What do you think?
Rate this book
The Castle
Jon’s dad was something of a pioneer in 1972, after writing a new kind of book – a book where readers could make their own choices and choose their own way through the story. Unfortunately, the idea was ahead of its time and his father died of a heart attack without ever finding the success he deserved.
It’s the summer and, between signing on to the unemployment allowance, Jon's moved back to his hometown to help his mum cope with her grief. Contending with his own grief, he loses himself in his father’s unpublished manuscripts. Fiction and reality blend perhaps a little too closely, and when he discovers a hidden appendix he finds that his father’s imagination was more terrifying and more powerful than he could have imagined.
It’s the summer and, between signing on to the unemployment allowance, Jon's moved back to his hometown to help his mum cope with her grief. Contending with his own grief, he loses himself in his father’s unpublished manuscripts. Fiction and reality blend perhaps a little too closely, and when he discovers a hidden appendix he finds that his father’s imagination was more terrifying and more powerful than he could have imagined.
- GenresHorrorFictionHistorical
80 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 20, 2021
The Castle is the last of the initial run of Eden Book Society horror novellas. The story follows Jaime, who’s grown up in the shadow of his late father, a famous novelist. When he comes across a mysterious manuscript, he’s drawn into a surreal adventure that tests his views about free will, as well everything he believes about his dad. This turned out to be my least favourite of the series: despite an interesting starting point, everything that happens is pretty predictable, and the philosophy stuff is painfully simplistic – though in its defence, this is a story about a teenage boy after all, and we are supposed to be seeing things from his perspective. A significant fantasy angle also means it lacks a clear connection to the era the novella was ostensibly (according to Eden lore) written in, the early 1970s, something the other books make the most of.
All that being said, this series has produced two of my favourite horror books of recent years – Judderman by D.A. Northwood (aka Gary Budden) and Starve Acre by Jonathan Buckley (aka Andrew Michael Hurley) – so The Castle being the weakest really doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not quite up to what has generally been an extremely high standard. This may be the last of the ‘1972’ series, but I hope it won’t be the last we’ll see of the Eden Book Society.
TinyLetter | Linktree
All that being said, this series has produced two of my favourite horror books of recent years – Judderman by D.A. Northwood (aka Gary Budden) and Starve Acre by Jonathan Buckley (aka Andrew Michael Hurley) – so The Castle being the weakest really doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not quite up to what has generally been an extremely high standard. This may be the last of the ‘1972’ series, but I hope it won’t be the last we’ll see of the Eden Book Society.
TinyLetter | Linktree
October 3, 2021
The Castle brings to an end a run of six horror novellas published by Dead Ink Books as part of its “Eden Book Society” project. I have reviewed the other volumes in this series but, for the benefit of newcomers, here’s a brief description of this innovative project. The (fictional) "Eden Book Society" was set up in 1919, publishing horror novellas for a private list of subscribers. Books published by Eden were elusive artefacts - written under a pseudonym, available only to a select few, occasionally turning up in jumble sales or unexpected locations. Dead Ink Press, the publishing house behind this literary experiment, purportedly acquired the back catalogue of the Society, with the aim of reissuing the novellas sequentially, starting from 1972. In reality, the books are penned by a group of specially commissioned writers who hardly need any introduction: Andrew Michael Hurley, Alison Moore, Aliya Whiteley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, Sam Mills, Gary Budden. These authors face the challenging task of evoking the style of 70s horror whilst taking contemporary readers back to the atmosphere of that decade.
A search on social media will reveal the identity of the real author of The Castle. However, to play along with the series’ conceit, let me introduce you to the novella’s fictional creator, “Chuck Valentine”. Born in Chicago in 1940 and, primarily, a botanist, Chuck turned to writing after an obscure and near-fatal accident. Science’s loss was literature’s gain, leading to the publication of the “deeply disturbing” Devil’s Helmet at Dawn and, for the Eden Book Society, the novella The Castle.
A botanist he might have been, but Valentine also appears to have had a lively interest in philosophy. Indeed, of the six Eden volumes, I would say that The Castle is the most cerebral, grappling as it does with themes of fate, choice and free will, in the guise of a meta-literary tale about a reader trapped within a haunting, haunted book.
