Phil Rickman and MerrilyWatkins

Reading notes: 21st-century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000 (2011) edited by Danel Olson

21st-century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000 (2011) edited by Danel Olson is a treasure trove for horror readers.¹ From introduction, through chapters and footnotes, to the index, it provides a wealth of enthusiastic and insightful comment on fifty novels. No author gets more than one entry, making this a capacious survey. Many of the commentators are fiction writers, which spices what might otherwise have been a dry academic book.

John Whitbourn's piece on the first ten volumes of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins roman fleuve is one of the best chapters.* Whitbourn's enthusiasm for characters, settings, and plots, refracted through a discussion of Rickman's use of gothic narrative commonplaces, is contagious.

Readers of horror and mystery fiction, as well as folklore readers, will find these spoiler-free Whitbourn précis motivating:

[....] Rickman’s achievement is in the art of “subcreation,” in the Tolkienesque sense. Therefore, the world of Rickman’s devising stands alone, and so details of its flesh-and-blood creator are irrelevant. We will see that Rickman’s act of subcreation is truly as Tolkien described it:

What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “subcreator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises . . . you are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.

[....] In scant (and sometimes facetious) summary, so as to avoid any possibility of spoilers, they comprise:

The Wine of Angels (1998). Cast introductions, apple and orchard lore, ancient injustice,

seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry, and sex murders.

Midwinter of the Spirit (1999). Merrily inherits the role of exorcist, her learning curve, apparitions, and Hereford Cathedral.

A Crown of Lights (2001). The interplay of Christianity (committed but uncharitable variant) and paganism (the tree-hugging, not cat-strangling, variety), the inadvisability of buying a decommissioned church.

The Cure of Souls (2002). Hop farming (the bitter flavoring for English ale) and hops lore (“the Lady of the Bines”), gypsies, guitars, and sexual possession.

The Lamp of the Wicked (2002). A horrific (real-world, alas) serial killer and his remains, corporeal and otherwise; a subplot concerning grounds for concern about electricity pylons; and, by the by, page 415 contains an evocation of despair that stands comparison to Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech, crushingly concluding with, “Nothing. Nothing but going through life . . .”

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (2004). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and the hound of the Baskervilles, among other things.

The Smile of a Ghost (2005). Strange and sinister (can there be any other kind?) suicides in a fashionable provincial town.

Remains of an Altar (2006). Inexplicable road accidents; the composer Elgar and mystical music; prehistoric “old straight tracks” as rediscovered by Merrily’s namesake and undercelebrated Herefordshire luminary, Sir Alfred Watkins; an ex–special forces (UK Special Air Service) priest; postmortem bottom pinching of lady cyclists.

The Fabric of Sin (2007). The Knights Templar and one of their churches; something rum happening there to famous ghost-story writer M. R. James (1862–1936); dealings with Prince Charles, England’s future (?) king; archaeology.

Dream of the Dead (2008). A best-selling professional atheist, biblical-style floods and murder, more archaeology.²

I have been purchasing or borrowing Rickman’s books since 1995. Thus far, I have read none. They are novels of dismaying length. But Whitbourn’s mention of Conan Doyle, M. R. James, and Alfred Watkins is motivating.

If you're a Rickman reader, please share your thoughts.

Jay

31 December 2023

1. Olson, Danel. 21st-century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000. Scarecrow Press, 2011.

2. (Olson 467–79)