Ghosts

by R.B. Russell, Mark Valentine (Introduction)

"I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy." - Charles BaudelaireGhosts contains R.B. Russell's debut publications, Putting the Pieces in Place and Bloody Baudelaire. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction, with a chilling contemporary European resonance. With original and compelling narratives, Russell's stories offer the reader insights into the more hidden, often puzzling, impulses of human nature, with all its uncertainty and intrigue. There are few conventional shocks or horrors on display, but you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are. This book is a disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts. This volume contains "In Hiding", which was shortlisted for the 2010 World Fantasy Awards. "Bloody Baudelaire" is soon to be filmed by 3:1 Cinema.ContentsIntroduction by Mark ValentinePutting the Pieces in PlaceThere's Nothing That I wouldn't DoIn HidingEleanorDispossessedBloody BaudelaireAcknowledgements. . . and in association with Klanggalerie, this volume comes with Russell's debut album of the same title as a bonus. "Ghosts presents a selection of tracks composed and arranged by Russell himself. Vocals for a number of tracks are provided by the incomparable Lidwine whose poignant voice is the perfect complement to the music. This is an album of haunting songs from ambient to rock, with both vocal and instrumental tracks. Guitar and piano creep in, in a ghostly manner, and sometimes a rhythm kicks in, only to disappear again . . . This is very melancholy, very evocative music." A sample selection of tracks can be heard here.

Genres: Fiction

201 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

R.B.RUSSELL has only recently started writing fiction seriously, having previously written lyrics, composed music, and drawn in pen and ink for his own amusement. He runs Tartarus Press with Rosalie Parker from their home in the Yorkshire Dales.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ghosts" by R. B. Russell - Is a combination of his "Putting The Pieces In Place" and "Bloody Baudelaire" originally published by Ex Occidente.

Since the original books are hard to find and quite expensive, Swan River Press located in Ireland has done me a great favor by making these two books available. Not only do you get the book, but this beautiful hard cover comes with a CD of Russell's songs, also a 12 page introduction from Mark Valentine describing each story.

The books was signed by Russell and Limited to 250 copies. It's really a beautiful little book. None of Swan Rivers books are Print On Demand.

I highly recommend any book by Mr. Russell, he creates his stories with master craft work and are a joy to read. I believe these were his first two books both originally published in 2009.

This hardcover is numbered 234 of 350 printed.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

between 4 & 4.5. This is a good one -- literature of the strange indeed.

full post here:
http://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/2021...

The other night I grabbed this book on my way up to bed, promising myself to read only three stories before turning off the light and calling it a day. I should have limited myself to two -- when I finished the third one, "In Hiding," my first thought was "did I just read what I thought I read?" so I had to go through it again. By that point I was wide awake, so it was "just one more," and before I knew it I'd gone through all six stories. Who needs sleep anyway?

The spotlight in this collection shines on its players. As Mark Valentine in his excellent introduction notes, Russell's people are "often rather gauche, hesitant interlopers in a contemporary world that does not quite work for them." They are also "already ill at ease with themselves, with others, with the world before any hint of the inexplicable comes on the scene." This idea makes itself manifest from the very beginning, but I'll go straight to my favorite story first, the above-mentioned "In Hiding." Here a disgraced MP, The Right Honourable David Barrett, decides to get away from it all and takes refuge in the small Greek fishing village of Arkos. It's only day two when he is recognized, by Taylor, a fellow countryman, who owns and has been living on a small island named Elga, just off the coast. He too had left England "under a cloud," and invites Barrett to visit the following day. Barrett is met early next morning by Simon, who also lives on Elga and who takes Barrett there by boat; it's what happens next that throws everything off kilter, and not just solely for the reader. I believe this is one of the finest short stories I've ever read; it was also nominated in 2010 for a World Fantasy Award. As I said earlier, don't be surprised if you read it and want to right away read it again.

The description of this book in part says that the stories in Ghosts make for a "disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts." This collection of strange tales is my introduction to the shorter fiction of Ray Russell, and I have to say that I am absolutely in awe of the talent this man displays here, not just in the writing (which is excellent) but also in the depths he reaches in his characters, allowing their often-troubled souls to surface. As the blurb notes, "you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are," a promise made and kept.

very highly recommended. Many thanks to Brian at Swan River Press as well.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first introduction to Ray Russell, the story-teller, was through a sublime story in an anthology called “The Werewolf Pack”. But his earlier stories had been published in very rare limited editions, and were practically beyond our pale. Thanks to Swan River Press, those earlier stories are now available in a beautiful & compact book: the present volume under review. The contents are: -

(*) Introduction by Mark Valentine

1. Putting the Pieces in Place: a story of pain, loss, obsessive quest, and delicious ‘frisson’ inducing haunting.
2. There’s Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do: Jilted lover’s revenge? Nervous breakdown? Practical Joke? This “strange” story was very difficult to classify, but its taut narrative made it a one-sitting-reading.
3. In Hiding: this is the best story of the book, in my humble opinion. With its lean narrative and matter-of-fact approach, the author toys with the protagonist as well as us in presuming one thing after another, and all along hinting something entirely different. This is a story that Algernon Blackwood might have loved to write, although he would have needed a ruthless editor to make the story so highly readable.
4. Eleanor: a very well-told story of an author’s most famous creation coming back to life (I know, I know, it has been done dime-a-dozen, but this story still managed to keep me thinking about “what next”), told in a very gentle (English?) manner befitting the central character, but retaining its ‘strange-ness’ all along.
5. Dispossessed: perhaps the most depressing & bleak story that I have read in recent times (only Terry Lamsley’s “Running in The Family” beats it).
6. Bloody Baudelaire: it had many things: gothic mansion, strange characters involved in intellectual wordplay, disquiet-causing game of cards, murder (manslaughter?), mysterious acts (paintings being completed after the artist is gone, blood appearing here & there). But perhaps its novella-length made it tedious.
(*) Acknowledgements

