PARASITE

Rating:
Summary: The horror is all in her mind - literally
Review: There is just something unique about Campbell's writing that continues to draw me back, even though I sometimes find myself floundering in his prose. Although I sometimes lose track of who is speaking to whom and find myself plodding through a miasma of words that sometimes lose my full attention, inevitably there are moments of brilliant insight or wide-eyed instances in which I realize that Campbell has lulled me into a sense of false security as a conscious means of entrapping me within a mental padded cell of his deft creation that make me glad I paid for the ride. The Parasite, published in 1980, is one of his older novels, and it seems to offer, in a way, both the best and worst of the writer. Although it seems somewhat rushed, the prologue is a gripping little presentation of a ten-year-old girl's terrifying though somewhat nebulous encounter with something called up from a seemingly playful Ouija-induced séance, a force she alone encountered inside a darkened, locked room after her older companions abandoned her to whatever horror they had unwittingly summoned. After this electrifying start, the bulk of the book plods along at a sometimes tedious rate, very slowly preparing us for the last hundred pages of ever-intensifying mental anguish brought to bear upon our grown up little girl as she is not only compelled to remember the things her mind has tried to lock up forever but to deal with forces of an almost cosmic nature that threaten her life and marriage from the outside. Even this pales in comparison to the real evil here, though, in the form of a long-dead practicioner of black magick (which is worse than just magic) who resides inside her own mind.

In a way, this novel is one of self-discovery, with a grown up Rose finding her seemingly placid life as a teacher and writer drawn unstoppably toward matters of an occult nature. Her terrifyingly new out-of-body experiences come in time, with study and practice, to empower her, and she begins to feel strengthened in some way by the unnatural talents she reluctantly admits to possessing. Then her world falls apart before her eyes, and she realizes that her new powers were never really hers to begin with but instead belong to the parasite that has lived within her own mind undetected for twenty years. Some part of her inner strength saves her from a total breakdown, but the mad scramble of the final major section of the book proves an increasingly unnerving experience for the reader seeing the world through her eyes. Even the ending is not really the ending, but that is only to be expected from a man of such insidious talents as Ramsey Campbell. While far from his most exciting novel, The Parasite more than satisfies the seeker of psychological horror who stays with it until the end.

Rating:
Summary: The horror is all in her mind - literally
Review: There is just something unique about Campbell's writing that continues to draw me back, even though I sometimes find myself floundering in his prose. Although I sometimes lose track of who is speaking to whom and find myself plodding through a miasma of words that sometimes lose my full attention, inevitably there are moments of brilliant insight or wide-eyed instances in which I realize that Campbell has lulled me into a sense of false security as a conscious means of entrapping me within a mental padded cell of his deft creation that make me glad I paid for the ride. The Parasite, published in 1980, is one of his older novels, and it seems to offer, in a way, both the best and worst of the writer. Although it seems somewhat rushed, the prologue is a gripping little presentation of a ten-year-old girl's terrifying though somewhat nebulous encounter with something called up from a seemingly playful Ouija-induced séance, a force she alone encountered inside a darkened, locked room after her older companions abandoned her to whatever horror they had unwittingly summoned. After this electrifying start, the bulk of the book plods along at a sometimes tedious rate, very slowly preparing us for the last hundred pages of ever-intensifying mental anguish brought to bear upon our grown up little girl as she is not only compelled to remember the things her mind has tried to lock up forever but to deal with forces of an almost cosmic nature that threaten her life and marriage from the outside. Even this pales in comparison to the real evil here, though, in the form of a long-dead practicioner of black magick (which is worse than just magic) who resides inside her own mind.

In a way, this novel is one of self-discovery, with a grown up Rose finding her seemingly placid life as a teacher and writer drawn unstoppably toward matters of an occult nature. Her terrifyingly new out-of-body experiences come in time, with study and practice, to empower her, and she begins to feel strengthened in some way by the unnatural talents she reluctantly admits to possessing. Then her world falls apart before her eyes, and she realizes that her new powers were never really hers to begin with but instead belong to the parasite that has lived within her own mind undetected for twenty years. Some part of her inner strength saves her from a total breakdown, but the mad scramble of the final major section of the book proves an increasingly unnerving experience for the reader seeing the world through her eyes. Even the ending is not really the ending, but that is only to be expected from a man of such insidious talents as Ramsey Campbell. While far from his most exciting novel, The Parasite more than satisfies the seeker of psychological horror who stays with it until the end.

Rating:
Summary: The Parasite
Review: Two and a half stars, to be precise; I confess I was a bit bored with this early Ramsey Campbell book at times. The lead character, Rose, deals with so many traumas at once--her life seems to go berserk as she experiments with dangerous astral projection, she is inundated with visions of future tragedies in store for friends or loved ones, she grapples with a malevolent unseen presence that hovers on the edge of her consciousness, and she tries to discover how it all relates to a repressed childhood memory that her own family wants to keep hidden from her. Worse yet, her husband Bill starts to pull away, in full revulsion over her frightening descent into the occult...and the new man in her life, a strange bald man stalking her every move, is not exactly a comfort. Turns out he has sinister followers ready to surround her.

It becomes more and more clear that opposing forces are swirling around Rose, not all of them earthbound. Her researches--and this involves a bit of globetrotting--lead her to bizarre books detailing with the exploits of a mysterious cult-leader, Mr. Grace, who existed near the turn of the century and sought immortality through aggressive astral projection into the bodies of unwilling hosts. Is this in store for Rose, somehow, or is Grace just a myth?

It all sounds very involving, but the book does not sustain true scariness throughout; it waits til quite late to come alive. And Rose's astral projection, an interesting facet of the early part of the book--the focus of Rose's metamorphosis and growth as a person--basically gets dropped, as the book takes a turn. I'm glad the book got scarier, but certain sections don't seem to feed into the next as cleanly as they could. Also, this early novel seemed full of spliced-in descriptions of things, often at the beginning of chapters, or whenever the locale changes. In later books, Campbell is more adapt in seamlessly working descriptions into the narrative; here it's a bit cut and dried: pause for description of place or thing, with all appropriate adjectives, and then move on. Description looking like a chore, shoved in by itself.

This is a decent horror book, with some burgeoning chills, but it meanders a bit when Rose is wandering about, alone, ruminating and researching, and it's not the flowing river cold terror that we see in, say, Campbell's grand effort, Nazareth Hill.

Rating:
Summary: good
Review: what ever u sa