Frances Oliver

[Nemonymous]

'Dancing on Air' by Frances Oliver
Ash Tree Press (2004)

CAVEAT: Spoilers are not intended but there may be inadvertent ones. You may wish (i) to take that risk and read my review as the items are posted below, before or during or after your own reading of the book, or (ii) to wait until you have finished reading the book. In either case, I hope it gives a useful or interesting perspective.

All my real-time reviews are linked from here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/recent_reviews_of_books_by_dfl.htm.
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The Visitor's Book
"This place is as magical as ever..."
A literally ingenious tale of a 'genius loci' built up by by entries to a house's Visitor's book. Frissons and connections. Some Visitors write almost retrocausally to previous Visitors! Similar to (but also several stages further than) an epistolary type tale of a haunting, we have here several viewpoints, some insensitive to the atmosphere of the place, others less so. But they all have their implications, however insensitive ... as if every reader will add to or subtract from the final inner gestalt of the story itself! Very impressive.
One extra frisson personally for me. The last entry is written by a Robert Liddell. Someone of this name features in 'The Other Elizabeth Taylor' by Nicola Beauman (Persephone 2009), a book that has effectively caused me to be reviewing 'Dancing On Air' in the first place, as a few of you reading this may know! (10 Feb 10)
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Cyprian's Room
"...but who on earth could be playing Schoenberg downstairs?"
Owing to the earlier context of this overall book being recommended to me, I was fully expecting to be generally impressed by it. But this story is quite beyond anything, I feel, I've read before, in view of my own interest in art and audience within the horror genre. Creativity as an incubus. Atonal plotting. False reviewing. Gender-freedom by neutralisation. Character intransference. The whole thing sort of just is without really becoming. If it truly 'became', I would hold no responsibility regarding what it might have become! It somehow prefigures Quentin S Crisp fiction that has emerged in recent years as well as 'Cinnabar's Gnosis' (a new anthology by several writers from Ex Occidente Press in 2009). There is a character called Mr Meyer(beer) in this story. Cf Meyrink (who I recall is called Meyer once or twice in 'Cinnabar's Gnosis'). It is as if there is a sort of osmosis working here across several muses. This story is highly disturbing. Where has it been all my life? This is not at all what I expected. (10 Feb 10 - 5 hours later)
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The Black Mare Midnight
"...that sense of being forever on the threshhold of something grand, never left me."
Exquiste gem. A short piece covering a magnitude of time that left me with tears of sorrow and joy in my eyes. Literally. It tells of a Childhood partly reminsicent of 'Calmahain' by Sarban and 'The Fruit-Stoners' by Algernon Blackwood as a rite of passage into adulthood seeking the treasure that was lost when growing up. Faces that come and go as a dream of reality itself changing throughout the distillation of time passing, a precious reality within fiction that is in itself, in turn, within fiction, this short nocturne by a Chopin who thinks he's Aickman.
So far, I'm beginning to think this book is not going to allow itself to be subjected to my usual methods in all my previous real-time reviews (even in those reviews of multi-authored anthologies) of encompassing the many stories' themes into a gestalt of personal serendipities and synchronicities. It defies me. (10 Feb 10 - another 3 hours later)
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Prester John
"It began from one day to the next. John simply opened his mouth and spoke, loudly and at length."
A truly fascinating treatment of an autistic man who is eventually discovered (not expressly in the story's words) 'to speak in tongues' - and we are led to believe that he becomes, perhaps, a living embodiment of the Prester John myth (Cf. John Buchan's novel entitled 'Prester John').
A tale about exploitation and contrasting psychological approaches - and a crime mystery of cause & effect in more ways than one.
This story and the book's three previous stories (reviewed above) have something in common: the accretion of themes towards a core stituation that transpires often over a sizeable span of time - comprising a display of clues in real-time without pre-empting hindsight.
The book itself somehow has a knack of instinctive 'speaking in tongues', fiction tongues within ordered internal texts (Cf those earlier concocted 'reviews' in 'Cyprian's Room'). (11 Feb 10)
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The Monster Drawing
"Roderick, though a bit of an ass, was the only other man in the house and was, after all, writing about H.P. Lovecraft, and not quite so prone as Deirdre to see everything in terms of complexes and hang-ups."
A disarmingly absurdist, yet still artfully traditional, weird-tale with haunting images. It tells of a Freudianly dysfunctional family, where the children seem delightfully to combine elements of those in 'Calmahain' and in 'Just William' and in some children-orientated Elizabeth Bowen stories. With a game of pictorial Consequences, prankish monster catching and, in tune with the previous story, a Lovecraftian 'speaking in tongues', I am now well and truly trapped by this book. With more Consequences yet to unravel no doubt like a concertina of leit-motifs. (12 Feb 10)
