Written with My Left Hand

by Nugent Barker, Douglas Anderson (Foreword)

Perhaps best known for two much-admired tales, the evocative ghost story 'Whessoe' and the grimly humorous horror tour-de-force 'Curious Adventure of Mr Bond', Nugent Barker (1888-1955) remains something of an enigma. Although rated highly by contemporaries: the 1929 edition of Edward J. O'Brien's anthology The Best British Stories is dedicated to Barker: little is known of his life, and these twenty-one tales, first collected in 1950, are thought to represent the sum total of Barker's literary output.

As Douglas Anderson notes in his Foreword, Barker ranks alongside fellow twentieth-century exponents of the strange story, Walter de la Mare and John Metcalfe. But what makes Barker unique as a writer is the originality and diversity of his imagination.

The stories collected here range widely, from the Poe-esque Parisian sophistication of 'The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo', to the sly and strangely touching Sussex folk-wisdom of 'Stanley Hutchinson'; from the dislocated, dreamlike horror of 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' to the idyllic, time-travelling nostalgia of 'The Thorn'.

These powerfully-written stories, long out of print, deserve to be much better known. They will be relished by all those who appreciate the very best classic supernatural literature.

Contains: ‘Foreword’ by Douglas Anderson, ‘Bibliographical Notes’, ‘Curious Adventure of Mr Bond’, ‘Stanley Hutchinson’, ‘The Six’, ‘I and My Wife Isobel’, ‘Whessoe’, ‘Interlude’, ‘The Spurs’, ‘Death’s Door’, ‘Gertie Macnamara’, ‘The Invalid’, ‘Out of Leading-Strings’, ‘Mrs Sayce’s Guy’, ‘Expectation of Life’, ‘A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks’, ‘The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo’, ‘The Thorn’, ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’, ‘Aimless Afternoon’, ‘The Announcement’, ‘Crescendo’, ‘Life and Death of the Princess Gertrude’.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

Reviews

[Murray Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written With My Left Hand collects all of Nugent Barker’s fiction: 21 short stories, written and published mostly during the 1930s. I have to say, it took me most of the book to adjust to the sort of fiction Barker writes: these aren’t ghost stories (though “Whessoe”, included here, is, and it’s one of the better tales), nor are they necessarily sinister in the traditional sense. (Assuming they would be, I was immediately wrongfooted by the second story in the collection, “Stanley Hutchinson”, about a talkative pig.) Rather, Barker writes dream-like narratives, which, although they veer towards the nightmarish, can just be outright strange. “Aimless Afternoon” was the tale that clinched this for me: a man on a seaside holiday wakes up on the beach and makes his slow way back to his hotel room, where he finds himself asleep on the bed. In the final story, “The Life and Death of Princess Gertrude”, an author recounts the creation of his most successful fictional character, and how, when he’d decided to finally kill her off, she turns up at his house. An early story, “The Six”, is a nicely taut little twist of a tale, about a man who takes a gun onto the beach and, on an impulse, shoots what he thinks are six seagulls, lined up rather neatly on the breakers.

Barker’s prose style is quite mannered. At times it can be good, at others — when it seemed to be rambling rather than moving the story forward, or when he does dialect, which is, more often than not, a bit of a readerly strain — I have to say I found it could be a bit irritating, which may be why, in the main, Barker’s tales didn’t work for me. But those I’ve mentioned I enjoyed enough to wish Barker had written more — his experimental approach certainly led to some interesting and unique tales.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Foreword by Douglas Anderson ✔
Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond 3.5⭐
Stanley Hutchinson 2⭐
The Six 2.75⭐
I and My Wife Isobel 2.5⭐
Whessoe 3.5⭐
Interlude 2⭐
The Spurs 3⭐
Death's Door 3⭐
Gertie Macnamara 3.75⭐
The Invalid 3.5⭐
Out of Leading-Strings 3.25⭐
Mrs. Sayce’s Guy 3⭐
Expectation of Life 2.5⭐
A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks 2⭐
The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo 3⭐
The Thorn 2⭐
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe 3⭐
Aimless Afternoon 2.25⭐
The Announcement 3⭐
Crescendo 1.5⭐
Life and Death of the Princess Gertrude 3.25⭐

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the astonishing quality of some of the previous stories, this substantive one is, in many ways, the best left to last. The only one that could follow a crescendo,...

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.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must for readers who enjoy open-ended or sub-rosa tales. There are several disguised afterlife stories, as well as more traditional supernatural anecdotes told "round the fire."

To say nothing of the pig.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10