Book Review | Gleam by Tom Fletcher

The gargantuan Factory of Gleam is an ancient, hulking edifice of stone, metal and glass ruled over by chaste alchemists and astronomer priests.

As millennia have passed, the population has decreased, and now only the central district is fully inhabited and operational; the outskirts have been left for the wilderness to reclaim. This decaying, lawless zone is the Discard: the home of Wild Alan.

Clever, arrogant, and perpetually angry, Wild Alan is both loved and loathed by the Discard's misfits. He's convinced that the Gleam authorities were behind the disaster that killed his parents and his ambition is to prove it. But he's about to uncover more than he bargained for.

***

Hot on the heels of three deeply discomfiting horror novels, Gleam marks the starts of a fantasy saga that's never better than when it harks back to Tom Fletcher's first fictions. It's burdened by a bland protagonist and a lacking opening act, but besides that, The Factory Trilogy is off to a tantalising start.

In large part that's due to the darkly wonderful world it introduces us to. Gleam is a devastated landscape equal parts Ambergris and Fallout 3, arranged around a truly hellish edifice:

From the centre rises the one structure that is not tarnished with extraneous growth, or overwhelmed with moss, or just rounded and worn by erosion. It's a vast, black, six-sided pyramid, separated from the rest of the chaos by a ring of ashen wasteland. The wasteland is the top of a hill, which slopes down into a darkness from which all the rest of the chaos emerges. This is the only visible ground in the whole place, and it's grey and dusty and somehow creepy. The pyramid itself, though, looks clean and new, and its edges are all sharp. (p.3)

Alan has lived in this "knot of lies and rituals that referenced only each other and combined to mean less than nothing" (p.211) for twelve tedious years—long enough to meet and marry his wife, Marion, and father a boy by the name of Billy with her—but he doesn't belong here any more now than he did on the devastating day he was made welcome within its walls. "He'd never been a Pyramidder and he never would be. He still dreamed about Modest Mills; being able to run around outside. And not in some courtyard or garden, but the real outside—the Discard." (p.12)

His dreams of freedom come true too soon, in truth. In short order Alan offends an Assistant Alchemical Co-ordinator, who sends heavies to his house to remind our protagonist of his place in the Pyramid. In the aftermath, Marion asks Alan to leave—not because she no longer loves him, but for the sake of their son's safety.

She doesn't have to ask him twice. He packs a bag and skedaddles, to find that though life in the Discard is difficult, it's not as awful as the Pyramidders insist.

Guest Post | "Many Worlds" by Tom Fletcher

I didn’t really think about genre when I started writing The Leaping, which was my first novel. I thought a lot about theme, about narrative voice, about character, about story. (Not necessarily in that order). I knew I wanted to write something about what it meant to be human, fear of death, about paranoia and paralysis in the face of a confusing and hostile world. About how late-stage capitalism insulates us from the consequences of our consumerist actions and choices. Nothing too ambitious, then.

In the end the book was about people objectifying and then frantically dismembering each other in some kind of desperate search for a soul, or meaning, and finding—this isn’t much of a spoiler—very little. I showed it to a friend and mentor, Nicholas Royle, who sent it to an editor, who made an offer for the book. I was delighted, obviously. They said they saw it as a horror novel. Well, I thought; yes. Perfect. It is a horror novel. I didn’t know much about horror fiction, having grown up mostly on fantasy, science-fiction and mainstream stuff, but The Leaping had a supernatural aspect—more than an aspect—and plenty of blood, so it made sense to me. And I was happy with that. 

Second and third novels followed—The Thing on the Shore and The Ravenglass Eye, respectively. Standalones, but set in the same collapsing universe as The Leaping. They were horror novels too, I think, though I was trying not to let any ideas about genre shape what I wrote. I tried to resist neat conclusions and anything approaching redemption or morality, but I didn’t know if this approach was making my books more horror, or less horror. What I wanted was a sense of nightmare, which—for me, then meant creating a sense of wrongness (though not badness) on every level. These books ended up quite cold, and jagged. I was committed to honesty, and that meant not shying away from themes or scenes that were unpleasant to contemplate, and it also meant writing instinctively—following a logic (a nightmarish logic) that operated at a deeper level than the plots, arcs and plans I’d spent a lot of time on.

These books, and a fourth horror novel called The Dead Fool, which is under contract but not yet published [ooh!—Ed], are—and I say this with pride—strange, bleak, and alienating. And they were strange, bleak, and alienating to write, too. After writing The Dead Fool, I was exhausted, and wanted a change. I wanted to write something expansive, and not intensely introspective. I wanted to write something a bit pacier, and a bit more structured. I wanted to write something a bit more fun.

