Blood And Water And Other Tales (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
This was Patrick McGrath's first book, and I actually recall first seeing his writing in some anthologies or literary magazines back in the 1980s. Here he sets out a mixed bag of tales, a few of which are brilliant, and a few which are merely oddities, but still attention-grabbing ones. At his best, he is a first-rate prose stylist who manipulates playfully the elements of his stories and comes up with stuff that is unique. To call him a literary horror/gothic writer fails to capture the range of his interests. He is literary, but never academic, and there is usually a dry sense of humor at work as well as an examination of things that go bump in the night. We could possibly apply the term post-modern to him as well, since he seems to delight in deploying twisted elements of traditional British fiction such as colonial-era missionaries to Africa and India, English boarding schools, and upper class families in their mansions. For some reason monkeys appear in many of the pieces as well.My favorites were: "The Angel" in which a drunken, would-be writer in the East Village of New York City befriends an older gentleman who is harboring a truly shocking secret. "Lush Triumphant", set in the same locale, a character sketch of an unapologetically selfish alcoholic artist who runs into some interesting situations. "The Arnold Crombeck Story" set in the 1950s, about a cheerful, Alec Guinness-like psycho killer giving an interview from prison ("Strange bird, the mind," he says). "Marmilion", a gothic piece about the decline into madness and mayhem of a proper Southern family, told by a scholar writing in the present, and featuring the fictional Louisiana spider monkey. "Hand of a Wanker" is also arresting and funny, about a severed hand running amok through the East Village bar scene. All of these belong in any collection of interesting gothic/horror short stories. The title story, although well-written did not strike me as being particularly fascinating, and I wondered why it was chosen for the honor. A few of the others did not particularly move me, but were still weird enough as to merit attention (i.e. the story of a fly, another told by a boot, another about an evil hand growing out of a man's head.)
Mcgrath is more of a stylist than a storyteller. His sentences have a jeweled and funny factuality to them, even when the subject matter is pedestrian but it especially works on the more nightmarish and surreal turns. In particular the story "The Skewer" about a psychotic tormented by miniature buzzing psychiatrists. My difficulty is when the stories are a bit too tongue-in-cheek, I have difficulty caring if I feel that as well as not being much more than an excercise in style the author does not care about the subject matter.
What do You think about Blood And Water And Other Tales (1992)?
This is an entertaining collection of dark, macabre short stories. Like most collections there is some variation in quality, but here that means from the merely good to the very excellent. The thirteen tales all invoke the shadows that lie in the human heart and in the dark spaces of our world. Some are merely surreal while others are more disturbing entering the realm of the grotesque, but in each there is a vein of sardonic humor.I know that I had read a couple of them before – surely no one else had brought to life such words in such the same way – but I cannot recall in what collection I saw them before. Encountering them was like a warm reassurance that I had not totally missed out on this author before now. As a whole this slim volume makes me eager for more of the same.The evil, if you will, that the author reveals is embodied in both psychic and physical deformation. Many of his characters believe that they are merely living life as it should and must be done. Whether they are acting out of unnatural impulses or physiological imbalances, all seems right with their world. Whether from the upper or lower classes, Old World or New, Mr. McGrath spins a mighty tale.If you are excessively squeamish, you might just need to gird your mental loins and take one for good writing. If you like dark comedy along with dark imaginings, then you should be singing the praises of this book very soon indeed. A full "4" and probably a "4.25".
—Mike
Easily one of the best books of short stories I've ever read. I tend to treat my copy rather gently, since it's out of print and I like it so much. The stories themselves are strange, surreal, heartbreaking and deviously clever, Gothic and macabre and above-all unique. My personal favorites are "The Boot's Tale" (which is possibly my favorite short story ever) and "Ambrose Syme" (which is a bit more serious, but no less horrifying). But really, all the stories in this collection deserve to be read, and read more than once.
—Seth
