The idea of ghosts used to terrify me when I was a kid. That was before I learned about vampires, werewolves, zombies and headmasters. After a while Caspar the Friendly Ghost came along and ruined the shuddering thrill of running through the dark to make it to bed and under the covers before the ghosts got me. Simon Kurt Unsworth's 'Quiet Houses' has helped me relive that thrill a bit, although I no longer need to shove my head under the covers.
The portmanteau collection of short stories features a researcher by the name of Nakata making a case for ghosts. It's a very ambitious work. It kicks in with a melancholy tale of misery which is fresh and surprising in its own right, and almost certainly worthy of collection in 'best of' anthologies. (I would have been more than happy to find the story in one of them if not for reading 'Quiet Houses'.) Think of it as the gentle upward slope of the roller coaster. After that, he pitches the reader headlong into the stomach churning abyss of horror, as it is meant to be.
The format of the work encompasses many of the archetypes of the ghost story, including possessed children, demonic ghosts, inexplicable ghosts, an angry ghost and a very enjoyable piece of New American Gothic (in the sense of 'bad places happening to good people') combined with eroticism. Throughout the stories, but particularly in the story of an experiment with a dying racist, he positions his ghosts as memories of forms and emotions captured by places.
His ghosts are damaging at best, but mostly bent on violent destruction. Using the form of short stories suits the work. Thinking on other ghost stories of novel length the thing that strikes me is that there is no elaborate build-up, so the reader is pitched immediately into the nastiness. Great!
One of the things that Unsworth's Nakata points out is that ghosts are best heard in quiet places. By the simple device of allowing Nakata to preserve his composure and avoiding the pitfall of screaming secondary characters, Unsworth allows the horror of his ghosts to shine through, or at least darken the scenery. Again, great!
With post-modern zombies now firmly in the realm of giggles and games, and vampires having been staked, beheaded and reduced to cringeworthy wimps by Hollywood overproduction, it is quite likely that ghosts will become the new 'it things'. Simon Kurt Unsworth could well show the way for people who don't want to follow the high-school / college ensemble formats.
This is well worth the read. Bonus points for lovely insights and beautiful turns of phrase here and there.
Caveat emptor
If you believe that Stephen King is scary, this is, like, so not for you.
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