Couching at the Door by D.K. Broster
Nov. 29th, 2009 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koilungfish22/11/09 - Day Off
23/11/09 - Day Off
24/11/09 - 27/11/09 - Ill
28/11/09 - Fail
Title - Couching at the Door
Author - D.K. Broster
ISBN - 978-1-84022-607-2
Couching at the Door itself is agonizingly amusing to the present day reader. The horror of the story is an animate fur boa which moves with a slow, caterpillar-like gait. Small furry things are generally not frightening - only good writers can make them so - and small furry things that nuzzle up against people and are generally petsome are even less so. That, on the day after I finished this short story, I saw an advert for little facsimiles of the horror itself shows just how weak a monster it is. Ms Broster attempt to convey that the adorable little furball exudes raw supernatural horror, but there is so large a disconnection between "small furry thing" and "raw malevolent monstrosity" that this one fails at the gate. The winsome horror is likened often to a snake, and perhaps Ms Broster was relying on the common fear of snakes to convey the awfulness of the little darling, but if so, she failed.
Incidentally, I am not wholly convinced that "couching" is not an error. It seems that it should be "crouching", which would make sense in the context. Given that the only meaning of "couching" that I can find is a form of embroidery, the mental image of a furry snake sitting in the doorway doing its needlework fails to makes it any less pettable.
From the Abyss feels like the opening part of a longer book, and indeed if it had been such I might have found it more interesting. I cannot recall any story where this specific device has been used - one person split into two different versions of the same - without the corresponding "good twin/evil twin" angle. Whether Ms Broster is the better writer for not going down that route, or whether she did and I didn't notice [the split seems to be more "old self/new self"] is made somewhat irrelevant by the lack of depth in the treatment. As said, this would have made a good opening shot for a novel. As it is, the reader suffers impatiently to get to the revelation of the device, only to run off the end of the story.
Clairvoyance shows Ms Broster's favourite way to build tension, by having people discuss the point of horror without explicitly referring to what it is. This works on some levels, in that it incites curiosity by means of having characters express curiosity, but fails in that it seems contrived and tiresome. The reader is aware that something horrible has happened, since they are reading a horror story, and rather wishes to get on with the actual meat of the thing, rather than faffing around with the parsley.
This story is based around a rather peculiar definition of clairvoyance, in which a young girl, placed in a trance, becomes pretty much possessed by the spirit of the last owner of objects she handles. One of these objects is a samurai sword; its previous owner appears to have been a bit on the nutty side, since the young lady goes clear off the deep end. The whole story is formed of a tiresome mundanity - which most of Ms Brosters stories also are - in which the everyday events are not so much infused with the unnatural but interrupted by them.
The Pavement is a story of obsession, rather than the supernatural, and details the possessive monomania of an old lady over a Roman mosaic. My inner archaeologist whimpered over the ending but the rest of me twiddled its thumbs and wondered if there wasn't more interest to be had in, say, staring at the ceiling.
The Window has the feel of a classic ghost story, and would not be out of place in a collection of second-rate supernatural tales. However it has a disjointed feel, a sense of scenes happening and being tied together by logic afterwards. The actual point of horror lacks underlying strength. When one watches a poor horror movie, and is presented with a climax that isn't - I find myself thinking of the very silly flying leap that crowned Reign of Fire - there is an absence of gravitas, of strength, perhaps even of significance of action, that makes this event the non-event that it is. The point of horror of The Window is very much one of those.
Juggernaut has little to do with its title, and is about a man either obsessed or haunted but either way dragging a large bathchair around a spa town. The whole thing feels mundane, even paltry. Readers will find themselves wondering why they are reading this story as opposed to any other, and indeed there is no reason why one should read this over any other story. There is no individual spark, no uniqueness. The reader's time is better spent elsewhere.
The Promised Land is in the vein of The Pavement, having slightly more meat on its bones but not all that much to show for it. It is a well-detailed portrayal of a small person whose life has been smothered by a larger, more overbearing person, and how that small person finally rebels, but there are others in this vein, and more interesting ones at that.
The Pestering was utter murder to read. I found myself stopping every few paragraphs to think about something else. At one point it took me three days to advance four pages. As a ghost story, it is run-of-the-mill. The object of the haunting comes out of left field rather, not in that way that unusual objects sometimes do when they appear from no context but fit neatly into the space provided. This one appears from no context and fits neatly into another story entirely. Possibly Ms Broster thought she was being original; I maintain she was just being confusing.
