The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts

Rating:
Summary: An Overlooked Master
Review: John Gordon is an extraordinary writer with an extraordinary career. He's been writing books for children and young adults for something like 30 years, and yet it's impossible to find more than a couple of his books in print at any time these days. His work is largely of a high standard and would certainly be appreciated by those who enjoy more enduringly better-known writers like Robert Westall or Alan Garner, writers with whom he certainly deserves to be mentioned. Critically, Gordon is regarded as a writer of conspicuous ability, and his The House On The Brink is recognised as one of the best stories written in the M.R.James style ever.

And yet, he goes largely un-noticed, unremarked, unprinted, and -I fear - unread even during today's enlightened times when children's books are finding a wider audience.

Although I think that some of Gordon's best work can be found in novels like Gilray's Ghost or the M.R. James pastiche The Flesh Eater, I adore The Burning Baby, because all of the horror stories it contains are short, and have bite - more than that, they have the atmosphere of menace and lurking threat which typifies his best work, but in concentration. The dark moods of his longer works are presented here in an accessible and immediate form; this book is both a superb introduction to the writer, and is at the same time among his best work.

Indeed, forget the 'children's' tag. While this book doesn't contain conspicuous or gratuitous horrors of an 'adults-only' kind, it could certainly hold its own among horror and ghost stories for an 'adult' market. This is a collection of rare mood and power.