Speculative Fiction Junkie

Lucy M. Boston

Reviving the works of authors who might otherwise slide into obscurity is one of the nobler endeavors undertaken by many of the small presses operating today. The smaller scale of their operations allows them to publish works that larger publishers wouldn't even consider publishing.

With its latest offering, newcomer The Swan River Press, run by author Brian J. Showers, attempts to rescue from obscurity the supernatural tales of Lucy M. Boston, best known for her award-winning children's novels.  The book, entitled Curfew and Other Stories, collects three previously published short stories, three previously unpublished short stories, as well as a previously published play.

In the end, I found the collection to be a mixed bag. While none of the stories are bad, per se, most of them simply fail to make much of an impression. The first story, "Curfew," for example, concerns three young brothers who are spending a school holiday with an aunt and uncle in a newly purchased rural English farmhouse. A number of ominous objects are discovered, including an old coffin and an old bell that was once used to signal curfews and about which the locals still tell stories of evil. The story thread that knits these elements together, however, is so utterly lacking in atmosphere that when scary things start happening to individual characters, the story falls flat because they seem to come out of nowhere and be too tenuously connected.

In a similar vein, some of these stories have simply not aged well. In "Many Coloured Glass," for example, any potential for eeriness is forced to contend with dialog like the following:

"What are you looking at?" said Phillip. "Attend me!"
"It's too public here. All your admirers are still out there."
"Good luck to them."
"No, Phillip, not now. Not here. Oh dear, that was a lovely waltz."
"Why Oh dear in that tone? Why not 'You dear!', or 'my dear', my dear?"
"I don't know what I'm saying or doing," she answered.

I understand and respect the fact that language has changed over time. I think that, where possible, it's important to look beyond language that may sound awkward to us today but that was perfectly ordinary in its own day, but it is difficult to see how any sense of eeriness can survive dialog like this.

Despite its shortcomings, there is one story in this collection that is astoundingly good. It is the previously unpublished story entitled "Blind Man's Buff" (and no, I did not misspell that title). In it, a Captain Fernley recounts the harrowing calamity that would eventually lead him to his sorry present state. Once a promising young man, we learn that his rapid ascent would eventually be brought to a halt by a terrible experience that took place while he was in Venezuela. What happened is truly horrifying and the resulting story of revenge reminded me of Jean Ray's excellent tale "Cousin Passeroux" with its haunting refrain of "Like me...Cut in two... Eaten... Rotten." Any fan of weird fiction will be impressed by "Blind Man's Buff."

Ultimately, most of the stories collected in Curfew and Other Eerie Tales don't leave much of an impression. With one notable exception, they have not aged well and feel like kids' stuff when measured against the efforts of many of our modern scriveners of nightmares, including those penned by Brian J. Showers himself. I have high hopes for The Swan River Press, but its reputation will almost surely be built on works other than this collection.

Rating: 5/10

The True First

Curfew and Other Eerie Tales was first published in August of 2011 by the Swan River Press and was limited to 350 copies.

[This review was based on a review copy]