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Topic: John Burke - New Tales Of Unease (Read 920 times) |
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demonik
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John Burke - New Tales Of Unease
« Thread started on: Oct 14th, 2006, 03:22am » |
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John Burke (ed.) - New Tales Of Unease (Pan, 1976)
Cover photography: Chris Yates
These tales are not about ghosts: not really, not ghosts pure and simple. They are not crime stories, or gruesome stories: well .... not All of them. They tell of ordinary people in an everyday world, people you may know, people you may recognize.
So what is there to be uneasy about?
Rosemary Timperley - Double Wedding
Miles Tripp - Commuter
George Mackay Brown - Two Horses, Rose And Terror
Barry Sutton - Jane Howard, Where Are You Now?
Elizabeth Walter - The Hollies And The Ivy
Stephen Meadows - It Had Happened Before
Charles Eric Maine - Joe Three Eyes
Jay Gilbert - Out Of Reason
Philip Evans - Tale-Telling
Peter Collins - Absence Without Leave
R. M. Stephenson - Janet
Michael Cornish - Mr. Gupta's Marionettes
R. Andrew Hall - Autumn's Dream
Keith Turner - Little Jimmy
Brian Morse - About Ghosts
John Burke - And Cannot Come Again
Third and final book in the series.
Elizabeth Walter - The Hollies And The Ivy: Gus and Judith Pentecost move into The Hollies, previously owned by old Mrs. Dyer whose husband vanished, presumed murdered by wife although no body was ever recovered. From the first, Gus fights a losing battle versus the unruly ivy which clings to the walls and taps on the windows at night. Come Christmas, and they're entombed by the fist-thick roots. Another cracker for the Vegetation! thread.
Miles Tripp - Commuter: For forty years, Sidney Hinds reflects, he's commuted to his dull job analysing unemployment figures before returning home to his joyless marriage. But today the station is deserted, the train doesn't arrive, and so he has no option but to return home and be nagged by Mabel for getting "under her feet" .... just as he has every day for years since he took an axe to her. Today, in a rare moment of clarity, Sidney realises he's no reason to stay at the gloomy bungalow any longer, so he has a last hack at the corpse, packs some provisions and sets up camp in the waiting room of the obsolete station. When two youths break in, he defends his property entirely oblivious to the express train belting along the rails ...
Stephen Meadows - It Had Happened Before: Short-short. Another bitter marriage with every day, every excuse for a conversation a repetition of one that has gone before. Husband takes out the iron and creeps up on wife as she's watching TV.
Philip Evans - Tale-Telling: Contract killer in the confessional box. The previous night he committed his first murder for non-financial gain, shooting a beautiful woman he'd just picked up and made love to, Rosa Selvaggio, and he can't explain why. He's even more at a loss as to why she merely laughed as bullet after bullet sank into her without having any effect whatsoever. She appears behind her killer in the box, as does the Priest. He's mighty odd, too.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 03:24am by demonik » |
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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Calenture
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Re: John Burke - New Tales Of Unease
« Reply #1 on: Oct 18th, 2006, 5:26pm » |
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Last night I read Elizabeth Walter's The Hollies and the Ivy and Stephen Meadows short-short It Had Happened Before.
I can't add much to your comments, except the Walter story was very slick and entertaining, while Meadows' writing conveyed a very intense portrait of the protagonist and something terrible that he'd done, and where, and why, in a very few words.
I definitely want to return to reading the book tonight.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 18th, 2006, 5:27pm by Calenture » |
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Calenture
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Re: John Burke - New Tales Of Unease
« Reply #2 on: Oct 21st, 2006, 4:34pm » |
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Mr Gupta's Marionettes by Michael Cornish: Mr Gupta has come to Sekkapur from Oxford, and becomes a favourite of seven-year-old Andrew because of the plays he puts on with his wooden marionettes. When puppet shows of fairy stories grows boring, Mr Gupta agrees with Andrew's suggestion that the marionettes should play soldiers - the only thing Andrew has found more exciting than the puppet shows has been watching the battalion of Highlanders at the depot drilling before they march off to the Front.
At the end of the game, Mr Gupta thinks the marionettes are tired and have fallen asleep, but Andrew believes they must be dead. A little later word comes through that the battalion has been almost wiped out.