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A Walk in the Forest
"And the cretin anyhow was an administrative mistake;"
Sometimes one knows one is reading a 'Hospice': a generic term, for me, that reminds me of when I first read a story with that title by Robert Aickman and, 'in-media-res', simply knowing that it will haunt me forever in a way that cannot be fully predicted. As if the future holds a literary retrocausality beyond my own jurisdiction as a participant in the story as reader. 'A Walk in the Forest' has today become, for me, another such 'Hospice'.
It is written from the narrative viewpoint of a (dependable?) inmate of a "neglected garden of dementia". Conspiracies, inspections, behavioural aberrations, angles on the 'youth of today' (as locusts?), one cannot do justice to this story without 'spoiling' it. Suffice to say that it has the artful accretions and 'fiction tongues' of the previous stories. It reminded me of the slippery concept of infinity: "millions and billions and trillions", of waiting for a monkey to type out the complete works of Shakespeare. A maze of involuted Consequences.
Everyone can breathe if they want to do so. But even if one is laughing too much? (12 Feb 10 - three hours later)
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The Man in the Blue Mercedes
"It sometimes seemed to me that anything could symbolize anything,"
This is a Gothic-Romantic exercise in 'infinity' (to follow the vague reference to 'infinity' I seemed to have already found in the previous story), written in beautifully textured prose.
Another dysfunctional family, and the narrator-woman's impulsive display of passion in leaving home (for a while), then touching a (Freudian?) dream she perhaps wanted to avoid, one of love, even imaginary sex, with a stranger who haunts her in an equally haunting 'genius loci' of Bad Moor (a sometimes sinister community in the Austrian mountains to where she travels by train).
∞ = I + I.
A time-drowning mirror.
" '...you're beginning to think every puff of imagination is something to be sold.' " (12 Feb 10 - another 4 hours later)
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The Dinosaurs
"Some children are weathervanes to the winds of fear,"
This is a classic story of the psyche of childhood in the face of fears presented by some adults and by other things - innocence tested, petulance triggered, obsessions ignited, world affairs absorbed, once firmly fixed positions of interest ever on the point of unfixing...
Frances Oliver and Elizabeth Bowen, I feel, are tapping into similar veins within their fiction about children. In the former, we seem to have a more Sarbanised version (yet intrinsically original), in the latter, a style that is more literary mainstream...but both essentially within the precarious Soul of Child.
Accretions, speaking in fiction tongues, Freudian Consequences ... a kaleidoscope of prehistoric monsters and contemporary monsters that one hears about on the wireless or that one calls 'uncle'. All subject to passing ambivalences and fixities. (13 Feb 10)
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The Married Man
"A big man in his field."
For me, a hilarious social comedy of a ladies group who enjoy gossip and scandal - and even try to create scandal in their own lives beneath genteel innuendo but also sometimes with blatant erotic pretentiousness ... plus a dark hint of an obsessive dream of a ghost or a real ghost (similar to that in the 'Blue Mercedes' story reviewed above).
This story also reminds me of the feminine rivalries and other interactions prevalent in the real life of Elizabeth Taylor in 'The Other Elizabeth Taylor' (the biography book that effectively caused me - by dint of a series of Consequences - to be writing this review in the first place) as well as the fictitious life depicted in Elizabeth Taylor's stories and novels themselves. Amazing! (13 Feb 10 - three hours later).
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Dancing on Air
"Not being a Stockhausen fan..."
This memorable story represents, for me, intentionally or serendipitously or synchronistically, a spinning waltz of the book's accretions, 'hospices', relational dysfunctions, 'tongues', consequences in what I see as a 'snow-shaker' globe of dancers. Some avant-garde (like Stockhausen - or Schoenberg, earlier, in 'Cyprian's Room'), some weird like Aickman or Sarban, others dense and textured (like Elizabeth Bowen fiction), others more traditionally ghost-story. And, as I foreshadowed (by retrocausality earlier?), we indeed have express retrocausality in this story (!): "...you heard the story, but your brain makes you remember it as something you saw before."
A female protagonist -- attending a weirdly framed business conference in an Austrian city -- is emotionally / sexually tempted and shifted by fate with implications of experiment and potential viral as well as spiritual infection. An ambiguous ending. A perfect ending to the book. A book that has been a series of separate 'Visitor's notes' all contributing their own leit-motifs towards an overall gestalt. This is perhaps the first book that has done that for me by its own volition. It did not really defy me (as I earlier thought) but somehow assisted me, whispered me towards its own end. (13 Feb 10 - another 3 hours later)
END