The Taste of Pomegranates is supposed to be some reworking of the myth of Persephone [which is mentioned in the story as if it were terribly obscure, despite the classical education being more common at the time of writing than it is now] but why Hades has been replaced with a palaeolithic cave bear escapes me utterly. There is a total lack of sense about this story - why it happened, why it should have happened and indeed what happened all escape me. How it relates to the myth of Persephone is utterly beyond me. Three hours in the distant past does not six months in Hades make.
I would not recommend this book to anyone except the terminally insomniac. At its best this book is second-rate, undistinguished amongst its many, many similar cousins. At its worst it wavers between dull and confusing. Worst of all it wholly lacks originality; nothing here cannot be found elsewhere, and better.
This book is:
* - technically competent
* - short
* - unoriginal
This book is not:
* - interesting
* - scary
* - worth reading
23/11/09 - Day Off
24/11/09 - 27/11/09 - Ill
28/11/09 - Fail
Author - D.K. Broster
ISBN - 978-1-84022-607-2
"He went for a walk after lunch, by the old canal, long out of use and undisturbed, as picturesque under its drooping trees as any river. It had no trace of movement in its unstirred waters - so little, indeed, that the drift of red beech leaves and of green ash leaves lay upon its surface as upon ice - the stillest water he had ever seen. The beech trees in their last glory mad of it an enchanted waterway." - The PesteringContents:
- Couching at the Door
- From the Abyss
- Clairvoyance
- The Pavement
- The Window
- Juggernaut
- The Promised Land
- The Pestering
- The Taste of Pomegranates
Couching at the Door itself is agonizingly amusing to the present day reader. The horror of the story is an animate fur boa which moves with a slow, caterpillar-like gait. Small furry things are generally not frightening - only good writers can make them so - and small furry things that nuzzle up against people and are generally petsome are even less so. That, on the day after I finished this short story, I saw an advert for little facsimiles of the horror itself shows just how weak a monster it is. Ms Broster attempt to convey that the adorable little furball exudes raw supernatural horror, but there is so large a disconnection between "small furry thing" and "raw malevolent monstrosity" that this one fails at the gate. The winsome horror is likened often to a snake, and perhaps Ms Broster was relying on the common fear of snakes to convey the awfulness of the little darling, but if so, she failed.
Incidentally, I am not wholly convinced that "couching" is not an error. It seems that it should be "crouching", which would make sense in the context. Given that the only meaning of "couching" that I can find is a form of embroidery, the mental image of a furry snake sitting in the doorway doing its needlework fails to makes it any less pettable.
From the Abyss feels like the opening part of a longer book, and indeed if it had been such I might have found it more interesting. I cannot recall any story where this specific device has been used - one person split into two different versions of the same - without the corresponding "good twin/evil twin" angle. Whether Ms Broster is the better writer for not going down that route, or whether she did and I didn't notice [the split seems to be more "old self/new self"] is made somewhat irrelevant by the lack of depth in the treatment. As said, this would have made a good opening shot for a novel. As it is, the reader suffers impatiently to get to the revelation of the device, only to run off the end of the story.
Clairvoyance shows Ms Broster's favourite way to build tension, by having people discuss the point of horror without explicitly referring to what it is. This works on some levels, in that it incites curiosity by means of having characters express curiosity, but fails in that it seems contrived and tiresome. The reader is aware that something horrible has happened, since they are reading a horror story, and rather wishes to get on with the actual meat of the thing, rather than faffing around with the parsley.
This story is based around a rather peculiar definition of clairvoyance, in which a young girl, placed in a trance, becomes pretty much possessed by the spirit of the last owner of objects she handles. One of these objects is a samurai sword; its previous owner appears to have been a bit on the nutty side, since the young lady goes clear off the deep end. The whole story is formed of a tiresome mundanity - which most of Ms Brosters stories also are - in which the everyday events are not so much infused with the unnatural but interrupted by them.
The Pavement is a story of obsession, rather than the supernatural, and details the possessive monomania of an old lady over a Roman mosaic. My inner archaeologist whimpered over the ending but the rest of me twiddled its thumbs and wondered if there wasn't more interest to be had in, say, staring at the ceiling.
The Window has the feel of a classic ghost story, and would not be out of place in a collection of second-rate supernatural tales. However it has a disjointed feel, a sense of scenes happening and being tied together by logic afterwards. The actual point of horror lacks underlying strength. When one watches a poor horror movie, and is presented with a climax that isn't - I find myself thinking of the very silly flying leap that crowned Reign of Fire - there is an absence of gravitas, of strength, perhaps even of significance of action, that makes this event the non-event that it is. The point of horror of The Window is very much one of those.
