Edgar Mittelholzer (1909–1965)

I was really disappointed by this. From early on I was put off but I kept reading because I was interested in the setting and because other reviews suggested that the book was genuinely scary at some point, had an interesting ending, and there were deeper things going on. I didn't really find the story creepy, the ending was incredibly dumb, and despite the occasional mention of something that would be interesting to go deeper on (eg the ghost was killed in a slave rebellion) the book absolutely refuses to even gesture at any significance.

The characters are irritating, stupid and shallow. To the extent their personalities exist, they're simply reflective of class, gender and race prejudices with no details and no hint of complication. Apart from the caretaker character Rayburn - who's depicted as a racist stereotype - the other 4 characters are all from the Guyanese elite. The 2 men are smart, brave and strong, the 2 women are stupid, weak and whiny. It's unpleasant to read.

Despite being a relatively short book, it feels extremely padded. Pages are filled with basically the same sort of thing happening over and over, with no new description, no interest. From early on escalation is threatened soon the ghost will take them away!! but for a couple of weeks they just sort of get away with ignoring it. The worst thing is that they don't do anything! Everything in the book happens to them and despite instructions on laying the ghost to rest in the face of otherwise certain death they just do nothing. They're unbearably passive despite the narrator grunting on about how scary it is but also how smart and strong he is. There's even one moment where the narrator admits the reader is probably thinking "why didn't you go out and try and put the ghost to rest" and just sort of waves it off as them being scared. But otherwise you're all thinking you're going to die??? It's unbearably dumb.

And then in the end, suddenly resolution is thrust upon them in a way which involves very minimal contribution from themselves (and the logic of the ghost by the end of the book is basically completely different from at the start). And it involves one of the stupidest ghost origin stories I've ever heard - this guy invoked dark evil forces to invent a better flute. Seriously. On this plantation he was working as a flute inventor as well as plantation owner. His wife was mad at him. He was frustrated. So he invoked demons to make a better flute. It worked! Except then he was in the clutches of demons It was funny but just made the whole thing feel even dumber retrospectively.

The book is full of misogyny and to a lesser extent racism, but the racism is even more shocking (one character just casually uses the n word). Again, I only carried on reading because I was led to believe there was something deeper here. There really isn't. The setting is unusual but the creepiness potential is squandered in a daft story that doesn't develop any tension and ends stupidly. Bad book.… (mehr)

Love, sex, theft and murder...
By sally tarbox on 10 May 2018
Format: Paperback
Somewhere between a *3 and *4; this is the second Mittelholzer book I have read. Set in his native Guyana, in the 1940s, the story centres around a poor Indian immigrant, Ramgolall, living with his two pretty daughters at a subsistence level. Their life revolves around herding cows and selling milk; their father, who has had a hard life, stashes away every possible shilling into a secret hoard.
But their apparently mundane existence soon becomes a gripping story, as a jealous neighbour and the playboy mixed-race son of well-to-do relatives enter the story, and it reaches an exciting climax.
Beautiful descriptions of the countryside, though I felt the author overdid the hints that "something bad was about to happen"; the constant equating of the distant thunder with threatening events.
But quite a memorable read.… (mehr)

Eltonsbrody an eerie Gothic mansion in the Caribbean under the patronage and possible madness of Mrs Scaife. Into this tropical paradise enters Mr Woodsley seeking accommodation close to Bridgetown in Barbados.

The story written in 1960 is typical of the horror writing of that period. The author does a wonderful job of portraying Mrs Scaife as a kindly yet possible dotty keeper of the inn! As the story gathers momentum the fear element increases and the reader begins to understand that all is not well in the house of Eltonsbrody and in particular its owner Mrs Scaife. There is some beautiful and elegant prose that greatly adds to the overall atmosphere in this Gothic tale of intrigue and growing uneasiness...."The soft swishing rustle of the casuarinas might have been a spirit-voice warning me of danger."......."And it was human hair. Human hair which must have been forcibly uprooted from the head which had once borne it."...."The wind. Just the wind whooping now, moaning now, whining in under the eaves, shaking the windows downstairs."....

My thanks to the good people at Valancourt Books for supplying me with a gratis copy of this spooky little tale, in exchange for a fair and honest review.… (mehr)