Simon Maginn

Last month’s book, ‘Suckers’ was the first book I’d reviewed for Carry on Screaming by a woman. This month’s is the second by a gay man (the first being ‘The Books of Blood volume 1’ by Clive Barker), although I don’t think either were publicly out when the books in question were first published. Whilst there are some notable female horror authors (Mary Shelley, anyone?), it still feels like an overwhelmingly male genre in a way that genres like crime and sci fi aren’t. I don’t know what that is, but I’d welcome thoughts in the comments below.
Back to the point. ‘Sheep’ is the 1994 debut from Simon Maginn, who lives (it turns out) a a few miles away from me. Maginn published four more horror novels under his own name and a number of comic novels as Simon Nolan. ‘Sheep’ made a bit of a splash when it was published, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s creepy, effective and very British. It was filmed as ‘The Dark’ in 2005, with the screenplay by Maginn), John Fawcett (‘Ginger Snaps’) directing and Sean Bean (almost every film ever) playing the lead. The film was, I think, less well received than the book.
I don’t know if Maginn’s other horror novels are as good as this one, but if they are I need to track down copies. ‘Sheep’ is unsettling right from the start and maintains its tension and subtle menace until the very last word. It tells the story of James and Adèle, a couple with a young son, who are trying to come to terms with the death of their daughter. They move to a dilapidated farmhouse rural Wales to escape their memories, but (this is a horror novel after all) end up facing something just as bad.
‘Sheep’ uses a lot of horror (and rural horror) tropes, but does so very effectively. The house has a dark secret. The locals are secretive and the sheep that graze the land around the farmhouse are freaky. Plus there’s a shit tonne of small bones buried near the house. What lifts the book out of cliché and is the quality of the writing. The grief and guilt that James and Adèle feel over the death of their daughter is palpable and infects the whole book. Their son, 7 year old Sam, is as convincing a child as I’ve read in a horror novel. Likewise, their new neighbour, Lewyn, who owns the sheep is a believable and very well rounded character.
Whilst the book isn’t overly gory, Maginn does a great job of making it disturbing. It’s quietly horrifying, like classic British rural horror movies ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. There’s a sense throughout that there’s something deeply messed up going on and that the final reveal with be shattering. If it doesn’t quite manage to be, it’s not too big a disappointment because the journey is so strong.
It strikes me that, as we’ve moved into the 90s, the books I’ve covered (with the exception of ‘Renegades’) have been far from the Paperback from Hell style of book that I expected to be covering when I conceived this column. They have, however, all been authentically horrifying and distinctly British. The transition from the gory excesses of Herbert and Hutson, to the more psychological horror of Maginn and McGrath and the witty satire of Newman and Billson is interesting observe and probably deserves analysis from someone better at reading pop culture trends than I am.

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Maginn's fiction has always had a strong psychological bent and this one is a step further into similar territory to Patrick McGrath. A couple still reeling from a series of failed IVF treatments come into contact with a homeless man with a personality disorder. They take him in as an almost surrogate child but their own problems complicate an already difficult situation. Various obsessions come to the fore and the fragile sanity of all of them is slowly pushed to breaking point. It also acts as a subtle comment on the hands off approach to mental health treatment through the Care in the Community programme. I'm not sure where Maginn disappeared to after this one, but here he's at the top of his game.… (más)

The concept of this book intrigued me, although the "back of the book" description just contains a fairly mundane detective story with hints at the paranormal. Superimposing the title and cover art over the description pulled me in and set my expectations for an interesting murder mystery with strange religious overtones.

Characters
There are five "main" characters in the book: Daniel, Wendy, the skinhead, the professor, and the detective inspector.

Daniel's character was intriguing to me as an introspective on a person in mental anguish. Even before he moves into "the house" and begins his downward spiral, Daniel was obviously suffering mental turmoil. His interactions with his mother and roommates, as well as their thoughts and descriptions of him, were great illustrations of someone suffering depression or some other mental imbalance. His lack of focus. His lack of emotion. His inability to commit himself to even simplistic decisions in life with any passion. These are actions of a mind disjointed from the world. Once he gets into the house, he's taken into even more turmoil. Unfortunately, because he was already lost at sea, he didn't have the strength to interpret and overcome the powers working on him and as a result, he nearly suffers the same fate.

