Summoning Knells and Other Inventions

Rating:
Summary: "What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!"
Review: Chico Kidd (a.k.a A.F. Kidd) is an avid campanologist and many of the forty-seven stories in this collection involve ghostly encounters in or near Old English bell towers. If you've read Dorothy Sayers's classic mystery, "The Nine Tailors" and thought you'd like to learn more about bell-ringing, "Summoning Knells" will cater to your whim in a satisfyingly supernatural manner. Kidd's ghosts are modeled after those M. R. James, which is to say they are malignant and horrifying. They are never chatty, cheerful, easily explained away, or too over the top in the blood-and-trailing-guts department, although Kidd is a shade less elegant than the Master. She does go in for the occasional hand sinking into rotting flesh or "a kiss without lips, just with rotten, crumbling teeth."

After a brief introduction and a Glossary of Bell-Ringing Terms, her stories are divided into the following categories: "Ghost Stories of a Campanologist;" "Other Jamesian Ghost Stories;" and "Other Ghost Stories." Although I'm very fond of the bellringer tales, the second section contains some of my favorites, including the much-collected "An Incident in the City," which also happens to be the first story Kidd ever published. I still have nightmares about the scholar who bought an antique guide to London and decided to visit one of the old churches listed therein.

Who lies beneath the monument inscribed (in part): "Now sleep unquiet neath this sod/ Yet call not on their master or on God"? Enter the sour, musty little church in the heart of the City with Sanford the antiquarian and his peculiar guide book, and see what you find.

Another story in this section, "Old Hobby Horse" is a fleshing-out (if that is the correct term to apply to a ghost story!) of a fragment by M.R. James from his "Stories I Have Tried to Write."

"Summoning Knells" is yet another haunting piece of night music from the Ash-Tree Press. If you're a fan of supernatural literature, do yourself a favor and check out the titles listed at their web site. This Canadian printing house specializes in the realm of the uncanny, and was a World Fantasy Award winner in 1997 and a Bram Stoker Award winner in 1999. Please note that I am not in any way connected with this press--except that I happen to own quite a few of their titles.

Rating:
Summary: "What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!"
Review: Chico Kidd (a.k.a A.F. Kidd) is an avid campanologist and many of the forty-seven stories in this collection involve ghostly encounters in or near Old English bell towers. If you've read Dorothy Sayers's classic mystery, "The Nine Tailors" and thought you'd like to learn more about bell-ringing, "Summoning Knells" will cater to your whim in a satisfyingly supernatural manner. Kidd's ghosts are modeled after those M. R. James, which is to say they are malignant and horrifying. They are never chatty, cheerful, easily explained away, or too over the top in the blood-and-trailing-guts department, although Kidd is a shade less elegant than the Master. She does go in for the occasional hand sinking into rotting flesh or "a kiss without lips, just with rotten, crumbling teeth."

After a brief introduction and a Glossary of Bell-Ringing Terms, her stories are divided into the following categories: "Ghost Stories of a Campanologist;" "Other Jamesian Ghost Stories;" and "Other Ghost Stories." Although I'm very fond of the bellringer tales, the second section contains some of my favorites, including the much-collected "An Incident in the City," which also happens to be the first story Kidd ever published. I still have nightmares about the scholar who bought an antique guide to London and decided to visit one of the old churches listed therein.

Who lies beneath the monument inscribed (in part): "Now sleep unquiet neath this sod/ Yet call not on their master or on God"? Enter the sour, musty little church in the heart of the City with Sanford the antiquarian and his peculiar guide book, and see what you find.

Another story in this section, "Old Hobby Horse" is a fleshing-out (if that is the correct term to apply to a ghost story!) of a fragment by M.R. James from his "Stories I Have Tried to Write."

"Summoning Knells" is yet another haunting piece of night music from the Ash-Tree Press. If you're a fan of supernatural literature, do yourself a favor and check out the titles listed at their web site. This Canadian printing house specializes in the realm of the uncanny, and was a World Fantasy Award winner in 1997 and a Bram Stoker Award winner in 1999. Please note that I am not in any way connected with this press--except that I happen to own quite a few of their titles.