| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Well, I finally finished Simon Strantzas' book Beneath The Surface. Got caught up in British Invasion midway through, but returned with pleasure these past few days. And what do I think of it? Here: First, each tale at a time -- A Shadow in God's Eye: a powerful tale, perhaps the most sinister and evocative in the book. Its pungent elucidation of personal emptiness (a characteristic of many of the stories) renders the sky-filling imagery at the end all the more potent. A genuine sense of a cosmic realm, a quality I know SS will explore just as effectively in later work. It Runs Beneath the Surface: a tad oblique for my tastes. I strongly suspect I'm missing something occasionally in some of SS's tales and this was one example. Constant Encroaching: similarly this tale felt a little too enigmatic for my tastes. Behind Glass: I read this tale a few years ago and enjoyed it this time around, too. Strong imagery, with more of that bland, repetitive context to render the tentacular invasion more loathsome. Thing of Love: I really liked this - a brave attempt to climb the summit perched upon by Lisa Tuttle's superb 'Replacements'. I thought the symbolic nature of the creature might be a little transparent (no winning with me: either it's too clear or too ineffeble  ), but the whole left me with a suitably sour taste. Strong stuff. In The Air: ah, now we're into the SS I love. This is a splendidly brooding tale with a sterling denouement. A foretaste of what we get from later tales like SS's 2nd Humdrumming Book of Horror story. More cosmic impact: the sky, particles, natural elements, folk trapped amid it all. Mr Fry was a good character, him and his wobbling legs. You Are Here: another slightly oblique tale. This stuff is dealt with more effectively in Thoughtless (below), I think. Wound so Deep: graphic horror a la Cronenberg. I guess the descriptions weren't gruesome enough (yes, it's me saying this) to truly get to the core of the horror on offer here, but I found it a compelling tale, not least because someone called Gary is threatened with murder and when the piece reaches its effective end, he's still alive. Something New: another tale I'd read before - an oblique piece (along with The Uninvited Guest) in which for me the obliqueness worked..dunno why, but, ah, uh, it did. Autumnal City: assured prose throughout and creeping symbolism. Like a Poe prose poem. I liked it. Thoughtless: superb. One of the best pieces I've read from SS and that makes it one of the best fright tales I've read more recently. Genuinely sinister and thought-provoking. Drowned Deep Inside: a tale I had the pleasure to read in MS form a few years ago. Its imagery hadn't left me and I was delighted to renew my acquaintance with this piece. Audacious and awesome juxtoposition of imagery. So in total, a very strong collection - couple of genuine classics, several very strong tales, and a few that didn't work for me (and I hasten to add that my problem with these were personal, and not owing to any flaws I could perceive in the pieces). Overall I have the impression that Simon is attempting the express the side-effects of civilisation. His characters occupy ruthlessly grey cities and work in jobs requiring non-satisfying precision. And always the dreams threaten to spill over, as does the autonomous body. In 'Wound So Deep' we have a deeply repressed individual who ends up caught between his habitual 'niceness' and the demands of his aggrieved being: the thing from his side becomes a kind of symbol for imaginary vengeance, yet as in the case of the hyper-organised (corporate) world, the guy can't control the fantasies. They seep out. And as for those who flee the city and the things its sociality leads its embodied subjects to do? Well, then there's sky and its denizens, the country and its beings, etc. SS's world is essentially an obsessive's. His folk cling to a 'carpentered' world while loathing every part of it. Its grey is soul-leeching, though it's the only colour they know well: all the others are even more frightening. But how to stop these invading? Why can't such people be left alone? Alas, as in the case of the obsessive, a thing denied multiplies: its limbs become innumerable; it manifests itself in metaphorically approximated forms. And that isn't a choice folk make; it's part and parcel (notice the corporate metaphor) of being human, of enquiring, of responding to the begging of flesh. As one character says in one of these stories: "I can see your inquisitiveness dripping off you like a poison. It will kill you, this thinking. Better you were like the rest." It will, but they ain't nothing SS's people can do about that. Perhaps the greatest horror is to be cursed with a needful heart and nowhere safe to place it. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.155.179 |
He's a good'un, is Simon. Got this and Ally's lined up near the top of my tbr pile, so I should be able to see if you know what you're talking about soon, Gary. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.166.188.81 |
Here's my review of that book: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/beneath_the_surface_by_simon_strantzas.htm | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Wound So Deep: "one with paranoiac fear of endangering other people with pollution, then revelling in it, then being subsumed himself" Yes, I meant to mention that: SS's characters are scared of their own power, its uncontrollable-ness. The mindful/mindless body in this tale is a perfect expression of that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
And another obsessive trait, I might add. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 99.225.104.255 |
Thanks, of course, Gary for the writing your thoughts on the book. The tales were written amongst other material, and it wasn't as clear to me at the time how unified they were in theme until I collected them. I mean, I had an idea, but ... Anyway, I hope you like the next one even more. | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.110.174.71 |
Whoa, whoa, wait a minute here! Let me make sure I'm reading this thread correctly: Simon wrote a book?  Beneath the Surface was a collection I'd been eagerly waiting for, and when Simon brought me back a copy from FantasyCon, I was not disappointed by it. I'd been fortunate enough to read a handful of these stories in manuscript format, whereupon I immediately spotted a writer who has the potential of being this generation's great writer of Aickman-level Strange Stories. I've read "Something New" on three separate occassions, and each time I grow more convinced that Simon is one of the few writers who not only understands what writers like Aickman and de la Mare were trying to achieve, but is able to conjure the same affects in his own way, in his own time. I think his next collection will leave many of us in his dust. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
His tale 'Pinholes in Black Muslin' is awesomely awesome. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.151.125.173 |
I am on the last tale of this Simon's collection and loving it. Hey...He used me as a character! - Cole Wilkin | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Yeah, but you didn't kill me! | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 99.225.104.255 |
Ah... my one regret in the entire collection. Perhaps the reprint?? (I'm thrilled you're enjoying the book, GCW, so keep your filthy "passenger" away from me!) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
Yeah, once it goes mass market that will be more satisfying. |