The novella is narrated in the first person by Jaime, the socially awkward son of renowned horror writer Magnus Hunt. After his dad’s death, Jaime’s life becomes increasingly overshadowed by his father’s reputation. On the one hand, Jaime is weary of the frequent interviews he and his mother have to endure, but, on the other hand, he seems obsessed with his father’s works. Imagine his surprise, then, when amongst Magnus’s books, he discovers an unpublished manuscript of which he was previously unaware, despite its bearing a dedication To Jaime. The unpublished novel was structurally innovative for its time, a prototype of the “choose-your-own-adventure” books which would become popular in the 80s, a “book of two halves that explores the interplay of free will and fate”.
The alternative storylines bring out the distinction between the protagonists – Boy A is intrepid and brave, Boy B “wants nothing more than to be home, safe in his bed”. Both boys are faced with the eponymous “Castle” and the horrors within and without. Following an esoteric ritual, Jaime ends up within the pages of his father’s novel, undecided whether he should act like “Boy B”, which is what he feels like, or “Boy A”, which is what he would like to be.
Precisely because of this philosophical underpinning, the narrative of The Castle is not always linear and sometimes feels rather disjointed. Of the novellas in the series, it is also possibly the one which least attempts to frame the story within a “70s” ambience, except for a brief, half-hearted reference to “Nixon clinging on to power, the Vietnam War trickling to an end, the power cuts getting worse”. That said, the novella is strong both on concept and on atmosphere: the claustrophobia felt the narrator is well brought out, and the descriptions of the castle, with its dark passages, spectral hounds and disturbing femme fatale are pure Gothic, while serving as a quasi-Freudian metaphor for the fears of a young man who cannot escape the influence of his father.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
A search on social media will reveal the identity of the real author of The Castle. However, to play along with the series’ conceit, let me introduce you to the novella’s fictional creator, “Chuck Valentine”. Born in Chicago in 1940 and, primarily, a botanist, Chuck turned to writing after an obscure and near-fatal accident. Science’s loss was literature’s gain, leading to the publication of the “deeply disturbing” Devil’s Helmet at Dawn and, for the Eden Book Society, the novella The Castle.
A botanist he might have been, but Valentine also appears to have had a lively interest in philosophy. Indeed, of the six Eden volumes, I would say that The Castle is the most cerebral, grappling as it does with themes of fate, choice and free will, in the guise of a meta-literary tale about a reader trapped within a haunting, haunted book.
The novella is narrated in the first person by Jaime, the socially awkward son of renowned horror writer Magnus Hunt. After his dad’s death, Jaime’s life becomes increasingly overshadowed by his father’s reputation. On the one hand, Jaime is weary of the frequent interviews he and his mother have to endure, but, on the other hand, he seems obsessed with his father’s works. Imagine his surprise, then, when amongst Magnus’s books, he discovers an unpublished manuscript of which he was previously unaware, despite its bearing a dedication To Jaime. The unpublished novel was structurally innovative for its time, a prototype of the “choose-your-own-adventure” books which would become popular in the 80s, a “book of two halves that explores the interplay of free will and fate”.
The alternative storylines bring out the distinction between the protagonists – Boy A is intrepid and brave, Boy B “wants nothing more than to be home, safe in his bed”. Both boys are faced with the eponymous “Castle” and the horrors within and without. Following an esoteric ritual, Jaime ends up within the pages of his father’s novel, undecided whether he should act like “Boy B”, which is what he feels like, or “Boy A”, which is what he would like to be.
Precisely because of this philosophical underpinning, the narrative of The Castle is not always linear and sometimes feels rather disjointed. Of the novellas in the series, it is also possibly the one which least attempts to frame the story within a “70s” ambience, except for a brief, half-hearted reference to “Nixon clinging on to power, the Vietnam War trickling to an end, the power cuts getting worse”. That said, the novella is strong both on concept and on atmosphere: the claustrophobia felt the narrator is well brought out, and the descriptions of the castle, with its dark passages, spectral hounds and disturbing femme fatale are pure Gothic, while serving as a quasi-Freudian metaphor for the fears of a young man who cannot escape the influence of his father.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews