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Element of Doubt: Ghost Stories
An academic is haunted by his dead colleague's certainty; a tutor is confronted with an eight year old's mortal secret and Aunt Selena's dancing bear appears from beyond the grave.
In this collection of ghost stories A.L. Barker brings her storytelling powers to cast more than an element of doubt on the differences dividing life and death, good and evil, animate and inanimate as the uncanny enters the everyday world.
In this collection of ghost stories A.L. Barker brings her storytelling powers to cast more than an element of doubt on the differences dividing life and death, good and evil, animate and inanimate as the uncanny enters the everyday world.
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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72 people want to read
About the author
A.L. Barker
40 books7 followersAudrey Lilian Barker was a short story writer and novelist. Born in St Paul's Cray, Kent, she lived in the same milieu where London borders on Kent and Surrey, for the rest of her life. As her Oxford DNB entry says it was 'the chief setting for her work, which often seemed to partake of the quotidian mysteriousness and even abandonment of these areas.'
Her first selection of short stories, Innocents, won the Somerset Maugham award in 1947. Of her short stories, Robert Nye has written, 'stories as carefully composed as poems, quiet and delicate and reserved perhaps, but oddly lingering in the mind.'
Although a stranger to commercial success, she never wanted for admirers, Jane Gardam, Francis King, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, John Sutherland, Deborah Moggach, Ronald Blythe, Susan Hill, A. S. Byatt, Adam Mars-Jones, Nina Bawden and Victoria Glendinning being just some of them.
A. L. Barker deserves to be better known. Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing her entire oeuvre, six volumes of short stories - Innocents, Novelette with Other Stories, Femina Real, Life Stories, No Words of Love and Element of Doubt - and thirteen novels - Apology for a Hero, A Case Examined, The Joy-Ride and After, Lost Upon the Roundabouts, The Middling, John Brown's Body, Source of Embarrassment, A Heavy Feather, Relative Successes, The Gooseboy, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, Zeph and The Haunt.
Her first selection of short stories, Innocents, won the Somerset Maugham award in 1947. Of her short stories, Robert Nye has written, 'stories as carefully composed as poems, quiet and delicate and reserved perhaps, but oddly lingering in the mind.'
Although a stranger to commercial success, she never wanted for admirers, Jane Gardam, Francis King, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, John Sutherland, Deborah Moggach, Ronald Blythe, Susan Hill, A. S. Byatt, Adam Mars-Jones, Nina Bawden and Victoria Glendinning being just some of them.
A. L. Barker deserves to be better known. Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing her entire oeuvre, six volumes of short stories - Innocents, Novelette with Other Stories, Femina Real, Life Stories, No Words of Love and Element of Doubt - and thirteen novels - Apology for a Hero, A Case Examined, The Joy-Ride and After, Lost Upon the Roundabouts, The Middling, John Brown's Body, Source of Embarrassment, A Heavy Feather, Relative Successes, The Gooseboy, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, Zeph and The Haunt.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 19, 2023
I read the Valancourt Books edition (where it is Element, not Elements, of Doubt) of these stories which has a cleaner but, unfortunately, still doll-faced cover. There is a slightly spooky story about a doll and so, doll face, I guess. But I think they should have used the one truly frightening image (seen in a kitchen in one of the later stories). Harder to draw and less culturally recognizable (and also less hackneyed), but it might have increased sales. I can't imagine this one is flying off the shelves.
Which is a shame because it is a beautiful collection, spanning decades. The first and longest story was my favorite without a ghost to be seen (or even felt, really). But they were all my favorites because Barker's writing is so subtle (when subtle is needed), so precise (when precision is called for), so strong and so smart and just so damned good! But not all that scary. And maybe that is a problem for some. Unfortunately. Because everyone should be reading A. L. Barker. I'm going to make it my mission to read many more of her books. If, that is, I can scare them up.
Which is a shame because it is a beautiful collection, spanning decades. The first and longest story was my favorite without a ghost to be seen (or even felt, really). But they were all my favorites because Barker's writing is so subtle (when subtle is needed), so precise (when precision is called for), so strong and so smart and just so damned good! But not all that scary. And maybe that is a problem for some. Unfortunately. Because everyone should be reading A. L. Barker. I'm going to make it my mission to read many more of her books. If, that is, I can scare them up.
October 31, 2018
Bleak creepy tales
October 16, 2023
‘Ghost’ stories in that they all have some element of the supernatural, and more so eerie than spooky.
November 14, 2023
One initial caveat out of the way: despite the subtitle on the cover, this is not really a book of ghost stories. There are ghost stories in it. Many of the stories do have some degree of supernatural elements or oddness. Essentially all have some sort of "haunting" though odds linger around 50/50 that the term is about grief and loss than anything spooky.
While I am not trying to lump A.L. Barker into some broad umbrella of Aickman-esque*, I think you could possibly best mentally frame what you are about to read by considering this collection in similar terms to how Robert Aickman framed his own stories: "strange". Barker is playing some fairly similar games as Aickman by using a wryly understated satirist's brush to make these vaguely dark comedic asides which are also poignant and sad. Ghosts and spooks occasionally intersect but in only a couple of cases are they (a) obvious or (b) central to the plot as a ghost/spook. Some are much more subtle or mostly something like a background element.