EDITED SIMPLY TO CHANGE THREAD TITLE

[nomis]

My own experience with the collection follows, as posted to the All Hallows group almost two years ago.
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After all the good words (most of them from a mutual online friend of me and Des's) I finally sat down and read Frances Oliver's "Dancing on Air" collection. I must say, she certainly is a fabulous writer. Her prose and characters are smart and funny and engaging. Yet, I couldn't help but come away repeatedly from each story with a sense of frustration. For the bulk of the stories there was a lack of the kind of ambiguity I enjoy most out of my fiction. It's unfortunate, as it wouldn't bother me if she didn't write as well as she does. I think back on some of the tales fondly, but when I remember their last pages I just feel disappointed. I'm undecided thus as to whether I can say I enjoyed the book or not. I suppose I did . . . I suppose.

I'm sure my opinion's in the minority on this one (and I think I hear our mutual online friend at my window sharpening a knife) but I have the urge with this book to express my feelings, if only because I came so close to loving it. Still, it's just my opinion, so don't judge me too harshly, please.
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My thoughts today? I remember what I liked about the book much more than what frustrated me. I suspect those frustrations wouldn't rank quite as highly now. Thus, I second Des's recommendation.

[Nemonymous]

Thanks, Simon, for sharing.

I do however feel the stories have a certain ambiguity. But that may be me.

Also, just to add to my review above, I feel Cyprian's Room at least is a MUST for anyone who visits TLO. As are all the others to varying degrees.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Joel]

I really loved Dancing on Air – it's an exemplar of what I think modern ghost stories should be like.

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Joel

I really loved Dancing on Air – it's an exemplar of what I think modern ghost stories should be like.

Agreed, Joel. Also, very much, simultaneously, Weird Tales in an Aickman, Sarban way as well as European (Meyrinkian?)...
And Elizabeth_Bowenesque literary...

[Nemonymous]

'Children of Epiphany' by Frances Oliver
Ash Tree Press (2004)
first published Secker & Warburg 1983

CAVEAT: Spoilers are not intended but there may be inadvertent ones. You may wish (i) to take that risk and read my review as the comments on the novel are posted chapter by chapter below, before or during or after your own reading of the book, or (ii) to wait until you have finished reading the book. In either case, I hope it gives a useful or interesting perspective.

