BORN TO THE DARK by Ramsey Campbell
A review by Gary Fry
The second in Campbell’s Brichester
Mythos trilogy, this novel takes up the ongoing story of Dominic Sheldrake’s
engagement with nefarious Christian Noble about 30 years after the first book’s
events (for my review of THE SEARCHING DEAD, see here). It’s now the 1980s; Dominic has a family and a job as a lecturer in film
studies. He hasn’t been involved with the Noble family since the 1950s, but all
that changes when his son develops a sleeping disorder in need of specialist treatment.
Dominic’s wife is drawn to an organisation which, on the surface at least,
purports to practice revolutionary new methods but, it soon transpires, has a
less benevolent intention.
That’s the basic story of
BORN TO THE DARK, and Campbell spends 270 pages dredging compelling tension
from such minimalist parts. While THE SEARCHING DEAD (the first of the trilogy)
drew on a wide range of supernatural episodes, both suggestive and concrete,
this novel is altogether quieter, building to a crescendo of unease rather than
presenting frights throughout in an episodic fashion.
After informing the
reader (both familiar with and new to the series) of previous events in a
deftly handled opening chapter, Campbell takes us to the main scene of the
drama: Dominic’s family. He’s married a smart, protective woman called Lesley,
and they have a fine son, Toby. It’s the dynamics between these three, along
with other characters such as Dominic’s father and his old friends, that form
the basis of the novel’s anxieties. After securing a place for the boy at the
aforementioned institution, Dominic begins to suspect malpractice there,
whereas his wife questions such accusations. Matters grow so strained that
their marriage is jeopardised, and it’s down to Dominic to prove that his
concerns are genuine.
What follows are
countless scenes of gradually escalating subterfuge involving covert telephone
calls, surveillance, infiltration, and even engagement with medical treatments (this
latter results in a wonderful passage of visionary prose, all blackness and
silence and packed with mouth-watering portents). With such an accumulative
approach, the novel exudes a form of menace heightened by all that’s at stake
on a personal level for Dominic. There’s a lot of dialogue in the book, perhaps
more than is common in Campbell. Set-pieces are dramatized via interaction,
even the extended, evocative conclusion. In previous novels, Campbell would
have just a single character exploring “that place”, but in this one there’s a
companion, and it works just as well.
The ending is both
spectacularly complete and indicative of developments to be explored in the
final novel. It leaves the reader feeling both satisfied and hungry for more.
Campbell’s skills in building tension here are second to none. He draws upon a
wide range of suggestive techniques to create a hypnotic atmosphere. Inside “that
place”, shadows of banisters beyond a flashlight beam become a giant centipede
scurrying along the wall. A sound beneath a dressing table (rats, perhaps) becomes
the whisper of a face trapped in one of its top drawers. Mirrors never quite
show what they should. And so on. Coupled with Campbell’s peerless command of
rhythm, the whole section wields the power of hypnosis. I loved it, just as I’ve
relished previous end-games in the likes of THIEVING FEAR and CREATURES OF THE
POOL.
Earlier on in the book,
Campbell’s dextrous command of other literary methods intensify and deepen its
textures. Both literature and film serve as thematic quilting points; by virtue
of Dominic and his wife’s academic professions in the humanities, the novel
becomes enmeshed in artistic materials it explicitly addresses. Political developments
examined in the first novel are similarly addressed in this one, with the
spectre (or, depending on your affiliations, the necessity) of Thatcherism lurking
behind many public exchanges. I suspect there are parallels between British
economic history and the Nobles’ aspirations over the 50-year course of the
trilogy, but until I read the final novel it’s too early to draw conclusions. I
also have suspicions about the role of the number three in the books –Three Investigators,
a game called Trio, the three syllables (and imminent births) of Daoloth – but again,
that’s for later.
As in THE SEARCHING DEAD,
a changing cultural landscape presents characters with unfamiliar situations to
tackle. A dyed-in-the-wool feminist solicitor perhaps oversteps her
professional remit with ideological blinkeredness. The police – well, certainly
some of the police – are corrupt. The medical world isn’t to be trusted,
either. And is the church really keeping up with such a mutated modern world?
This sense of society’s principal engines, its essential institutions, being infiltrated
by furtively invisible hands lends the novels’ depiction of the imminent collapse
of stuff on which we all rely – folk at the end of emergency service calls, or even
the land and sky – additional fragility, a tainted atmosphere that grows more
pungent at every turn.
Indeed, it’s this mix of
the personal and the universal, of Dominic’s familial woes and his tenuous place
in the world at large, that prove to be the novel’s finest achievement. This is
a book that eschews the standard horror novel’s reliance on regular “scary” set-pieces,
focusing instead on an evocation of fear that inhabits and invades all aspects
of everyday lives: marriage, parenthood, employment; memory, spiritual orientation,
dreams; the future, death, the cosmos. BORN TO THE DARK finishes with a
staggering set-piece, but it’s taken 270 pages to build to that, and for me
that makes the whole immensely more satisfying.
Is there anything else I
can say to convey my feeling that the novel is an essential read? How about
this: I started it at 8am and finished at 3pm the same day. Everything about it
held me solid in my seat. It’s another deft and compelling masterwork.
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