Wendy was a strange character but I had some trouble with her motivations. It's apparent that she too must suffer from some psychological shortcomings that made her susceptible to the behaviors she carried out. And yet, we're not given a thorough enough backstory or enough fleshing out of her character to fully understand her actions. The best view we could have gotten of Wendy would have been through the dowager Duchess, but sadly the dowager was too caught up in herself to give us a good view of Wendy.

For the most part, the "skinhead" is a fairly flat character...he's not even given a name. We get him best fleshed out through his actions (which we don't see much of until the end) and through the professor's views of him. I'll speak more about the professor in a minute, but generally I would have liked to have seen more fleshing out of both the skinhead and the professor in terms of their thoughts and actions.

The detective was an intriguing and yet typical character. Pulled from the set of many crime dramas, we have a semi-burned-out inspector with troubles at home at the end of his rope to solve a strange crime. I think the best segments with the inspector were near the end of the book while he was doing the stakeout in front of the house. We finally got to really get into his head and his psyche. The scene where he imagines the fight/beating of his son was especially interesting to his character. I would have enjoyed more details about the inspector.

Plot, pacing, etc.
As I mentioned initially, the base plot is fairly straightforward. The twists come in the 'supernatural' influences on Daniel and on the motives of the killer.

The supernatural elements were subtle at first. I loved the way the author worked in ghostly dialog without calling attention to it. The early segments where Daniel was thinking to himself or working through things and the author just dropped a name or a thought into the passage that were completely out of line with Daniel's character, but directly in line with the ghost...very subtle and very effective. As the supernatural basically came to inhabit Daniel and take over his actions and behaviors, the effectiveness broke down, not because of the mechanism, but because of the time involved in carrying it out.

The pacing was the main thing that pulled this novel down for me. Elements were introduced and put into motion early on. We were quickly given enough depth to understand the situation and even to predict the way things would pan out. Unfortunately, the next 2/3 of the novel were spent with layer upon layer of suspenseful tension even though we already knew they were coming. After a few chapters, something needed to be there to break the suspense. Instead, it just plateaued to the extent that there was nowhere for it to go. In terms of rising action --> climax --> falling action...the suspense plateaued the novel early on such that there could be no more rising action and there was no real way to climax because the structure didn't permit rising higher.

Thus, when the "climax" did finally come, it felt very staid and almost trite by the time things played out. Despite the potential intensity of things, the action felt slow and dry to me.

Something that may have helped create greater intensity while also breaking up the suspense plateau would have been better use of the secondary characters. The scene with the dowager Duchess in the taxi with Daniel was far more climactic to me than the final climax. Even though the scene was just a couple of pages, it was intriguing and effective. I would have liked to see more scenes of a similar vein.

Of particular interest would have been more involvement from the professor. I enjoyed having the professor as a sort of "sounding wall" for Daniel as he talked to himself and received replies from the professor as Daniel thought he would answer. As the professor got more fleshed out and began reading Daniel's thesis and later the skinhead's thesis, he turned into a historical lecturer rather than an intriguing character. He had the potential to get involved in the drama and present some additional forms of action. Instead, he read us piles of research data and provided his opinions but ended up being a random thread never brought to fruition.

Overall
Generally I found the theme interesting. The research and thesis presented were intriguing and presented an interesting backdrop to an otherwise straightforward and typical murder mystery. The suspense factor started out good but stagnated and failed to develop into an intensity worth waiting for.

From a high level, the book reminded me of the movie What Lies Beneath from a few years back in terms of structure (not in terms of motive/characters). That movie succeeded where this book failed for me in that the suspense built slowly over time and as it finally reached the breaking point, a true climax was presented and carried out over the course of a few intense scenes. In the book, the suspense grew quickly and maintained itself over the course of a few hundred pages such that short scene of climax couldn't adequately release the buildup.

I guess I would have liked to see this book either shorter, or filled with more scenes of action (probably by having the professor and detective into the action similar to the Duchess in the taxi). I wouldn't want it to turn into a "shock-fest", with constant jolts every couple of chapters, but it would have been nice to see more direct application of the supernatural or the macabre (because truly, the motive was rather macabre in its completion).

Don't let my "low" rating discourage you from this author. I rather enjoyed the language (minus the vulgarity) and general style of the writing. I just think that the overall product let me down a bit.

2 stars
**… (más)