I wonder if this book is the prime example of what I call ‘ghorror’ (a word I coined recently as a result of a typo, pronounced ‘gore-or’) where ghost story trappings are accompanied by gory upstagings of one’s very soul. But that is just me idly rambling from the other side of the page. Or foolhardily rambling like Bell’s protagonists … to seek some oxymoron of destiny. A fate that is only sleeping. Or slanting from the vandalised past toward you with some mixed hope and despair for the future.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here. Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
I had developed very high hopes regarding Peter Bell after reading his collection "Strange Epiphanies" (undoubtedly one of the finest collection to have graced my shelf), but I found this "Jamesian" stories rather slow, tedious, pretentious and off-balance. Unlike some of the other books, this one took an inordinately long time to be completed because the stories were rather soporific. No, now that the nights are becoming longer, something more chilling and yet compact is required. Perhaps the "Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows"?