All DFL's real-time reviews are linked from here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/recent_reviews_of_books_by_dfl.htm.
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I
"I like to make my scenes myself."
Even temporarily eschewing the reading of any introduction or the scrutiny of the physical book itself as far as possible while reading the actual text of any novel, one can still almost immediately know in the first few paragraphs of the first chapter what sort of read it's going to be. And this, for me, has wonderful premonitions of style and timbre while, then, dipping further into the chapter, one is soon in tune with the magical masquerade in the book's Mediterranean 'spirit of place', a girl (mid teens?) as the I-protagonist viewpoint, her feistiness, her mother's equal feistiness as well as flightiness, the girl's latest 'father' (Robert); the family's arty preoccupations as well as their sense of means-justifying-the-ends, of sexual innuendo and of unfixity of domain, as they are transposed to another part of their Greek island, i.e. now living opposite to where a 'mad' woman comes to her 'last balcony' regularly to mark the hours (like a clockwork weather forecast?). A foreboding of cosmic harmonics and sexual machinations. A foreboding, too, of I-know-not-what. Full of exquisite characters some masked, some transparent. The girl certainly knows how to write! Having just finished the first chapter, I'm not sure whether I believe the girl wholly ... yet. But even if it's not true, it is true for her.
"Or that a few more of those balcony scenes would convince them both that this was not the place, after all, for Robert to write his great book." (22 Feb 10)
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II
" 'Real legends - I mean a real local fairy story - wouldn't have hair growing out of bleeding knuckles. It's too' - I searched for the word - 'it's just too - complicated.' "
But, Tamsin, the girl narrator who says that, seems herself just too complicated. It is as if she is possessed by a force. The authorial force? ... or a force beyond even the control of the author herself? An unforeseen audit trail through a complicated jazz solo.
The family's life in their new domain is touched upon by insidious as well as potentially friendly characters. Tamsin herself falls in love with the good-looking son of the 'mad' woman and befriended by her daughter. There is an aura of events being almost generally beset with fetich.
A place with clothes thrown about in the backyard. Half-waking nightmare of a 'torn' donkey followed by a damaged pink pig - fallen off the balcony. Complicated images, but I can't help thinking that these 'complications' will become simplicity itself when distilled by the cosmic harmonics I sense underlying this book so far. Or overlying it?
"...moaning and clutching the balcony rail like a drowning person hanging onto a lifeline." (22 Feb 10 - four hours later)
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III
" 'In the old days, when they made an important building like a Pirgos, they would crush a living man to death under the foundation stone, so that the building would be a good strong building; because, you see, it had eaten a life.' "
Pirgos, balconies, bikini tops - all take on an aura of fetich as well as salaciousness. And connections are cleverly developed - seemingly without effort, perhaps even without authorial or protagonal volition - about the myths of the island, including one relating to the novel's title, from Robert's friend Hugo who seems at cross-antipathy with the possibly Epiphanic children of the 'mad' woman - one of which 'children' (i.e. Petros) Tamsin continues almost to fetichize as well as eroticise. (23 Feb 10)
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IV
"I wondered why when grown-ups had that it was Love and when you were really young, when maybe it could hurt most, it was a crush. A crush. Where did the silly expression come from?"
And also the expression 'grounded' for Tamsin's punishment as if she is a pilot! Tamsin (who is, I now note from the book's cover (!), aged 14), as narrator, is omniscient to the extent of reading her mother Lisa's diary and Robert's ongoing book (developing into Shakespearean-like verse?) and she overhears the suspicious Hugo making a pass at Lisa. But Tamsin is not only omniscient but complicatedly precocious of perception for a 14 year old, to the extent of recognising old classic con tricks - and when compared to the Epiphanic tendencies (as earlier described) in others by her own 'fuller' soul (as demonstrated by her precocity), fuller than the supposed mythical empty souls of those others, this comparison makes them seem potentially even emptier. I am non-plussed and feel scoured by a real force - & I note Hugo speaks of it as a 'rhythm', a jazz drumbeat - a force that I predicted earlier to be a form of cosmic harmonics. I continue to feel my way in this most intriguing reading experience. (24 Feb 10)
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V
" 'I know. But to us in America birthdays are very important.' I couldn't stop now. 'Mine is September 11. When is yours, Heleni?' "
The nearest terrestrial form to my concept of cosmic harmonics is the practice of Astrology (empirical Synchronicity rather than cause-and-effect.) We shall discover later perhaps how relevant this may be.
There is some force in this fiction that is unstoppable. Apparently, Robert may be typing in his room not to produce the expected lucrative book that Tamsin and Lisa are expecting, but typing out idle verse and other folderols to make them believe he's writing that book with the sound of his typewriter! This book itself ('Children of Epiphany'), meanwhile, is perhaps the master-work of Robert that he wants to conceal until it's finished - a double-bluff. Would explain the extreme precocity of his central narrator and protagonist....!
