Margaret Irwin Anthology
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darkling_talesDo we have any fans of Margaret Irwin here? She's a very well-respected author of historical novels with a romantic flavour, who churned out large numbers of such books between 1920 and 1954 or so (I think her most famous one is Young Bess, about a young Elizabeth I.) But she also had a darker side! I have just finished Bloodstock, a mixed bag of Irwin's short supernatural and weird fiction, some romances and a couple of historical tales.
The book is divided into three parts. First come five "Stories from Ireland". These are not all ghost stories proper - "The Doctor" and "Courage" are straight dramatic stories and "Bloodstock" a romance - but they all share a certain flavour of wildness, and focus on whirlwinds of human emotion while acknowledging the pull of Ireland's past. But fear not! Irwin is no "Plastic Paddy", and there are few tiresome skiddle-dee-dee leprechaun-chasing stereotypes to clutter up her stories. Nor is there any false nostalgia. "The Country Gentleman", set in the Ireland of Cromwell, makes no bones about the savagery that formed an integral part of society in those days. The story with the highest supernatural content, "The Collar", is a charming pastoral yarn that draws on millenium-old Irish mythology without being too condescending about it. It's not particularly frightening, but its obvious that Irwin's aim here is to enchant, not terrorise, and it works fairly well. Irwin has a gift for imbuing fairly mundane events with that "numinous" quality, so that her straight fiction almost feels supernatural sometimes, if that makes any sense. Altogether this part of the book was a good deal more fun than I thought it would be.
But I really bought this book for the second part: the four "Uncanny Stories". There are two stories here that are fairly famous: "The Book" (one of the best tales in the Virago Book of Modern Ghost Stories) and "The Earlier Service", which has appeared in several collections. Having last read these two when I was only a child, I thought they were probably worth a re-read, and I was right! "The Book" is excellent, despite its preternaturally forgettable title. It's about a normal suburban father who discovers a tome of ancient occult lore on his shelf, which presently begins to exert a baleful influence on him. I found the mechanisms by which the book achieves its dark ends imaginative and chilling, especially the part where its still on the shelf. But I'd better not give any more away! "The Earlier Service" is also pretty eerie, with a very modern feel despite being set mainly in an old Norman church, and a troubling conclusion. But what of the other two ghost stories? Well, "Mistletoe" was a bit light-hearted and romantic for my tastes, but "Monsieur Seeks A Wife" (a tale of Ancien Regime witchcraft in the remote Jura region of France) definitely got under my skin. It has a superbly evil (though outwardly respectable) villainess, and indirectly has much to say about the hypocrisy with which upper-class daughters were treated in those days.
The collection finishes with two tales, "Mrs Oliver Cromwell" and "Where Beauty Lies". Neither of these are remotely ghostly or numinous, but the former is a very touching and insightful psychological portrait of one of history's many forgotten female figures. It even manages the feat of making the reader feel a bit sorry for Oliver Cromwell!
All the stories are characterised by a lightness of touch of the kind you don't see very often these days (I wonder exactly when literature became so serious?)a dry wit and profound insights. Irwin is able to make people from any era of history spring right off the page, as it were, and her hauntings are equally convincing. I've often suspected that a true sense of the past is a key requirement for any supernatural fiction author to possess, so it's not really surprising that an author of historical fiction should do so well! I do think it's a shame that Irwin didn't make more forays into supernatural fiction (I think her only other contribution to the genre is her first ever novel And Still She Wished for Company, which apparently has a plot similar to Charlotte Sometimes, though I've yet to read it.) But what she did write in the genre is definitely worth a look at. And the good news is you can bag a charmingly antiquated 1953 hardback edition of Bloodstock second-hand via Abebooks for just a few pounds!
The book is divided into three parts. First come five "Stories from Ireland". These are not all ghost stories proper - "The Doctor" and "Courage" are straight dramatic stories and "Bloodstock" a romance - but they all share a certain flavour of wildness, and focus on whirlwinds of human emotion while acknowledging the pull of Ireland's past. But fear not! Irwin is no "Plastic Paddy", and there are few tiresome skiddle-dee-dee leprechaun-chasing stereotypes to clutter up her stories. Nor is there any false nostalgia. "The Country Gentleman", set in the Ireland of Cromwell, makes no bones about the savagery that formed an integral part of society in those days. The story with the highest supernatural content, "The Collar", is a charming pastoral yarn that draws on millenium-old Irish mythology without being too condescending about it. It's not particularly frightening, but its obvious that Irwin's aim here is to enchant, not terrorise, and it works fairly well. Irwin has a gift for imbuing fairly mundane events with that "numinous" quality, so that her straight fiction almost feels supernatural sometimes, if that makes any sense. Altogether this part of the book was a good deal more fun than I thought it would be.
But I really bought this book for the second part: the four "Uncanny Stories". There are two stories here that are fairly famous: "The Book" (one of the best tales in the Virago Book of Modern Ghost Stories) and "The Earlier Service", which has appeared in several collections. Having last read these two when I was only a child, I thought they were probably worth a re-read, and I was right! "The Book" is excellent, despite its preternaturally forgettable title. It's about a normal suburban father who discovers a tome of ancient occult lore on his shelf, which presently begins to exert a baleful influence on him. I found the mechanisms by which the book achieves its dark ends imaginative and chilling, especially the part where its still on the shelf. But I'd better not give any more away! "The Earlier Service" is also pretty eerie, with a very modern feel despite being set mainly in an old Norman church, and a troubling conclusion. But what of the other two ghost stories? Well, "Mistletoe" was a bit light-hearted and romantic for my tastes, but "Monsieur Seeks A Wife" (a tale of Ancien Regime witchcraft in the remote Jura region of France) definitely got under my skin. It has a superbly evil (though outwardly respectable) villainess, and indirectly has much to say about the hypocrisy with which upper-class daughters were treated in those days.
The collection finishes with two tales, "Mrs Oliver Cromwell" and "Where Beauty Lies". Neither of these are remotely ghostly or numinous, but the former is a very touching and insightful psychological portrait of one of history's many forgotten female figures. It even manages the feat of making the reader feel a bit sorry for Oliver Cromwell!
All the stories are characterised by a lightness of touch of the kind you don't see very often these days (I wonder exactly when literature became so serious?)a dry wit and profound insights. Irwin is able to make people from any era of history spring right off the page, as it were, and her hauntings are equally convincing. I've often suspected that a true sense of the past is a key requirement for any supernatural fiction author to possess, so it's not really surprising that an author of historical fiction should do so well! I do think it's a shame that Irwin didn't make more forays into supernatural fiction (I think her only other contribution to the genre is her first ever novel And Still She Wished for Company, which apparently has a plot similar to Charlotte Sometimes, though I've yet to read it.) But what she did write in the genre is definitely worth a look at. And the good news is you can bag a charmingly antiquated 1953 hardback edition of Bloodstock second-hand via Abebooks for just a few pounds!
