What do you think?
Rate this book
Old Albert: An Epilogue
This New copy of Old Albert is one of only 300 copies published in this Limited Edition by Swan River Press.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2011
25 people want to read
About the author
Brian J. Showers
46 books47 followersBrian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, interviews and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, All Hallows, Ghosts & Scholars: The M.R. James Newsletter, Le Fanu Studies, Supernatural Tales and Wormwood. He also runs The Swan River Press and the editor of The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature.
His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse (Mercier Press), won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (Nonsuch, 2006) and Old Albert — An Epilogue (Ex Occidente, 2011); with Gary W. Crawford and Jim Rockhill he co-edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Hippocampus Press, 2011).
Having studied Popular Literature at Trinity College, he currently resides on the Emerald Isle, somewhere in the verdant and ghost-haunted wilderness of Dublin City, where he is busy at work on various projects, including his next collection of strange tales.
His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse (Mercier Press), won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (Nonsuch, 2006) and Old Albert — An Epilogue (Ex Occidente, 2011); with Gary W. Crawford and Jim Rockhill he co-edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Hippocampus Press, 2011).
Having studied Popular Literature at Trinity College, he currently resides on the Emerald Isle, somewhere in the verdant and ghost-haunted wilderness of Dublin City, where he is busy at work on various projects, including his next collection of strange tales.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 13, 2012
How can you review a piece if you are not entirely sure whether the said piece is fiction or non-fiction? Until that “major” classification has been done, further categorisation of the work into one or other ‘genre’ would be impossible, and the only feeling with which a reader is left would be something like: “bless me, but…”! This particular work under review is one of that ‘type’ (if that loaded word can be used), and therefore, I would simply try to jot down my feelings as under:
1. Similar to the author’s previous collection (if you are yet to read that deliciously disquieting and fear-inducing volume [The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories] then please rectify the situation ASAP), the various narratives collected together between the covers of this volume indicate some strange & subtle pattern, which can be felt but can’t be traced out for another.
2. The stories or historical incidents or vague recollections all sound true and appear to be based on facts (unfortunately most of which can’t be verified), but the picture that emerges once you have connected the dots is irrational and quite disturbing.
3. The protagonists or antagonists mentioned in these narratives are all haunted, and their collective presence in this piece makes it one of the most effectively strange and thought-provoking piece of writing that I have encountered in recent times.
This particular edition of “Old Albert” had been published by Ex Occidente Press through their Passport Levant imprint in a ridiculously limited edition of 60 copies. Now, with the news of this piece getting reprinted by Swan River Press in more ‘obtainable’ numbers, I would like to recommend this particular piece of writing to all lovers of strange & haunting fiction and non-fiction, in the most positive terms.
1. Similar to the author’s previous collection (if you are yet to read that deliciously disquieting and fear-inducing volume [The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories] then please rectify the situation ASAP), the various narratives collected together between the covers of this volume indicate some strange & subtle pattern, which can be felt but can’t be traced out for another.
2. The stories or historical incidents or vague recollections all sound true and appear to be based on facts (unfortunately most of which can’t be verified), but the picture that emerges once you have connected the dots is irrational and quite disturbing.
3. The protagonists or antagonists mentioned in these narratives are all haunted, and their collective presence in this piece makes it one of the most effectively strange and thought-provoking piece of writing that I have encountered in recent times.
This particular edition of “Old Albert” had been published by Ex Occidente Press through their Passport Levant imprint in a ridiculously limited edition of 60 copies. Now, with the news of this piece getting reprinted by Swan River Press in more ‘obtainable’ numbers, I would like to recommend this particular piece of writing to all lovers of strange & haunting fiction and non-fiction, in the most positive terms.
January 15, 2021
Landscape format, sewn hardcover with dust-jacket printed on textured cardboard paper, cloth boards, gold folio, silk ribbon, end papers and full-colour frontispiece. There are 55 pages excluding exterior pages that bear, inter alia, ‘A Note to the Reader’ by Jim Rockhill, End Notes and Bibliography, all three of which (in accordance with my normal practice) I shall not read until I’ve reviewed the fiction work itself.
The edition is limited to sixty copies of which this one is hand-numbered 20.
I am pleased to see this publisher (Dan Ghetu of Ex Occidente Press) is still prolific in publishing great books, contrary to what I was led to understand a few months ago. I hope the logistics of book delivery and authorial care have improved from what I was also led to believe some time ago. I’ve never needed to complain in respect of myself, I hasten to add.
==========================
I. Prologue
“…you just may be able to make out the shape of a tower.”
Surrounded by words in workmanlike description of the history / buildings of the Dublin (Rathmines Road) locality is a schoolyard rhyme that itself surrounds ‘Old Albert’. I am surrounded, too, by memories – somehow – of Elizabeth Bowen’s book Bowen’s Court that is workmanlike to create a distantly felt poetry from its Irish location and in its perceived nostalgia, too. If I am not too much mistaken. (9 Jul 11)
II. Ellis Grimwood of Larkhill
“…he shifted his focus from Passeriformes (perching birds) to Charadriiformes (seabirds, generally).”
