personalities and doubles that are explored by a number of other writers (e.g. Bram Stoker in Crooken Sands, or Dostoevsky in The Double).
It is the title story, In Sarah's House, that caught my imagination the most. It begins with a man meeting an old friend who used to be the life and soul of the party but who is changed, drained of his youth and exuberance and firmly blaming it on a relationship he has formed with a strangely long-lived woman called Sarah. The story then traces the narrator's struggle with the woman. Although framed as a vampire story, this is very much about the fear of man of the effect of sexual obsession for a woman and how dangerous women can be to men's life and vitality. I found this story fascinating but quite a blunt instrument; Grabinski's own love life was not happy and this story appears to be an articulation of his anger and fear of women, and is perhaps an attempt to do on paper what he felt he could not do in life - resist them and thereby nullify their power.
This theme was also in The Black Hamlet, a piece which has the quality of a dream. Again there is a femme fatale who lures the narrator with her false charms. As a woman I found these stories beautiful but felt pity that someone could have such a dark view of my sex. I felt like a curious outsider, dispassionately looking into this man's mind and wondering why it had become so twisted. Despite the anger in them, I don't think they are threatening stories, just sad.
There are also a couple of more straightforward chillers; White Virak, the first story in the collection, is about chimney sweeps who disappear while sweeping out a disused brewery chimney. The Grey Room is a story about the ability of buildings to 'remember' strong events or presences, an idea common in occult and paranormal literature and nowadays known as the 'stone tape theory'.
A number of the stories are written in the first person in quite a simple style, but the descriptions in the stories are at times beautiful. The stories are set, as the best supernatural tales always are, in a recognisable world. It is the modern age, full of trains and medical opinions, but still the other side permeates through the veil and touches ordinary people in unexpected and devastating ways. Obsession is a major theme in this collection, be it for a woman, or a dream of what life should be. Whatever an obsession is for, though, it is always shown to be destructive.
It is an interesting and varied collection that appears to have been written by a man whose strong feelings come through in the stories very clearly. Grabinski is a writer who deserves to be remembered more than he is; I can highly recommend this collection.
5 comments:
Oh my! This sounds too, too good. (But I'm not allowed to buy any new books right now, so it will have to wait.)
Very interesting - had never heard of this fellow until you mentioned him.
Emily - it would be worth breaking the ban for, if only because of the ethos of the publishing company. I recommend a look at the website.
AR - It was a very interesting collection, I will be looking out for more of his work now.
Spare us the amateur psychology, please.
It never ceases to amaze and amuse me how an author's use of a theme in his stories is misinterpreted to lead to generalizations about an author's feelings "about women" as a whole, for instance.
I realize that professional victims need to take their empowerment where they find it, but leave Grabinski alone. We English-speakers know next to nothing about his life, and only a fraction of his work is so far available in English translation.
Dear Rob T
Please don't accuse me of a generalisation and then make a generalisation about me from the little you have read. I am not a 'professional victim', or even an amateur one, just someone who writes about what she feels when she reads stories.
Rather than just posting anonymous abuse, why not give a different interpretation of the stories in question (I am doing you the courtesy of assuming that you have read them)? Or if you know something more about Grabinski's life that proves my interpretation is wrong then please share it - I would be happy to learn more about him. Otherwise, please move on elsewhere.
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