Andrew's other friends are brother and sister Toby and Lucy Durrant; but Andrew hates Lucy's friend Captain Heighton. The newest marrionette reminds him of Heighton... This one doesn't quite hit the mark for me, it has a sort of Radio 4 story feel - which isn't bad in itself - but the ending seems a tiny bit wide of the target.
Little Jimmy by Keith Turner: Sibling rivalry. Jimmy is jealous of the little thing his mum and dad have brought back from the hospital, lying there in its basket, wrapped up in blankets. It seems he can never do anything right. Even though he helps Mummy with the laundry, putting the clothes into the washing machine... This one does turn the screw as you guess what's going to happen.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 21st, 2006, 4:35pm by Calenture » |
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - New Tales Of Unease
« Reply #3 on: Oct 22nd, 2006, 03:29am » |
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on Oct 21st, 2006, 4:34pm, Calenture wrote: This one doesn't quite hit the mark for me, it has a sort of Radio 4 story feel - which isn't bad in itself - but the ending seems a tiny bit wide of the target.
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I think you've eloquently summed up my feelings toward Cornish's Superstitious Ignorance in the first book. It's probably a fine piece of literature but there's something not quite right about it. The Tales Of Unease series as a whole seem to be more experimental than we're used to, so I guess they were always going to be hit and miss. and, of course, what works for one of us will be anathema to another, and vice versa.
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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Calenture
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Re: John Burke - New Tales Of Unease
« Reply #4 on: Oct 22nd, 2006, 09:51am » |
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on Oct 22nd, 2006, 03:29am, demonik wrote:| It's probably a fine piece of literature but there's something not quite right about it. The Tales Of Unease series as a whole seem to be more experimental than we're used to, so I guess they were always going to be hit and miss. |
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A bit like Moorcock's New Worlds where experimental writing sometimes replaced science fiction, but encouraged the writers to explore wider areas in the long run. Possibly as you say this was the New Terrors of its day, and after the experiments I think New Terrors was able to put the horror back into the experiments?
Commuter by Miles Tripp: It was exactly 9.07. But where was the 9.07 crowd, and where was the 9.07 train. Miles Tripp’s henpecked commuter has a boring job filing Employment statistics, while his wife Mabel has – in his opinion - a carefree time at home, doing more or less as she likes, with no children to bother her. When the train doesn’t arrive, he decides to risk being under Mabel’s feet all day and staying at home himself. The phrase under her feet sends him into a rage, and that’s where this story moves into EC Comic Book territory. But the ending might not be quite what you expect. Enjoyed this!
(Despite reading Dem's review above, before, I've double-posted on this one in my hurry. Oops!  )
Two horses, Rose and Terror by George Mackay Brown: ‘Obviously,’ said Lothar, ‘I can’t kill Bjorn myself. He is a popular chief. The islanders might turn from me if they knew I was Bjorn’s murderer. So you will put the knife into him.’
‘Lothar,’ I said, ‘I might live, if I’m lucky, for two minutes after Bjorn’s death. The retainers will make a red honeycomb of me. They’ll throw me into the fire.’
But Lothar tells his bondsman not to fear, because he will be there to speak for him and will tell the people how evil and degenerate Bjorn has become in his old age; and that with Bjorn dead, his daughter will be free to marry the young man. In the event, of course, Lothar betrays the bondsman, and the rest of the story looks at the other ways the story might end, and how a basic and elemental tale becomes transmuted over the ages by the theme of love. An intriguing piece which both illustrates and explains how style can rule over content.
Julie Howard, Where Are You Now? is the notice Francis Willard puts in the Personal Column of the Daily Telegraph on the first Monday of every month, ‘partly in hope, but increasingly in memoriam.’
In fact, Julie has been abducted by Dr Hendrix, who needs her for an experiment he is carrying out on animals, combating the effects of radiation with doses of vitamins. Julie shares the animals’ quarters, and due to the top secret nature of Hendrix’s work, no-one else ever enters. The cobalt Irradiation Unit is ‘terribly dangerous.’ One short dose and your skin would start to fall off you.
If this was a Herbert van Thal anthology we'd know exactly how this would end. But it wasn't.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 22nd, 2006, 09:59am by Calenture » |
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