But this is just brainstorming on my part. This book is certainly fleshing out all the characters, including the inscrutability of Hugo that Alice Drift (a visitor to the Pirgos) fills in. Plus behind-the-scenes machinations of the man (Morelli) who allowed them to stay at the Pirgos. Others' intentions inferred or otherwise. The status of the 'mad' balcony-woman's 'children' is further delineated. The house by the ravine with the clothes thrown about in its backyard is also mentioned again (something that I admit indeed haunted one of my dreams last night). The word-painted picture of this novel grows, dabbed at and brush-stroked and scraped with the inferred author's palette-knife... (24 Feb 10 - six hours later)
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VI (up to page 72)
" 'You've never understood, have you, Lisa? How a writer's mind functions? That everything is grist for the mill? That every experience, every observation has an ultimate use?' "
Robert no longer bothers to pretend to write his book - and Lisa and Tamsin walk to the house by the ravine where clothes are strewn about outside...including that earlier 'torn' donkey but now for real. I have not read 'The Houses of The Russians' for many years but this effective scene somehow reminds me of it. It even made me think that Robert is Robert Aickman himself! An atmosphere with also a smidgin of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'. Meanwhile, the feisty relationship between mother and daughter is very well drawn, given the reader's acceptance of the premise of Tamsin's precocity. (25 Feb 10)
.(from page 72 to end of chapter)
"She has the orthodox unorthodox ideas."
Hugo brings his 'girl friend' to dinner with Lisa, Robert and Tamsin - Jo who is staying with Hugo in his house near the ravine. Dinner party 'philosophisation' and anoxeric 'skinning' of a memory of another previous party - tending to tangle the undercurrents with which the reader is beginning, I guess, to be imbued. It is difficult to comment on this novel without extrapolating upon each turn of the plot. A reviewing process that increasingly seems susceptible to filling as the originally fat Jo once seemed to need emptying. I did not intend it this way. It's as if I'm now being subtly controlled by the book and told (in some unknown way) what to say about it. (25 Feb 10 - an hour later)
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VII
"The thing about ghostly warnings is, like oracles, they are always ambiguous. They never give you the feet and inches of it."
Resisting further plot descriptions, merely let me say that this appears to be a core chapter, where Tamsin, without relinquishing her own sense of omniscience, expressly addresses the reader as 'reader' and withholds details of her relationship with Petros but simultaneously admits to a loophole in her omniscience regarding her worries concerning the suspicious Hugo and the ever diminishing physical presence of his girl friend Jo. We also learn, directly from Tamsin, that the book cover is correct: she is indeed only 14.
We are left embroiled in this fascinating ferment. Tamsin -- the book's formal (ostensibly astute and premature) narrator -- is in the process of abandoning us. Or Robert the writer has abandoned us by allowing Tamsin to abandon us to our own fallible inferences as to the truth lying behind her (or his?) words. Or the head-lease author herself (whose name is on the book's spine) has abandoned us...? This is certainly a major reading experience that reminds me of the mixed motives within various reliable or unreliable, collusive or non-collusive narrative-levels in 'Chance', a novel by Joseph Conrad. And that is no mean compliment. (25 Feb 10 - another 5 hours later)
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VIII
"If I had not been in that scene, and had no idea what it was about, it would have been funny."
A long chapter, but I am now committed to brevity. With Robert expressly abandoning fiction, Tamsin now seems intent upon casting her scenes as an absurdist romp amid the empty houses near the ravine and in Hugo's house nearby, while Hugo himself seeps more and more into his mould of apparent representative of Evil. Tamsin searches, along with the now seemingly more vulnerable Petros and her 'step-father' Robert, for the ever-depleting Jo and the ever madder 'balcony woman' who are both missing -- mistaking the former for a dummy or doll that Hugo had created (as decoy?). Robert earlier in the chapter extrapolated upon the world's madness, but the novel (in which he writes) becomes madder than any of its characters! A believable madness, however, a madness that makes me shudder with nightmares-in-utero...and who or what was it that Tamsin spotted poking around near the ravine, if it wasn't Jo or the mad 'balcony woman'? (26 Feb 10)
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IX
"I felt as if I were on stilts. Very high up, looking down on it all, but very wobbly. I knew what Hugo was doing."
Indeed if the Narrator falters it is important she knows she falters, I guess. Meanwhile, this chapter gives the reader some evidence of how Tamsin is so precocious. So, I was right to question it earlier, I guess.
We are shown the ouzo-sodden Robert and the supposed inveigling of him by the dynamite-ousted-from-his-home-beside-the-ravine Hugo ... plus the equivocal discussion of leaving the Pirgos about which Lisa tries to persuade Robert. Tamsin herself earlier visited Alice Drift and suffered some form of 'flu while also meeting a man who knew about the myths of the Ravine, concerning matters almost akin to Swift's 'Modest Proposal'. And about the ambivalent nature of the Children of Epiphany ... and we wonder about the nature of some of the characters in this light and who is right or wrong about who is harming or benefiting whom.