Yes, I wanted to write something different. But this wasn’t a case of jumping one ship for another; abandoning horror for fantasy. I could have written a horror novel that was pacey, rigorously planned, and fun. And fantasy can be extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable. The truth is, I’d always wanted to write fantasy, as well as everything else. When I decided I wanted to be a writer—way, way back at secondary school—I was devouring writers like Pratchett, Peake, and Hobb, and I’d envisaged myself writing fantasy and sci-fi. When writing my first few novels, I was also noting down ideas for mainstream fiction, and writing SF shorts. Yes, my published novels were horror, but that didn’t mean I was a horror writer exclusively.

Pitching a fantasy trilogy to Jo Fletcher Books—of which Gleam is the first book—was the realisation of a long-held idea, and it coincided with my desire to try a different approach to writing for a while. And I’m having a blast. Creating a whole other world is a new challenge, but it’s incredibly liberating, as is working across the larger canvas of a trilogy. 

None of which is to say that Gleam is all sweetness and light, of course. It’s not all colourful moons and campfires and magic crystals. There are ruins, bandits, bloodletters, drugs, giant slugs, and other monsters. There’s darkness, and there’s despair, and there’s violence. But in Gleam, as opposed to in my horror novels, the characters are not completely overwhelmed by the threat, and so the narrative has room for humour and warmth. Wild Alan, Bloody Nora, The Mushroom Queen, Churr, Spider Kurt—they’re all equipped to cope with the world they inhabit, which my horror novel characters are not.

The worlds are very, very different. ButI fully intend to return to the brutal, nihilistic world of The Leaping et al in future, and I’ve got plans for another trilogy set in the weird, magical Factory of Gleam too. I’ve grown deeply attached to it (and I hope you’ll all grow as attached to it as I have). 

I can’t imagine working in only one genre for my entire career. I don’t know any writer who can. And yet you hear of ‘horror writers’ and ‘fantasy authors’. These are reductive terms. Books might (might) have genres; writers don’t.

***

Tom Fletcher was born in 1984 and lives in Manchester with his wife and son. He's published a number of short stories alongside three loosely connected horror novels, namely The Leaping, The Thing on the Shore and The Ravenglass Eye. His new book, Gleam, is the first part of The Factory Trilogy. Find out more about it and its author at The Endist.

Short Fiction Corner | Three From Nightjar, or, The Corpse Fowl Cometh

I don't know if social media has a bad rap, or I give it a bad rap, but for all that it's a right bloody timesuck - such that I tend to disappear off the face of the Earth in terms of Twitter and Google+ whenever I've deadlines to attend, for fear I spend my allotted hours burbling about #fridayreads or the pitfalls of UHT milk - for all that it is that, as I was saying, and it is, it is too a way to engage with people you otherwise wouldn't, or couldn't.

Case in point: a little while back I was tweeting about what I was reading. One of those books was Regicide by Nicholas Royle, which I reviewed here, and after a little searching it turned out that the gent had a Twitter presence. So I did the decent thing and cordially @ replied Nicholas in.

Momentarily, he and I got chatting. One thing led to another, and before you know it I was introducing him to my---

Wait, what? No no no! That's not what happened at all!

What in fact happened was: Nicholas asked if I'd like to take a look at a few of the latest chapbooks he'd published through the small press he operates. I'll cop to not having heard of Nightjar Press before we talked, but a quick look at the blog, and the array of authors gathered together under the Nightjar banner - among them Michael Marshall Smith, Tom Fletcher and Conrad Williams, to name but a few - was all the impetus I needed to take Nicholas up on his offer.

And that isn't even to speak of the fact that Nightjar Press is named in honour of the most terrifying bird I've ever heard of.

Do yourself a favour: don't follow that link. :/

So. What I did was... I started with what I knew. Namely Tom Fletcher, whose The Leaping I loved last year - see here - though I found, I'm afraid, rather less to like about Fletcher's second novel, The Thing on the Shore, this spring. 'Field' the tale of a Forestry Commission warden called Tony and his assistant Sarah, who are called out one evening by a local pub landlord to move along a group of youths who are camping illegally at the end of the lake. In fact "not only were they camping illegally, but they were partying very loudly, and had dreadlocks and piercings. And it wasn't even dark." (p.5) The horror!

Anyway, when Tony and Sarah find the campgrounds, the youths are nowhere to be found. The wardens split up to find them, and then... well. These are short short stories, folks, and it wouldn't do to ruin them, so forgive me if my synopses are on the slight side.