Juggernaut has little to do with its title, and is about a man either obsessed or haunted but either way dragging a large bathchair around a spa town. The whole thing feels mundane, even paltry. Readers will find themselves wondering why they are reading this story as opposed to any other, and indeed there is no reason why one should read this over any other story. There is no individual spark, no uniqueness. The reader's time is better spent elsewhere.
The Promised Land is in the vein of The Pavement, having slightly more meat on its bones but not all that much to show for it. It is a well-detailed portrayal of a small person whose life has been smothered by a larger, more overbearing person, and how that small person finally rebels, but there are others in this vein, and more interesting ones at that.
The Pestering was utter murder to read. I found myself stopping every few paragraphs to think about something else. At one point it took me three days to advance four pages. As a ghost story, it is run-of-the-mill. The object of the haunting comes out of left field rather, not in that way that unusual objects sometimes do when they appear from no context but fit neatly into the space provided. This one appears from no context and fits neatly into another story entirely. Possibly Ms Broster thought she was being original; I maintain she was just being confusing.
The Taste of Pomegranates is supposed to be some reworking of the myth of Persephone [which is mentioned in the story as if it were terribly obscure, despite the classical education being more common at the time of writing than it is now] but why Hades has been replaced with a palaeolithic cave bear escapes me utterly. There is a total lack of sense about this story - why it happened, why it should have happened and indeed what happened all escape me. How it relates to the myth of Persephone is utterly beyond me. Three hours in the distant past does not six months in Hades make.
I would not recommend this book to anyone except the terminally insomniac. At its best this book is second-rate, undistinguished amongst its many, many similar cousins. At its worst it wavers between dull and confusing. Worst of all it wholly lacks originality; nothing here cannot be found elsewhere, and better.
This book is:
* - technically competent
* - short
* - unoriginal
This book is not:
* - interesting
* - scary
* - worth reading
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-30 12:26 am (UTC)I sent you a private message through LJ. Did you get it? Just checking. *hugga!*
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 04:28 am (UTC)The horror of the story is an animate fur boa which moves with a slow, caterpillar-like gait. Small furry things are generally not frightening - only good writers can make them so - and small furry things that nuzzle up against people and are generally petsome are even less so.
Funny you should mention this the day after I got up for something in the middle of the night and found a solid black wooly bear caterpillar trundling across the floor. Not horrifying, though I was mystified as to what the hell it was doing in the middle of the house, as they are rather an outdoor species.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 08:06 pm (UTC)Most of the books I'm reading at the moment - the W40K ones and most of the horror collections - are Rath's books. The rest are ones I've picked up off Amazon. A lot of them are quite old - Rath's horror collections are mostly from the seventies and early eighties - but the Wordsworth Editions [Broster here, The Bell in the Fog, The Tangled Skein] are a new set, reprinting out-of-copyright Victorian supernaturals. I've always had a bit of a rule about not reading a book that's less than ten years old, but these out-of-copyright runs and "Best Of" runs have made a mockery of my system.
I haven't been to a library since I was ... eighteen? I stopped reading whilst I was at university, probably because I had so much to read for my course. Since then I've built up almost two shelves of unread books and I'm trying to get through them [I *dread* the Terry Pratchetts - I'm six or more behind and I'm not sure how the hell I'd review them].
Perhaps it was looking for the exit?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 11:15 pm (UTC)I ought to review "Ben-Hur" sometime... the story was decent, but The. Pacing. Really. Could. Have. Been. Picked. Up. A. Bit, knowwhatImean?
I think it came off of mom's orchids that I brought in from the cold. I just found and squashed a rather large bug (as in Hemiptera) of the biting variety that was clinging to the orchids. Might be where the recent kitchen ant invasion hatched from, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 02:39 pm (UTC)[Insert reference to urban legend about taranatulas in flowerpots here]
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 02:37 am (UTC)(Okay, I've only seen the monster magnolia-leaf sized ones in Key West, but the "smaller" ones are still easily 2-3x the size of German cockroaches. And they fly.)
If it crawls or scuttles on more than four legs, we have too many, too big, around here.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 03:18 pm (UTC)What, including Wayward?
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 10:04 pm (UTC)Slash Pine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_pine)
Longleaf Pine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longleaf_pine)
Mostly Loblolly around here. The southern yellow pines are major sources of pulpwood. They farm them down here in huge treefarms in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, etc.
Well, I suppose I might let Wayward-bug in my kitchen. ;-)