I feel strangely as if I'm writing the story now (not Robert or Tamsin or Frances) and I don't know where it's heading! In this chapter and the previous one, the various participants have been jockeying for position as the increasingly telegraphed 'vibrations' (or cosmic harmonics) of Lisa allow the compass-point to shake about before settling in one direction of plot or another. I admire this novel, but I currently can't help thinking that it enjoys shaking the kaleidoscope too much with brave but uncertain attempts at predicting into what shapes the bits will fall. That's not a criticism, because I weirdly feel that I myself have become part of this novel simply by being its reader and self-proclaimed reviewer and am at least partially responsible for it.
Committed to brevity? This novel is not amenable to brevity of reaction I've found. (26 Feb 10 - two hours later)
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X
"It is my nontention, however, that what we have here is not merely abhurdity but onsense." (sic)
Tamsin expressly addresses the reader as 'reader' again, about the nature of Ghost Stories and Horror stories. It's as if she's talking to me direct - as if knowing that, one day, like today, I would be writing this review. An overwhelming thought, that!
Further reference to the nature of Swift's 'Modest Proposal' and, in Lisa's Journal, a text that Tamsin manages to read omnisciently, there is oblique reference to Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw'. Hugo acts as buffer between Lisa and Robert. A mayhem of emotion and recrimination and studied calm.
A mangled kitten in a sack. That scene brought tears to my eyes, not about the kitten itself, but about the implications of Hugo showing it to Tamsin. One wonders who is truly turning the screw in this book? Petros and his sister as suspected Children of Epiphany? Or Hugo or Lisa or Robert or, even, Tamsin herself?
Robert - now having given up typing the scrambled Shakespeare - types out apparent nonsense. But nothing is nonsense, I say. (26 Feb 10 - another 4 hours later)
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XI
" 'You always lie, Tamsin. You have always been a liar.' "
The narrative-levels continue, for example Petros repeating verbatim in his own dialogue the 'crazy' sayings of a madwoman's dialogue about the ravine and Tamsin in turn narrating verbatim Petros' dialogue.....
The ambivalences continue - between madness and possession, between harmonics and chaos, between the magnetic pulls of destiny and chance - and who is right or wrong about who is harming or benefiting whom. I dare not relay my suspicions to you, for fear of spoilers, and I do assume that this will shake out more definitely in the final kaleidoscope within the forthcoming closing chapters. But I could be wrong. I am very low down in the pecking-order of narrative-levels as mere reader, after all.
"The ravine was becoming like a magnet, and the horror of my dream had done nothing to weaken its pull." (27 Feb 10)
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XII
"Most ritual is nonsense. But if you believe in it and understand the connections, it becomes a way of focusing power."
A relatively compressed potential dénouement for Tamsin at the ravine which effectively sheds significant (if oblique) light on some of my queries, reservations and observations above. And in this same light, as reviewer, I continue to withdraw my description of the plot from any 'scorched earth' policy of leaving spoilers in my wake. This book needs to be read.
"I was now like Tamsin dreaming..." (27 Feb 10 - two hours later)
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XIII
"...poor Robert, he imagines such things, yesterday he even wanted to climb up on the balcony..."
A perfect chapter in every way. I'll leave you to decide if it answers my question:- who is right or wrong about who is harming or benefiting whom?
This is a wonderful treatment of self-doubt and equivocal evil.
A perfect chapter, but a perfect ending? If it were the ending, I'd say yes. But we're not finished yet....
"What if you made onsense (sic) from Shakespeare instead of just scrambling?" (27 Feb 10 - another 2 hours later)
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Epilogue (Lisa's journal)
This reminds the reader of the importance of birthdays and their dates.
This ending upon an ending will be one with which to tussle I guess, and I wonder whether I shall ever be released from tussling with it.
"Perhaps the best thing is to wait, and not decide anything." (27 Feb 10 - another 30 minutes later)
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I hope you've enjoyed that personal journey of mine, one of many journeys that good books can provide. Books in the great Weird Literature tradition, in particular. This one was first published in 1983 by Secker & Warburg and re-published by Ash Tree Press in 2004. I should have known about it before now but had to depend upon a recent mention of Frances Oliver on the All Hallows discussion forum to entice me into buying the book. I wonder how many other so-called Weird Literature enthusiasts have missed this book before now. I wonder how many other great works like 'Children of Epiphany' have become lost in the wastes of 1983 or in any other year when they were first published. Judging by Google today, very few of you, I guess, would be able to say that they knew about this book ... before now.
I shall now read, for the first time, Frances Oliver's own 2004 introduction to 'Children of Epiphany' within the Ash Tree Press book and see what further food for thought it may give me. But I won't be back to tell you.
df lewis (27 Feb 10 - another 30 minutes later)
END

