The Whisperer in Darkness by HP Lovecraft (2007)

 This is the first volume in a paperback reissue of all of Lovecraft's works. I'd been directed toward him many a time over many years, via the interest in him of people I knew. I finally got there, and my responses are mixed. There are nine pieces in this first volume, among them some of his most famous, like The Dunwich Horror, Dagon and At the Mountains of Madness. Initially, with short pieces like Dagon as a first exposure, I was quietly impressed; there seemed a strange place he occupied, full of landscapes empty of obvious life but which harboured it in hidden places. A fascination with archaeological records persisted, showing lost civilisations and the possible influence of vaguely hinted at others, either of a previously unknown prehistoric intelligent species, or visitors from elsewhere, surviving secretly. This was riddled with the author's queasiness at such things, which was elaborately explained. I could also see where the prejudice against him has received its energy, through the hackneyed adage "show, don't tell". There's a lot of telling here. But also a lot of showing, so that relation is an interesting one. As the volume progressed, though, that criticism gathered some weight, I will admit. It foundered in the middle of the volume in his longest piece (at least as far as I am aware) The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which really did chug back and forth in a tiring sargasso sea of blasphemous this, and stench-laden that. It would have been better if those elements had been searing, and capable of raising the ghost of Giger, but they were less horrifying by quite a way, mainly because they were so often referenced as "nameless" or  "incapable of description" or whatever. And the treatment was profoundly repetitive. Surviving behind though was a peculiar atmosphere. The depth and specificity of his imagining of these others and their alien cultures still has great underlying charm. It seems to me that his pulp origins are most betrayed in this element: these stories would be much better not read all together in omnibus volumes, but encountered periodically, at good distances from one another. He seems to me almost the paragon of a little going a long way. So I'll no doubt pick up the second volume at some point, but at the moment I'm Lovecrafted out.

After the Rain by John Bowen (1958)

 This one confirms some conclusions about Bowen that I had come to after reading his first from two years earlier. He's a great ideas-man, but shows a few faultlines in terms of execution. That earlier one had transplanted a historical situation of the 1700s into 1950s Scotland, and if the melding was a little awkward, well, the result was fascinating. This one posits the end of the current world in flood, has a group of survivors aboard a raft who are fairly typical middle-class English types of the time, has a little fun with that, but awkwardly. It has the feel of a slightly stiff black and white film starring John Mills, Shirley Eaton and Kenneth More. But it's intriguing all the same. The eight survivors cope broadly well to begin with, but dark patches begin to appear as time goes by. When they are becalmed for an extended period, the sun beating down on their raft and no discernible movement, they start to go a bit doolally. It ends up with their 'leader' Arthur declaring himself a god and withdrawing to the one bedroom aboard. Most of the group fall in with the plan in their sense of exposedness and uncertainty. The parallels with Lord of the Flies and its like are obvious - were Faber, the publishers of both, looking for another Golding? We are clearly expected to come to the conclusion that Arthur has got bored with his divinity when he declares that he's not the god, rather the high priest of the god, and comes out to interact with everyone again - it's a neat sleight. They get moving again finally after several months, encountering strange atmospheres of the sea and movements of its animals. Finally, after a terrifying encounter with a giant squid, Arthur declares that the animal was an incarnation of their god. His jumped-at next step is an "expiation" - revealed only to John, the main character - they will secretly sacrifice the as yet unborn baby of Sonya, one of the group. John believes it to be his child, and is enjoined by Arthur to take part in the coming sacrifice as punishment for his consistent questioning of Arthur's status. John spills the plan out on the deck to the bodybuilder Tony, who is a simple working class man who's kept out of most of the middle-class delusional shenanigans, as they are now confirmed to be. His ground-level morality is outraged and he engages Arthur in a fight to both their deaths overboard. The following morning the remainder of the group finally spot an island - as though there had been a pattern of lockedness which the death of Arthur has symbolically broken. The blurb mentions that Angus Wilson had called this "a satire of the first order". I have to say I'm not quite sure that's true. If it does have targets, they feel momentary and isolated, coming in minor cuts. The rest is more directly adventuresome. But it is limpid and bold, if a little silly. Funny combination, which phrase sums up Bowen for me at the moment. 

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym (1953)

 Great to return to Pym again. This one feels like a subtle progression from the previous one in one sense in particular - 'dangerous' characters are a little more foregrounded. Like her first novel (about which I remember little else) the centre of this one is a village in the country. And again like it, it involves people nearby to the church or in it, and their love affairs, tight lives and niggles with one another. But it's no I. Compton-Burnett hell-stoker; the milieu is rounded out instead with incisive wit of a more standard variety. The two titular characters are an older woman from a particular Oxford college who has since married a clergyman, and a younger one of the same college who was tutored by the older and is still on the marriage market. The older, Jane, has moved to the village with her husband as vicar. The younger, Prudence, is in London, working at a small office. Jane and Prudence have kept up their relationship, with Jane feeling almost responsible sometimes for providing Prudence with marriage options. Prudence, meanwhile, has had quite a few relationships, about some of which Jane knows nothing. We work through the process of acclimatization into the village's (and the church's) life and with its characters as it happens to Jane and her husband Nicholas. And we concurrently examine Prudence's life in the office and at her flat in London with similar attention to variances of character at work and her private aims, the main one of these an adoration of her boss which is unrequited. Shot through with humour, this is what can be seen as typical Pym territory, as it veers between gentility and pointedness, warmly familiar pokes and somewhat cooler stabs. The thing which differentiates this a little is, as aforementioned, a livelier attention to characters, two in particular, who don't quite play by the rules. Jane herself is an uncomfortable blurter on occasion, steaming in before she's really thought something through, ruffling feathers with awkward truths. And even more of this stripe is village woman Jessie Morrow - a small, mouse-like, tiny-voiced companion to dragon Miss Doggett, who is splendid and severe. Jessie is the proverbial dark horse, revealed as having steel under her featherbed exterior, as she firmly (and unexpectedly) decides to oust Prudence from the affections of a local lothario - another of Jane's plans for her younger protégé goes astray. These small harshnesses only work in the way they do, I think, because they are couched within such a reassuring frame, though it would be interesting to see what Pym could do with an entirely savage free-for-all.