As emerging from the tail-end of the Prologue’s ‘surroundings’, an enthralling account of the house Larkhill in the 1840s and the ornithologist who took it over, followed by a visit to him from Sheridan Le Fanu narrated by the visitor himself – and mysterious ‘end’-papers of the chapter vis a vis the ornithologist and his changing bird-habits and his death (the pages are very stiff). I’ve delightfully no idea where this is taking me. Whether the chapters are separate incidents to be told in this book of the said locality or to be tied into a gestalt, that I was planning to do in any event? It is serendipitous that I have already decided not concurrently to consult the ‘End’-Notes (that are really distant Foot-Notes) because I can relish this, without them, as part of the Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction – not as either discrete Fiction or discrete Fact. This may be the wisest thing I do today. And I’ve been doing a lot of unwise things lately. At the end of this chapter, I suspect, is a slippage into meta-fiction, if you can call cardboard boxes of books meta-fiction at all…? (9 Jul 11 – ninety minutes later)
III: This Terrible, This Unnatural Crime
“…it was not uncommon for hearsay to smoulder in Dublin’s drinking establishments.”
And I’ve poured out a glass of wine to ensure this book becomes a drinking establishment – quite aptly, in the light of that quote, it turns out. A henry-fielding-esque intruded-upon visit to an island a distance from the book’s central locality – and a marital tragedy – and a possible hearsay connection of the wife’s death with our ornithologist. Hearsay without careful investigation of the truth behind the fiction can be cruelly unjust to the innocent, it turns out. The possible moral of this chapter, if not of my review. Enjoying it immensely, whatever the case. (9 Jul 11 – another 2 hours later)
IV. An Exaltation of Skylarks
“Walker was known in Dublin and the surrounding country estates for locating and importing the world’s finest wines.”
…which seems apt in view of what I mentioned imbibing earlier! He even has a wine shop in Aungier Street. But, seriously, this is a great chapter of happiness, less happiness, then conflict, finally horror, between a married couple with shadows of Mrs Rochester and shades of Yellow Wallpaper – in the Larkhill House of this book’s erstwhile threaded-through yore – a social society built on the wine trade, then the perfect trilling like birds by the wife’s admired singing, the husband’s jealousy and, eventually, Larkhill House threatened by Lovecraftianisation. Marital bliss does not seem to thrive in this book … so far. As overshadowed by locality, locality, locality. (9 Jul 11 – another 3 hours later)
V. Thin and Brittle Bones
“In 1837 Rathmines was described in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland as ‘a considerable village and suburb of Dublin…'”
For a village to be part of city is like a phenomenon I can’t quite define in literature. Author and readership? Perhaps others will suggest ideas to me. In any event we now have location, location, location (an English (Irish?) expression for the crux of a property sale) – as we follow Larkhill House through the late 19th century to the early twentieth, involving a school, a ‘sexy’ theosophical society, a school again – and a discovery, hidden in this text’s reported intertext, that resonates, for me, like indefinable foreboding Aickmanery and the book’s erstwhile birds and their female bird-warbler. Meanwhile, I also sense an overweening force – that henry-fielding-esque intruder who may be the author or who may not be the author but masquerading as him. (9 Jul 11 – another hour later)
VI. Come Like Shadows, So Depart
“The contents of these boxes…”
I am the reader village in the city of patterns evolving, shaping, dawning towards dusk – and, despite an important withdrawal of omniscience by the narrator/author (about the whereabouts of one of the protagonists) – a fact that makes me shudder about whom I’m dealing with here, in this last chapter – I think I know how to cope with the ending. Just.
A perfect ending, very well-written, encapsulating all that I was trying – sometimes with blind readerly instinct – to trace above… but I dare not hide spoilers too easy to seek out. Just that it is as difficult to tell a story in the language of silent words as it is…. but that would be telling, indeed. That schoolyard rhyme now flown home to roost.
“‘Wine.’ I obliged him and poured him a glass,…” (9 Jul 11 – another two and half hours later)
[I think that is the first time I’ve completed a whole real-time review of a book in one day.]
END OF REVIEW (no more, villagers).
The edition is limited to sixty copies of which this one is hand-numbered 20.
I am pleased to see this publisher (Dan Ghetu of Ex Occidente Press) is still prolific in publishing great books, contrary to what I was led to understand a few months ago. I hope the logistics of book delivery and authorial care have improved from what I was also led to believe some time ago. I’ve never needed to complain in respect of myself, I hasten to add.
==========================
I. Prologue
“…you just may be able to make out the shape of a tower.”
