This so-called ghost story — as sort-of-Joycean prose, but somehow more osmotically absorbable than Joyce — is its own mentioned “decalcomania” upon the surface whence it is read then onto the surface of the mind itself, and the meaning is between the two, creating ‘ghosts’ more powerfully than a more normal linearity of prose or than carefully built-up characters and plot…
Panes of glass in a glasshouse and faces upon them, and a half-shilling moon, and much else that crowds the page. Full of words I need to look up, and perhaps I shall if I read it again, but a first time reading is often the best one, and I managed to follow the outset where Patricia is staying with Anne and her mother and father, the two girls sleeping in the garden hut, her father having just built a greenhouse, a place visited by tinkers and tourists and whatever, Patricia four years older than Anne and engaged to Anne’s brother Denzil who later turns up suddenly on leave from the war, with all manner of (“mi5”) innuendo and wireless-tuning — and field-glasses that look for their owner. Possibly the only ghost story that truly works beyond fiction into an area that is something quite different. A “caggermagger of centuries ago.” Where has this story been all my life?
Those sash or slash windows or with vertical hinges? A tragic synchronicity of casements seen clearly from within or from without — or simply through, like filters working both ways? Somehow needing to be sorted out. Not sure it has been … yet?
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My similar reviews: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/07/13/separate-horror-stories-from-many-years-ago/
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