'Field' is for its part an exercise in measure and suggestion. There are no monsters in Fletcher's short - at least, none that the reader sees - only these two lost souls, Tony and Sarah, and a field full of atmosphere, and implicit, perhaps even Lovecraftian, otherworldliness. Few authors can evoke such unease so effortlessly, juxtapose the natural and the unnatural so very memorably, and though I was a slice of trifle disappointed by The Thing on the Shore, 'Field' is proof positive that Tom Fletcher is a talent to watch like a hawk.

The night after I finished 'Field' I read 'Lexicon' by Christopher Burns, whose work I fear I am not at all familiar with... though from his minibio I gather Quercus Publishing will be putting out his sixth novel, A Division of the Light, in 2012. I may well look for it then.

That said, of the three chapbooks Nicholas was so kind as to send along, I think I enjoyed 'Lexicon' the least. It's about a first date, and the origins of one particular Greek myth. Harry has brought Heather to his home, you see, ostensibly to serve her a delicious meal of olives and fish -- but there's more going on in 'Lexicon' than just that, from the first paragraph on out:

"What survives of past civilisations is more than architecture and earthworks. Whatever we say, whatever we do, has taproots that feed within deep layers of the past. In faraway lands tongues we would not recognise have already expressed our every thought. Other minds have imagined our dreams and traded them amongst people who saw no distinction between fiction, belief, history and myth." (p.5)

Sadly, though Harry at least seems an interesting character, off-kilter and so controlling as to set alarm bells ringing in any sane individual - but not Heather, for altogether too long a time - 'Lexicon' is creepy rather than chilling, disturbing in its ostentatiously mythical way... but alas, a little obvious. I wasn't surprised by 'Lexicon', and in a narrative so inextricable from its twist resolution as this, that's a real problem.

Last but not least, I read 'The Beautiful Room,' from the pen of another author I knew next to nothing about before now: R. B. Russell. 'The Beautiful Room' is about a young couple looking to buy their first flat together. When during a viewing John and Maria come upon a beautiful room with a beautiful view in a beautiful house, they set to discussing how they could wrap this place into their future plans.

But as they chat, John and Maria become aware of an odd noise. Some living, suffering thing seems to be trapped in the walls. Mice, maybe? Or could there be birds stuck in the firmament of this beautiful room? 

Birds... or mice... or something else entirely?

'The Beautiful Room' is a terrific short story, and easily my favourite of the three Nightjar chapbooks addressed in this post. I read it first to myself, as you do, then again, out loud to my partner in crime, who I dare say was as alarmed by R. B. Russell's dialogue-driven narrative as I; nor did I find 'The Beautiful Room' any less alluring a work of fiction the second time out, wrapped up as it is with a wonderfully unspoken ending -- such that a re-read brings to light all sorts of things the reader mightn't have noticed that first time.

On the basis of these three stories alone, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend anyone with an interest in the subtler, more sinister side of short horror seek out the terrific selection of chapbooks on offer from Nightjar Press with all due haste. They're beautifully presented, simply but attractively designed, and artistically very powerful; intimate, insidious little stories fit to work a hole in the hardest hearts.

Not to seem a total shill, they're also strictly limited in the literal sense of the phrase, so oft-abused: there are only 200 copies of each chapbook available - in fact many of Nightjar's earlier efforts have long since sold out - every one of which comes signed and numbered at a nominal cost of £3 plus postage, if you order direct from the publisher. I gather there are still a few copies of 'Field', 'Lexicon' and 'The Beautiful Room' going, as of the time of this writing... but be quick about it, folks, if you're at all interested.

And you should be!

The Scotsman Abroad | Hubbed

You'd think between the blog and my work for Strange Horizons and The Zone and Starburst Magazine I'd have more than enough on my plate.

Well, it's true: I do. But it's long been said my eyes are bigger than my belly - though I admit my belly is not so small as once it was - so when the opportunity to contribute to Hub Magazine came up, goddamnit it all, I made space!

Hub, in case you haven't heard of it, has been up and running since the year of our lord 2006, and though it began a print publication, its head honchos soon figured out where the party was at - here on the internet, of course - and they've been releasing the magazine in PDF and EPUB format on a weekly-ish basis ever since. At last count, something like 10000 readers were subscribed to the mailshot; and the last count was way back when. The numbers can only have grown since.

So, join the club?

I'd really recommend you do. My first review for Hub Magazine - of The Cypress House by Michael Koryta - actually went up a while ago, and I've been woefully remiss not to point you in its direction sooner.

In short: anyone looking for a good creepy book to take on holiday or to the beach one lovely sunny day, ye need look no further. The Cypress House makes for superb Summer reading. And technically speaking Summer's not over yet!

But what better impetus to get you all good and linked up to Hub than the publication of my second submission? That is to say, my review of The Thing on the Shore, by Tom Fletcher, whose first novel The Leaping you might recall I really rather adored when I read it right around this time last year.

