| Author | Message | ||
     Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.104.0 |
I wrote a review of Ramsey Campbell’s novel THE GRIN OF THE DARK for Page Horrific. Page Horrific is a great site run by David T. Wilbanks that includes short book reviews and interviews with horror icons. You can check out my review of Ramsey's novel at http://pagehorrific.blogspot.com/2010/11/grin-of-dark-by-ramsey-campbell.html . | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Nice, succinct review, Matt. Says it all about "Grin .." really - one of my all-time favourite novels!  Looks like an interesting site too. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.104.0 |
Thanks Carolinec. That site is run by David T. Wilbanks. He recently got it up and running and asked if I'd like to contribute to it. He's posting new reviews and interviews everyday. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Hey, thanks, Matt! Strange - Huw had the same reaction to the scene in the disused theatre, but for myself, when I'd finished it I thought it was a little uneventful and low-key for its position in the narrative. Trust the tale, not the author. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.126.12 |
It's also bloody funny, that scene. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Indeed! I read it at a signing at Waterstones in Leeds, and my fellow panellists (Adam Nevill, Mark Morris and Conrad Williams) all were heard to chuckle like Tubby. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.126.12 |
Yeah, Gary Mc and I were in the audience, sniggering too. That was the night you almost ran out of petrol. | ||
| James Armstrong (James_armstrong) Username: James_armstrong Registered: 10-2010 Posted From: 81.151.187.189 |
‘There is a bizarre, dreamlike visit to a clown show that is bloodlessly unsettling.’ Couldn’t agree more, one of the most imaginatively frightening scenes I’ve encountered in fiction for a while. Simon’s night in Amsterdam was another favourite; I genuinely felt as though on the border between mirth and hysteria. If you don’t mind me asking Ramsey, was the abandoned movie theatre inspired by a real location or completely fictional? I ask as a Prestonian. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
It's a theatre (where Thackeray Lane performed his stage act) rather than a cinema, but it's my invention, James. | ||
| James Armstrong (James_armstrong) Username: James_armstrong Registered: 10-2010 Posted From: 81.151.187.189 |
Ah, I see. Forgive me, it's been some time since I last read the novel. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.104.0 |
Wow, people chuckled at that scene? I thought it was masterfully chilling. I guess since the imagination of the reader, and their state of mind at the time of reading are in play it can effect how a scene is perceived. | ||
| James Armstrong (James_armstrong) Username: James_armstrong Registered: 10-2010 Posted From: 81.151.187.189 |
I admit to feeling more frightened than amused by the theatre scene. I've not heard Ramsey's delivery of it though. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Curious, Ramsey - I've not yet read this novel - but I'm still wading through this great old THE DARK DESCENT anthology - and I just read Edith Wharton's fantastic tale, "Afterward." And in it there's a fine line that goes, "It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they had often called England so little -- 'such a confoundedly hard place to get lost in.' " The story is importantly about a man who becomes lost, and his disappearance is (quite disturbingly) never explained. Your novel, from what I've read of the synopsis, is also about things gone missing, and the search for them. This is a purely trivial question, I know. I was just wondering if you were at all nodding to this short story, with your novel's title? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.202.244 |
Well-spotted, hawkeyes. Could be just a case of great minds thinking alike, tho. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
I've got that collection, albeit part one, I must check it out. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
That's a great story - I only read it recently, recommended by our own Simon Strantzas (he even sent me his spare copy of the book, bless his soul). |