It is the last two works that somewhat frustrated me, and hence I am dropping a star. But otherwise, this is “strange story” at its best. Readers lamenting the non-availability of new ‘Aickmanesque’ stories, as well as the lovers of classic supernatural fiction, would love to get hold of this book (Cold Tonnage or Fantastic may be helpful, now that its 250 copies are officially, again, out-of-print). Recommended.

[Jess M · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 Stars

Of the six short stories bound within this beautiful hardcover book, I found two to be exceptional and one to be very enjoyabal. I had difficulty connecting with the last two, but perhaps it was just me. All six are written in the same style of pros and share one voice. Fans of the ghost story genera will likely be pleased with this modern effort. I will not hesitate to pick up another book from this author.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

My real-time reviews of this book’s fictions when I first read them as based on their earlier incarnations in 2008/2009:-

(1) Putting the Pieces in Place

A lovely story that features many of my passions – classical music, Venice, coincidences (jncluding the strongest possible coincidence that can create a rare unlikely situation of there being no coincidences at all!), a reel to reel tape-recorder, a ghost and its frisson, a mention of Proust… but fundamentally it seems to ’explain’ my ownership of these printed stories in the first place, my destiny to become a collector manqué or a collector completist – a piece put in place that caused me to be able to read the stories from unreal to real. (23 Apr 10)

(2) There’s Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do

“The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.”- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913)

A memorable story of stalking in Ukraine and p***k-teasing…

It seems to combine Architecture and Language in a state of real and metaphorical subsidence. (24 Apr 10)

(3) In Hiding

Incredible, I suppose, that I seemed above to predict – meaningfully, as it turns out – the name of one of this story’s ‘protagonists’, i.e. Ferdinand!

I also predicted the ending of this wonderful ghost story before I reached it. That’s not a criticism. It seems perfect for a book with its overall title of ‘Putting the Pieces in Place’. Gave me a good feeling.

A coolly-told story of a sunburnt Greek island, of an exile because of scandal and a strange companionship. I wonder if it was a ‘spoiler’ to have said above that I predicted the ending. Only if you the reader predicts it correctly, too. And you won’t. (24 Apr 10 – three hours later)

(4) Eleanor

A believable and touching scenario of a Science Fiction convention … of an aging writer as a guest there, one who once created someone who has now become a cult female character since further propelled in various media by others … and he now meets her seemingly ’for real’ at that convention. A fable, as it turns out for me, of a character creating its own author just as much as an author creating its own character – and each taking the main chance to fleece the other by whatever means of creativity or harsh reality. Except both, here, can shrug off their own reality sincerely to love each other’s unreality. Real to real. Unreal to unreal. (24 Apr 10 – another 3 hours later)

(5) Dispossessed

“Andrew told his mother that Jayne seemed to him to be something of a blank canvas.”

A female at a loose end between relationship and shelter. The tape, too, when it flaps around and around at a spool’s loose-end. A dead pet or a residuary full groin, we have here a feel of that Ukraine stalker again, but who stalks whom? Here we are left to find our own way home to a chapter or story that I was given prior opportunity to read but have been too busy elsewhere with other chapters or stories. Who says a book’s stories should be read in order of printing, especially if they’re loose-leafed? But what else can I logically do when faced with real-time?

It is difficult to draw gestalt from this exquisitely Russellian book’s leitmotifs, as this story’s last reel continues flapping around. At least I now have some period of grace to regroup as reader, to escape the ancient scratches and feelers around me upon a tabula rasa or screen. All the pages freeze-framing, separate from the spine or spindle that once kept them together.

There is an afterword [in 2008] I’ve not yet read, an afterword seeming to imply an emptiness beyond each word. Still flapping around, flapping around… (24 Apr 10 – another 3 hours later)

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Bloody Baudelaire

This is a stunning novella I’ve just been compelled to read in one sitting – compelled by a fear of its words changing before I got to them. It starts as a country house shenanigan where young people might say in a different book: “Anyone, for Tennis?”

Not that famous Monty Python sketch, well, maybe it is, in a sense.

No, it is something seriously decadent and Dorian Gray and Stephen Poliakoff and pre-Raphaelite … with Elizabeth-Bowen-esque nihilism of a fractured soul. The Tabula Rasa of love … and a rite of torture that unfolds so slowly in such a quick book, one is driven along by it. This whole force of onward fiction has a very clever ending. I believed every word.

I felt I wrote it. The book itself – as a physical object – struck me as one of those old French books whose pages you needed to uncut. But someone had done it already.

Very well done indeed. In two Acts. (1 Aug 2009)

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[William Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. Luxurious, evocative writing. This was my first experience with the writing of R.B. Russell, but I'll certainly scout out much more of his work.