Unfortunately, I fear Fletcher's sophomore effort takes the rambling about Mario Kart a lap of Rainbow Road too far. Read more in the hundred forty-first issue of the mag... if you dare. :)

Anyway. That's two for the price of one! Now, pop on over to Hub, if you please, and here's hoping you enjoy reading these reviews - not to mention the stellar original fiction and other criticism you'll find in each and every issue of the zine - as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Hell, you take even half as much pleasure as I did putting together these spooky reviews and we'll call it square, alright?

Book Review: The Leaping by Tom Fletcher

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"Jack finished university three years ago, but he's still stuck in a dead-end job in a sinister call-centre in Manchester. When the beautiful (and rich) Jennifer comes into his life he thinks he has finally found his ticket out of there. Trouble is that his boss is interested in Jennifer as well, and there's something strangely bestial about him... So when Jennifer buys Fell House, a mysterious old mansion out in remote Cumbria, a house party on a legendary scale seems like the perfect escape. But as the party spins out of control on a seemingly neverending night, they must face up to the terrifying possibility that not all their guests may be human - and some of them want to feed."

***

The Leaping is a strange and powerful beast of a book. "The wind wakes me up in the early hours and I confuse the present with a memory," it begins, and that sense of the ethereal infecting the everyday pervades Tom Fletcher's impressive debut becomes a powerful theme throughout the atmospheric narrative which follows. Three parts character study to one part fearful folktale, this is a novel that I can't help but feel has been pitched poorly. If you want out and out werewolf fiction, avert your eyes. Such audiences come seeking visceral thrills and shlocky chills, and they'll find none herein. There's nothing so cheap about The Leaping; this is sophisticated and considered fiction - remarkably so given that its author is only 24 years young. Make no mistake: there are indeed werewolves, but they're only about for a bit, and even then the beasts are addressed with ambiguity and a tangible sense of reverence. Come to the table without such expectations and you'll find a haunting novel that far exceeds the potential appeal of everyday urban fantasy.

Jack and Francis, our alternating narrators for the duration, live in student accommodation in Manchester with a gaggle of twenty-something friends, though they're no longer students - the flat is just a hangover of their collective lack of organisational skills - but co-workers at a dismal call-centre in the city. In between shifts, they drink tea incessantly, club against their better judgment, and talk books and movies to pass the time. The glue that truly binds them together, though, is Mario Kart, games of which see them all gathered around the television in the living room, racing for dear life and red shells.

To begin with, The Leaping reads like the antithesis of lad lit, a novel written by and indeed for the new generation of the nation: alternative, disaffected and unapologetically middle-class youth with no real notion of career or family. Down-to-earth and refreshingly direct, it certainly struck a chord with me, thanks in no small part to such relatable, if not always likeable characters. You can't help but feel for Jack as he's harassed by his creepy supervisor Kenny at the call-centre, and soon enough you'll be whooping with joy when he gets a date with a hot goth.

Jennifer isn't just your token panda-eyed pretty girl, either. She's just come into an inheritance, which she spends on a run-down old cottage in the idyllic Yorkshire fells. She's just the push Jack needs to finally move on from the going-nowhere existence he's led for an interminable number of years, and together they kick in their jobs and move into Fell House to make a go of it. Sad to see their friend move on, Jack's flatmates - one of whom nurses an inappropriate crush on Jennifer - start planning an extravagant housewarming party, but what they don't know is that there's another event in the offing nearby: The Leaping. And The Leaping is a party like no other.

What all the plot synopsis in the world fails to convey about Tom Fletcher's uncanny novel, however, is the sense of dread that's palpable throughout The Leaping. Foreboding from the get-go and punctuated by utterly terrifying interludes, it might be a while before the werewolves come out of the woodwork, but when they do, two-thirds through, it's almost a relief. The suspense mounts inexorably... the feeling that something is very, very wrong builds and builds... until the curtain finally comes down - and all hell breaks loose. It makes for an incredibly satisfying moment, and though from that point on you're never quite sure what the state of play is - one can never truly know the unknowable - it's atmospheric, brutal and unrestrained.

Although it is, perhaps, rather at odds with all that's come before. There's a sudden shift in the narrative that can be difficult to parse, but if you're going to enjoy The Leaping, you'll already be well and truly enraptured by the point at which it threatens to comes undone. That momentary muddle aside, with great, quirky characters and bold prose, a brilliantly British sense of humour and a last act which leaves no-one unscathed by the horrors of the fellside on a night that never ends, Tom Fletcher's debut is a powerful and progressive piece of work.

Roll on The Thing on the Shore...

***

The Leaping

by Tom Fletcher

April 2010, Quercus Publishing

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Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
The Book Depository

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