THE DEEP ONES: "Kecksies" by Marjorie Bowen
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"Kecksies" by Marjorie Bowen
Discussion begins May 5, 2021.
First published in the January 1925 issue of Regent magazine.
ONLINE VERSIONS
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900581h.html#story2
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?874406
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
65 Great Tales of the Supernatural
The Eighteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories
The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Bowen
https://news.ku.edu/2019/12/06/book-aims-revive-interest-forgotten-weird-fiction...
https://skullsinthestars.com/2016/09/19/kecksies-by-marjorie-bowen/
https://tinyurl.com/u85x5dtc
Discussion begins May 5, 2021.
First published in the January 1925 issue of Regent magazine.
ONLINE VERSIONS
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900581h.html#story2
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?874406
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
65 Great Tales of the Supernatural
The Eighteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories
The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Bowen
https://news.ku.edu/2019/12/06/book-aims-revive-interest-forgotten-weird-fiction...
https://skullsinthestars.com/2016/09/19/kecksies-by-marjorie-bowen/
https://tinyurl.com/u85x5dtc
2elenchus
This is the sort of tale that I file under "classic Weird" despite never having read it before. The body switching, the travelers coming upon an isolated dwelling under threat of a storm, the main characters crying out for some sort of reckoning, the rustic adherence to superstition set against a modern disdain ... the story ticks many boxes.
I had to check, but it appears we've not read a Bowen story until now. I thought it was told well, not only the grisly bits (there was real punch to the descriptions of the dead man's assault) but also the setting and character. I'd be up for another of hers, though I see she wrote a lot that wasn't supernatural.
I had to check, but it appears we've not read a Bowen story until now. I thought it was told well, not only the grisly bits (there was real punch to the descriptions of the dead man's assault) but also the setting and character. I'd be up for another of hers, though I see she wrote a lot that wasn't supernatural.
3RandyStafford
I was impressed too.
There were several points I thought I knew what was going to happen. But, no, Goody didn't put a curse on anyone. The mourner's didn't avenge their friend Horne's banishment, and Anne and Horne were never lovers.
And the morality is not black and white either. Horne kills what he calls a good woman, but he's kind to the outcasts in the marsh. Nick may be a fop and worse, but he won't tolerate brutalizing women. Ned the loving husband beats his wife.
And I thought the end, especially the final paragraph, was memorable.
There were several points I thought I knew what was going to happen. But, no, Goody didn't put a curse on anyone. The mourner's didn't avenge their friend Horne's banishment, and Anne and Horne were never lovers.
And the morality is not black and white either. Horne kills what he calls a good woman, but he's kind to the outcasts in the marsh. Nick may be a fop and worse, but he won't tolerate brutalizing women. Ned the loving husband beats his wife.
And I thought the end, especially the final paragraph, was memorable.
4paradoxosalpha
Yes, she totally nailed the landing.
5housefulofpaper
Bowen turns up or is mentioned in a lot of anthologies and surveys I own, and I'm a little surprised she hasn't been nominated before now (then again, the Arkham edition of Kecksies I bought new in Forbidden Planet 10 years ago was an original printing, so not a well-selling author).
It's tempting to describe this as rural horror but contemporary readers would have focused on the two aristocratic bad boys..."bodice rippers" being a big Romance sub-genre of the time (in film as well as print. Gainsborough films were specialists in this - and many of their personnel were working for Hammer a decade or so later. The flashback sequence in Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles must have been especially familiar territory for the cast and crew, as well as having a modest degree of similarity, maybe a sort of "family resemblance", with this story.
Agree that the plot unrolled with a nice avoidance of hackneyed or over-melodramatic turns, but still ended with the sense of inevitability rightly belonging to something folklore-ish.
It's tempting to describe this as rural horror but contemporary readers would have focused on the two aristocratic bad boys..."bodice rippers" being a big Romance sub-genre of the time (in film as well as print. Gainsborough films were specialists in this - and many of their personnel were working for Hammer a decade or so later. The flashback sequence in Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles must have been especially familiar territory for the cast and crew, as well as having a modest degree of similarity, maybe a sort of "family resemblance", with this story.
Agree that the plot unrolled with a nice avoidance of hackneyed or over-melodramatic turns, but still ended with the sense of inevitability rightly belonging to something folklore-ish.
