BLOOD AND WATER

by Patrick McGrath ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 1987

And Other TalesThirteen stylish stories of gothic horror; the impressive book debut of an author previously published in literary magazines (Bomb, The Quarterly, Between C&D). The spirit of Poe hovers close to these tales in which, more often than not, a figure cloaked in tragedy looms at story's end, its descent into darkness limned via a sinuous prose style. ""Angel,"" the first (and best) story is a case in point, with its arcane first-person narration (""You know the Bowery, 1 presume?""), its antique cadence ("". . .there was, I detected it even then, something unpleasant about it, a nuance, a suggestion of overripeness in the bouquet""), and its steady revelation of a decadent horror at the heart of things. Other stories, too, smack of Poe and subsequent gothic masters including Macben and Blackwood: the languid yet powerful ""The Black Hand of the Raj,"" where a young woman joins her fiancÉ in 1897 India to find that from his scalp grows a black hand that eventually strangles him; or the longish ""Marmilion,"" which begins with the catchy ""Have you ever eaten monkey?"" and goes on to chronicle feverish druggings, whippings, and couplings in a decaying Southern mansion. Yet here influence doesn't mean only imitation; McGrath's voice is at times too familiar, but his conceits bloom from an original imagination that soars in stories like ""Hand of a Wanker,"" about a masturbator's amputated hand that retains madcap life; or ""Blood Disease,"" about anemic vampires; and only occasionally runs to ground, as in the forced ""The Skewer,"" a stilted tale of an old man haunted by a miniature Freud. McGrath here joins--as a junior partner until his ideas and own voice fully mature--the handful of horror writers (Barker, King, Straub, Etchison) who yoke original vision to skilled prose.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Poseidon/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION