The Haunted Woman

David Lindsay

Canongate

Unfulfilled young Isbel Loment is companion to a wealthy spinster aunt. Their lives consist of an endless tour of hotels. In search of a place to settle her aunt, so she herself can be free to marry her fiancé, Isbel visits the house of an older man, Judge, which comes complete with rumors of a ghostly staircase that appears only at certain times or to certain people. Isbel sees the staircase & ascends it to a region of the house where her perceptions of herself, & others, alter, with profound consequences for her everday life.

Lindsay is now a recognisable name in classic sci-fi circles for his book 'A Voyage to Arcturus' which at the time of release sank almost without trace and was only posthumously acclaimed but having just read 'The Haunted Woman' I'm left wondering if this book also needs it's moment in the sun.

The story centres around Isbel Loment who, with her aunt, Mrs Moor, lives a nomadic and fairly meaningless existence moving from hotel to hotel.  Whilst in Brighton, and through Isbel's fiance Marshall they discover the availability of a house into which Mrs Moor might settle upon Isbel's marriage.

The house, owned by a widower named Judge has a secret,  a staircase, visible only to some that leads to three rooms.  The first room contains a mirror, the second a sofa and the third a window through which can be seen a view of an idyllic valley in which sits a musician playing an unfamiliar instrument.  The first room allows Isbel to see her true self, the second provides an environment where social masks can be dropped and truer nature's expressed and the third almost forcibly strips them of their reservations presenting them with the full expression of their deeper feelings away from the confines of everyday society.

The social mores of their everyday world seem archaic and even at the time were probably a little old hat but as an examination of the ways in which conventions govern our lives and the ways in which we surrender to them as seen in Isbel and Judge's amnesia upon descending the stairs as they are literally forgetting themselves which seems, at least for Lindsay, to be eminently preferable to the alternative.

Perhaps Lindsay's own fear of emotional commitment lies at the heart of the book's bleak ending or perhaps it's a comment on the wisdom of fully revealing ones true self as then you'll see the terrifying other self.

Whatever the truth of it it's an undeniably powerful and twisted end to a fascinating read

Buy it here - UK / US.

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A Slight Trick of the Mind

Mitch Cullin
(Canongate)

It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind. But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking–about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know. A novel of exceptional grace and literary sensitivity, A Slight Trick of the Mind is a brilliant imagining of our greatest fictional detective and a stunning inquiry into the mysteries of human connection.
 
Behind my head as I write this is a shelf with about 20 Sherlock Holmes books plus various DVD adaptations / versions. It would be pretty safe to say I'm a fan. I am not however even remotely precious about it. Amongst those 20 odd books and sat alongside the canon are a number of pastiches, some are downright silly - the 'War of the World' one springs immediately to mind (written by the magnificently named Manly Wellman). Another features Holmes teaming up with a young Teddy Roosevelt, whilst a third pits him against the gentleman burglar Arsene Lupin although he is called Herlock Sholmes in that one. There's even a first edition of Michael Chabon's masterclass of a novel featuring an elderly Holmes, The Final Solution. So basically, do what you want with him. The character is malleable and durable enough and I'm enough of a fan to go along on the journey and see if it's going somewhere interesting.

In 'A Slight Trick of the Mind' Mitch Cullin takes Holmes somewhere very interesting indeed, to the end. Cullin places the nonagenarian Holmes in two very different settings and the younger version into what at first seems like a rather nondescript case that eventually takes on much deeper meanings.

Mitch Cullin

Switching effortlessly between his life amongst his beloved bees in the company of the housekeeper's son, his beekeeping protégé, and a trip to postwar Japan ostensibly to search for prickly ash but also to satisfy a young man's curiosity regarding his estranged father whilst also being drip fed the resolution of the earlier case; Cullin's book is that rarity, a literary pageturner. It's beautifully written and reveals it's heartbreaking secrets both far too soon and frustratingly slowly. The carefully crafted links between the various stories are given the time and space to allow their tales to tell and to allow us to more fully understand what it means to be both Holmes at the height of his powers and Holmes at their decline.

For many people this will no doubt be an ill fit alongside the canon but those people will be missing the point. This isn't a book about Sherlock Holmes the great detective; he is simply the principal in a book about loss both great and small. Loss of friends, loss of family, loss of a child, loss of love, of memory, of things, of direction and ultimately loss of self. Holmes is ourselves wit large and as such any loss is both magnified and intensified. Through him we are shown what it means to be ultimately, inevitably, inescapably fallible.

I found this to be a beautiful and poignant read that took me to a place I've not visited in a while and brought me back filled with questions for which the answers can only be experienced when the time comes for them to be asked.

Heartily and resoundingly recommended.