Amyas Northcote is a ghost story writer whose name has faded into obscurity. Wordsworth Editions brings back to life his only, rather slim collection titled "In Ghostly Company".A Goodreads reviewer Bill Kerwin sums this volume perfectly: "This is probably the best book of ghost stories that could written by someone who has a love for the form, a serviceable style, and no spark of genius whatsoever."Northcote has been compared with M. R. James. The truth is, I don't like M. R. James particularly. I actually couldn't quite finish James' ghost story collection because, while being full of smart ideas, his writing bored me considerably, in most instances.Why?M. R. James employs a too much passive style for my taste, and Northcote apes him - and then some. "In Ghostly Company" is filled with omniscient objective 3rd person narration, usually coming from a relative or acquaintance of the person to whom the story had happened to, so we're not even reading the telling of the story - but rather a re-telling.In such cases all the action had already happened a long time ago, and we as the readers are not once, but several times removed from it. Instead of following the protagonist as he goes through the ghostly encounter, aka being in the thick of it with him, we're hearing about the event some X years later from someone who had only heard the story, and is now conveying it to us.Effectively, all true excitement is gone from such narratives.To illustrate, the direst culprit in this collection would undoubtedly be "The House in the Wood". The story features a narrator A who is about to be told a story from B, who heard it from C; however, for effect, B chooses to narrate C's story to A in first person, as if it had happened to B instead of C.I mean, what? Wouldn't it have been easier just to have followed C as the event was happening to him the first time?Despite it all, there are few good tales here, particularly at towards the end, and when all is said and done, "In Ghostly Company" was an OK read, though nothing more than that.
This slim volume of supernatural stories explores and muses on the themes of death, the after-life, the nature of evil, as well as more conventional ghost stories of those haunted because of their role in the death of another. People don't return in Northcote's stories to a happy ending. They often die or disappear at the hands of evil or supernatural beings. A sample of one of his chilling lines: "No, Mr Carmichael, I am not the devil. Perhaps you would be better off if I were".It is suggested in the introduction that the stories may have influenced Dennis Wheatley; the story 'The Late Mrs Fowke' would seem to be good evidence for this with its grey robed figures and midnight chantings.One for the connoisseur of the supernatural story, the literary equivalent of a sliver of dark, strong chocolate with an espresso.
What do You think about In Ghostly Company (2010)?
This is probably the best book of ghost stories that could written by someone who has a love for the form, a serviceable style, and no spark of genius whatsoever. If this sounds harsh, I don't mean it to be; as matter of fact, it gives me hope that one day I too can write a good ghost story. For every story in this book--although none of them has the least touch of greatness--is worth at least one reading. The English countryside brings out the best in Northcote, and most of the best of his stories use it to advantage: "Brickett Bottom," "The Downs," "The Last Mrs. Fowkes," and--my favorite--"In the Woods".
—Bill Kerwin