[njhorror]

I read this and also enjoyed it very much.

[Nemonymous]

I have also been speculating upon the 'journey' that I mention in the review above. Was the journey *different* by virtue of the fact that I knew I was intent on publicly writing *about* the journey while making that very journey? I sense that public real-time reviewing -- hopefully giving alternative perspectives to previous readers of the book as well as to its new readers -- also creates a wonderful experience, yes, a different experience from what would otherwise have taken place, i.e. for the person spending time and effort in creating the real-time review. It is perhaps the new way to *read*, one that, *psychologically*, is now only possible through using the internet in this way. One of the more positive things about the internet, among a lot of negative ones.

[Nemonymous]

Xargos (Secker & Warburg 1981)
by Frances Oliver

Having reviewed her genre work published by Ash-Tree Press here: Dancing on Air and Children of Epiphany (thanks to the recommendation of Rebekah Brown of the All Hallows Forum), I thought I would try one of Frances Oliver's ostensibly more mainstream works.

I feel, if it has been neglected, this is a major work that should not have been neglected. Combining EM Forster, DH Lawrence and Robert Aickman - even HP Lovecraft - but essentially a major discovery of originality for me: Frances Oliver. Much business with gender and racial politics - and nightmarish breaching of religious and sexual protocols.

The relentless scenes of sleep and waking and nearness within the claustrophobic expedition tents are absolutely incredible. The flutes of shepherds in lands of hot-steaming misbegotten wonder. The faces in rocks...

Not to overblow this book, it has its moments of gaucheness, but basically: why is it not more well known?

"The face of the stone giant, fully exposed at last, was the face of a Mongoloid child. It simpered up at Irina in sinister idiocy, with drooling mouth and vacant eyes."

[Nemonymous]

I’m starting below another of my gradual real-time reviews. And it is of the novel entitled ‘The Peacock's Eye’ by Frances Oliver (Secker and Warburg 1986).

Jacket Illustration by Amanda Hall (website)
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EDIT this review as a whole can be read here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/the...ces_oliver.htm