Barker (who would have been in her 70s when this was initial published) could be thought to be cataloging something of an end-of-life stack of observations. The just-in-time of "Just in Time," for instance — a story about being plagued by other people's opinions of your marriage and how they think it is perfect and incessantly tell you so while you know it is really falling apart — is about how a sudden death of a spouse might have saved the appearance and expectations of a marriage for everyone else. In real life, Barker left her marriage because she "couldn't be bothered". The longest story, and opener, "Romney," is about grief and how it completely overshadows everything else. While there is no deep conspiracy at the heart of the tale (spoilers, I guess), the fact that it posits itself into certain gothic and cozy mystery modes means you feel it might have something deeper inside than a family still unable to process their own emotional scars.
Or, in a more minor example, the final story, "I'll Never Know," is perhaps a take (or a jab) on the sort of ghost story that drives solutions through implications**, but the most haunting bit is when the POV character and a young girl/ghost is look at a carved panel. Initially the art is seen as exquisite and beautiful. As the young girl "puts her thumb upon it," it is described as explicit and tawdry and a "bacchanal of nymphs and satyrs". Later, as the girl is forgotten and gone, the piece again is beautiful and worth saving. While Barker could be talking about the value of art being caught up in the person experiencing it (and I think she is), it feels like another part of it is about how the people we know have an underneath we somewhat ignore in order to appreciate their beauty, especially in a long-enough life.
A similar game is played in "The Dress," where a dumpy little young woman becomes the object of desire for an older confirmed bachelor who judges her for wearing a particular dress that he feels does not suit her. Later, as he remarries, someone else wears the same dress (what counts as this story's haunting) only now he finds its beautiful and well suited.
Recommended. Outside of the opening story, most of the others are short and quick. A few have actual monsters of a sort. Many (even some with monsters) are more about the ruminating. It is the kind of collection I wish there was more of... but it was probably just the right amount in hindsight.
=====
* for one, she often gives you plenty of explanation.
** In this case, it is explicitly obvious what the twist is though some of the language pretends as thought it is not.
While I am not trying to lump A.L. Barker into some broad umbrella of Aickman-esque*, I think you could possibly best mentally frame what you are about to read by considering this collection in similar terms to how Robert Aickman framed his own stories: "strange". Barker is playing some fairly similar games as Aickman by using a wryly understated satirist's brush to make these vaguely dark comedic asides which are also poignant and sad. Ghosts and spooks occasionally intersect but in only a couple of cases are they (a) obvious or (b) central to the plot as a ghost/spook. Some are much more subtle or mostly something like a background element.
Barker (who would have been in her 70s when this was initial published) could be thought to be cataloging something of an end-of-life stack of observations. The just-in-time of "Just in Time," for instance — a story about being plagued by other people's opinions of your marriage and how they think it is perfect and incessantly tell you so while you know it is really falling apart — is about how a sudden death of a spouse might have saved the appearance and expectations of a marriage for everyone else. In real life, Barker left her marriage because she "couldn't be bothered". The longest story, and opener, "Romney," is about grief and how it completely overshadows everything else. While there is no deep conspiracy at the heart of the tale (spoilers, I guess), the fact that it posits itself into certain gothic and cozy mystery modes means you feel it might have something deeper inside than a family still unable to process their own emotional scars.
Or, in a more minor example, the final story, "I'll Never Know," is perhaps a take (or a jab) on the sort of ghost story that drives solutions through implications**, but the most haunting bit is when the POV character and a young girl/ghost is look at a carved panel. Initially the art is seen as exquisite and beautiful. As the young girl "puts her thumb upon it," it is described as explicit and tawdry and a "bacchanal of nymphs and satyrs". Later, as the girl is forgotten and gone, the piece again is beautiful and worth saving. While Barker could be talking about the value of art being caught up in the person experiencing it (and I think she is), it feels like another part of it is about how the people we know have an underneath we somewhat ignore in order to appreciate their beauty, especially in a long-enough life.
A similar game is played in "The Dress," where a dumpy little young woman becomes the object of desire for an older confirmed bachelor who judges her for wearing a particular dress that he feels does not suit her. Later, as he remarries, someone else wears the same dress (what counts as this story's haunting) only now he finds its beautiful and well suited.
Recommended. Outside of the opening story, most of the others are short and quick. A few have actual monsters of a sort. Many (even some with monsters) are more about the ruminating. It is the kind of collection I wish there was more of... but it was probably just the right amount in hindsight.
=====
* for one, she often gives you plenty of explanation.
** In this case, it is explicitly obvious what the twist is though some of the language pretends as thought it is not.
November 18, 2023
Nice little collection of weird fiction. One reviewer says there’s no ghost stories in this—that is definitely not true. There are literal ghosts in this book, and there’s even one made out of twigs which is badass. Some didn’t fully make it for me, about two in the collection are underwhelming. But reading this in a cozy room in the fall is a time well spent.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews