| Author |
Message |
    
Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Sunday, September 21, 2008 - 11:03 am: | |
My apologies for starting this thread a little early. I shall be absent from the Net for a couple of weeks at the start of October, so thought it a good thing to cast my thoughts and reasons for choosing “The Ferries” as October’s tale now, so that there are no hold ups and no one feels they’re treading on someone else’s (perhaps webbed!) toes . ...
As soon as the notion for this book club was floated, I knew my choice for the discussion would be “The Ferries”. It’s probably my personal favourite of all Ramsey’s tales and any excuse to read it again is a welcome one.
Perhaps unusual in Ramsey’s stores, because he so likes to push forward and create new traditions, this tale contains many of the ghost story’s traditional elements: the protagonist travelling to a meeting with a troubled loner who fears the coming of something unspeakable; the subsequent – and of course mysterious – demise/disappearance of the troubled loner after he has imparted enough information for the protagonist (and of course the reader) to glean some notion of what might, however seemingly impossible, be happening; the Jamesian device of an inanimate object as a trigger or siren call to the supernatural; and the subsequent passing on of the haunting and how the protagonist is slowly submerged beneath the slowly increasing eddies of that haunting.
The initial scene at the dry dockland is wonderfully creepy. The ghost of the sea whispers in the grass. There’s a sense of foreboding, a fear of something relentless always threatening to draw in, unstoppable as the tide. Creatures from the grass flee like rats from a sinking ship (a cliché Ramsey would never use) when the sea is said to be coming in farther than usual or a storm approaches. Atmosphere is something a good number of writers can’t buy. Here Ramsey unloads a treasure trove of it: the black and white buildings of the deserted (by the sea at least) promenade, the sense of a ship run aground in the timbers of the buildings, that hard to define but very certainly present feeling of something about to happen . . .
It’s the atmosphere – coupled with the ghostly sea-shanty tale of creepy loneliness and isolation out on the wide ocean as a confrontation with the moon-white ship passing with creaking rigging so close to the sailors is told – that makes me catch my breath and tense a little with an excitement that comes as much from wonder and awe at the supernatural as it does with any horror or fear, as Berry makes his way to the night-time promenade and catches sight of the terrible but beautiful ship dragging its wake of pale grasses to the horizon.
And I think that’s what I keep coming back for in this tale: not the fear, not the horror, the grizzly nightmares. It’s the sense of awe, of being confronted with something that might very well bring about your end, but not without showing you a glimpse of something more, something larger than us and our clockwork understandings of the way of the world.
The craft on display here is terrific, it almost goes without saying. The build up to the final confrontation is wonderful, as ever. We’ve all the elements we’d like from such a tale: unexplained water on the streets where a mariner too long beneath the waves might have stood watching, watching; the drunken swaying of the buildings; people sailing by; waves of this and that. It’s just delightful from a technical point of view. The ship in the bottle, which might at first have been a creature stuck there, is just perfect as the carrying device, the physical form of the passing on of the runes so to speak. The ending is at once inevitable and spooky, and while a gentle shiver travels the spine, as only the very best ghost stories can produce, so too am I left with a sense of wonder, of longing to sight that light, amidst whose shine might be seen the spindly masts and sails shadowed like the full moon, sailing down the Thames one night … Though I’d be fearful that I might, at some point in the future, see it again…
It’s my favourite piece in ALONE WITH THE HORRORS. I hope you like it and find as much to enjoy as I did. I hope you take that sense of awe and wonder from the piece.
Cheers, me hearties. |
Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin)
Username: Richard_gavin
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 03:48 pm: | |
Great review, Mark.
I must apologize to everyone taking part in the Reading Group. My summer was abnormally chaotic this year, and because of this a lot of my projects like this Reading Group had to be put on ice. Fortunately things are back on track now.
I will be adding my own thoughts on 'The Ferries' this week and will make a dilligent effort to keep the monthly tales on track.
Best,
Richard |
Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin)
Username: Richard_gavin
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 01:15 am: | |
Thanks to Mark for selecting 'The Ferries' and kicking the October thread.
I read this tale last night. I would agree with Mark: the technical aspects of 'The Ferries' are its greatest attributes. The protagonist pondering how to free the ship from its bottle was a rather chilly touch. I also liked the sea-tinged metaphors that Ramsey used. They were refreshingly free of the cliches a lesser writer might have employed.
This being said, I confess that I found 'The Ferries' a difficult story to connect with. Speaking plainly, it left me rather flat. There were some wonderful touches, but the visit to the seafaring uncle held no tension for me, and I'm afraid that I myself didn't experience the awe that Ramsey might have been striving for. He's certainly capable of it, but 'The Ferries' just refused to gel for me. Strong writing and some solid images, but characters I didn't feel were tangible enough and very little that I found truly frightening.
This is obviously just a matter of personal taste rather than 'The Ferries' being a "bad" story. It just didn't work for me. |
Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2008 - 10:45 pm: | |
Ach! Sorry about that, Richard. I guess it's one we'll have to disagree about. And yeah, probably a taste thing; of the pieces we've all read so far, I think it's possibly the one that least fits into Ramsey's area of more progressive tales. It's less urban and perhaps more overtly fantastical, nodding toward the fireside ghost story tradition.
Can't beat em all.
Anyway, I've read "Ferries" countless times, and it's a piece I keep coming back to. Can't imagine a time when I won't look forward to an excuse to read it again. |
Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin)
Username: Richard_gavin
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Monday, October 20, 2008 - 07:21 pm: | |
That's the great thing about Ramsey's work: there's enough diversity to please pretty much any reader who enjoys quality horror. :-)
Best,
Richard |
Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 01:17 pm: | |
Enjoyed your comments Mark!
It is all about taste - that is why I seldom write reviews. I love THE FERRIES - in this story I'm there with the protagonist, all my senses are heightened as the story pushes on.'Berry's sleep was dark and profound. Half-submerged images floated by, so changed as to be unrecognisable' Enough going on in that to keep my imagination flooded with imagery. When James 'dreaded to see,' I dreaded too.
I suddenly became highly delighted when the ship in the bottle was introduced (had one as a child) and one satisfaction of reading the story was to try and guess the ending of course. And what happens in the office near the end - absolute artistry in writing. Yes - definately one of my favourite Ramsey stories. |
|