Ape’s-face

by Marion L. Fox

Ape’s-Face tells the story of a well-known writer, Armstrong by name, who is invited to visit a remote country house in the Wiltshire downland for the purpose of examining certain ancestral documents belonging to the Delane-Mortons, a family beset by a curse, but one not of traditional form. Once in a hundred years, at the winter solstice, the evil takes its toll of the people who conquered its ancient worshippers, the prehistoric folk of the downs.

Reviewing Marion Fox's remarkable Ape's-Face at the time of its publication, the critic and essayist F. T. Dalton wrote in The Times Literary 'Marion Fox has an aim identical with that which was openly acknowledged by the most celebrated youth in fiction. But her methods for the inducement of flesh-creepiness owe very little either to him or to any of her predecessors.'

Genres: Horror, Fiction

154 pages, Hardback

First published January 1, 1914

Reviews

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

He believed that he perceived something in nature (whether living or lifeless, animate or inanimate) that manifested itself only in contradictions and therefore could not be expressed in any concept, much less in any words. It was not divine, for it seemed irrational; not human, for it had no intelligence; not diabolical, for it was beneficent; and not angelic, for it often betrayed malice. It was like chance, for it lacked continuity, and like Providence, for it suggested context. Everything that limits us seemed penetrable by it, and it appeared to do as it pleased with the elements necessary to our existence, to contract time and expand space. It seemed only to accept the impossible and scornfully to reject the possible. This essence, which appeared to infiltrate all the others, separating and combining them, I called "daemonic," after the example of the ancients and others who had perceived something similar. I tried to save myself from this fearful thing.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel that I should like this more than I did. There's a family curse and a supernatural horror looming over the downs, and the setting should be creepy but it isn't. The title is a rather unflattering description of the heroine, and she's certainly the most interesting thing about the story - it's a shame she's not the protagonist instead of the rather boring Armstrong.

What's really made me struggle with this over the few days that I've been reading it, though, is the pacing. It's diabolical. It picks up when there's dialogue, but otherwise it really drags... and Ape's-face is a short book, it should not feel so long. But it does. It really does.

[H James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ape’s-face was one of six books lauded in the August 7, 2015, edition of The Week magazine. The guest curator that week was the brilliant novelist China Miéville, who described Ms Fox’s work as ‘an offbeat tour de force and an invocation of Englishness, inheritance, and supernatural threat’ and ‘a starling anti-classic’. I heartily agree and thank him for the recommendation.

[Chrissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely atmospheric read; didn't particularly enjoy the main-character's nickname (which is a little awkward to be believable) but found this a good rainy weekend read. Would read more by this author if given the chance.