Surrounded by words in workmanlike description of the history / buildings of the Dublin (Rathmines Road) locality is a schoolyard rhyme that itself surrounds ‘Old Albert’. I am surrounded, too, by memories – somehow – of Elizabeth Bowen’s book Bowen’s Court that is workmanlike to create a distantly felt poetry from its Irish location and in its perceived nostalgia, too. If I am not too much mistaken. (9 Jul 11)
II. Ellis Grimwood of Larkhill
“…he shifted his focus from Passeriformes (perching birds) to Charadriiformes (seabirds, generally).”
As emerging from the tail-end of the Prologue’s ‘surroundings’, an enthralling account of the house Larkhill in the 1840s and the ornithologist who took it over, followed by a visit to him from Sheridan Le Fanu narrated by the visitor himself – and mysterious ‘end’-papers of the chapter vis a vis the ornithologist and his changing bird-habits and his death (the pages are very stiff). I’ve delightfully no idea where this is taking me. Whether the chapters are separate incidents to be told in this book of the said locality or to be tied into a gestalt, that I was planning to do in any event? It is serendipitous that I have already decided not concurrently to consult the ‘End’-Notes (that are really distant Foot-Notes) because I can relish this, without them, as part of the Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction – not as either discrete Fiction or discrete Fact. This may be the wisest thing I do today. And I’ve been doing a lot of unwise things lately. At the end of this chapter, I suspect, is a slippage into meta-fiction, if you can call cardboard boxes of books meta-fiction at all…? (9 Jul 11 – ninety minutes later)
III: This Terrible, This Unnatural Crime
“…it was not uncommon for hearsay to smoulder in Dublin’s drinking establishments.”
And I’ve poured out a glass of wine to ensure this book becomes a drinking establishment – quite aptly, in the light of that quote, it turns out. A henry-fielding-esque intruded-upon visit to an island a distance from the book’s central locality – and a marital tragedy – and a possible hearsay connection of the wife’s death with our ornithologist. Hearsay without careful investigation of the truth behind the fiction can be cruelly unjust to the innocent, it turns out. The possible moral of this chapter, if not of my review. Enjoying it immensely, whatever the case. (9 Jul 11 – another 2 hours later)
IV. An Exaltation of Skylarks
“Walker was known in Dublin and the surrounding country estates for locating and importing the world’s finest wines.”
…which seems apt in view of what I mentioned imbibing earlier! He even has a wine shop in Aungier Street. But, seriously, this is a great chapter of happiness, less happiness, then conflict, finally horror, between a married couple with shadows of Mrs Rochester and shades of Yellow Wallpaper – in the Larkhill House of this book’s erstwhile threaded-through yore – a social society built on the wine trade, then the perfect trilling like birds by the wife’s admired singing, the husband’s jealousy and, eventually, Larkhill House threatened by Lovecraftianisation. Marital bliss does not seem to thrive in this book … so far. As overshadowed by locality, locality, locality. (9 Jul 11 – another 3 hours later)
V. Thin and Brittle Bones
“In 1837 Rathmines was described in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland as ‘a considerable village and suburb of Dublin…'”
For a village to be part of city is like a phenomenon I can’t quite define in literature. Author and readership? Perhaps others will suggest ideas to me. In any event we now have location, location, location (an English (Irish?) expression for the crux of a property sale) – as we follow Larkhill House through the late 19th century to the early twentieth, involving a school, a ‘sexy’ theosophical society, a school again – and a discovery, hidden in this text’s reported intertext, that resonates, for me, like indefinable foreboding Aickmanery and the book’s erstwhile birds and their female bird-warbler. Meanwhile, I also sense an overweening force – that henry-fielding-esque intruder who may be the author or who may not be the author but masquerading as him. (9 Jul 11 – another hour later)
VI. Come Like Shadows, So Depart
“The contents of these boxes…”
I am the reader village in the city of patterns evolving, shaping, dawning towards dusk – and, despite an important withdrawal of omniscience by the narrator/author (about the whereabouts of one of the protagonists) – a fact that makes me shudder about whom I’m dealing with here, in this last chapter – I think I know how to cope with the ending. Just.
A perfect ending, very well-written, encapsulating all that I was trying – sometimes with blind readerly instinct – to trace above… but I dare not hide spoilers too easy to seek out. Just that it is as difficult to tell a story in the language of silent words as it is…. but that would be telling, indeed. That schoolyard rhyme now flown home to roost.
“‘Wine.’ I obliged him and poured him a glass,…” (9 Jul 11 – another two and half hours later)
[I think that is the first time I’ve completed a whole real-time review of a book in one day.]
END OF REVIEW (no more, villagers).
December 18, 2015
A harrowing tale, made up of fragments the reader's brain must, shuddering, puzzle together. Like all the best ghost stories, it reminds us that the past might not be firm ground, but rather, a miasmic quag.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews