Night Side of the River

Night Side of the River / Jeanette Winterson
NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, c2023.
320 p.

This was an interesting concept for a book -- ghost stories by literary writer Jeanette Winterson, followed by a true story of her own experience with the unknown world after each section. I found one of the true stories more haunting than anything else in the book! 

The stories are varied, with many of them exploring technology and how it interacts with life, death and grief. From immersive ghost tours to a virtual world in which a woman visits the new and improved version of her dead husband, there are elements of tech shaping the experience of loss and the afterworld. But there are also a few more traditional stories, like that of a couple who come across a haunting on their wedding weekend at an old estate, or the creepiest one for me, the title story. In it, a woman ends up on a boat in the Thames, heading toward the Night Side of the river. That felt Ray Bradbury-ish to me, with dark and strange boatmen and a nearly inescapable feeling of doom and entrapment. Shudder! 

I also found the real life stories intriguing. Winterson is a very down to earth person so her matter-of-fact relation of her own experiences with the uncanny have a lot of resonance. She has lived in old places, much older than we could find where I am, so the hauntings seem more understandable there! But these are not just stories of ghosts, they are discussions of life, perception, reality, spiritual existence and more. Thoughtful, engaging, and a great read for anyone with an interest in ghost stories in the literary tradition. 

 

Unaccustomed Spirits

 

Unaccustomed Spirits / Elizabeth Pewsey
London: Sceptre, c1997.
336 p.

This is a book that I found by chance, at a massive book sale at my regular thrift store, after a church sale donated all their leavings. There were so many books that they were all priced at .50 a piece, to clear out the backlog. I got a boxful, and this one was one I added last minute, thinking that it was only 50 cents, I could take a chance on the cover. 

I'm so glad I did, as I so enjoyed it. In fact, so much that I quickly searched out the rest of the series to read them as well. This book is #5 in the Mountjoy series, but as I found out, can easily stand alone. And I'm glad that it was this one that I discovered first, as it was my favourite in the series, in the end.

It caught my attention because of the cover, which is a very particular kind of British book cover for women's fiction in the 1990s. There are SO many books from that era with this style of white cover with a painting and the author's name writ large. It's also set over Christmas in a crumbling manor house, with resident ghosts. All just my thing! 

Cleo Byng is a young woman who is engaged to a much older man, but has postponed her wedding due to coming down with shingles. Her distant relative has a country house that he needs a housesitter for, so she takes up the post, leaving her intense city job and fiance, and decamping to Haphazard House. 

This house is in Eyotshire, the location for the whole series. And Cleo starts to settle in, finding an old schoolfriend working as a seamstress in town who then moves in with her since Haphazard House is so large and rambling with so many rooms. 

There are various characters who show up in the house, including an extremely handsome ghost hunter who has heard that the house is haunted -- and both Cleo and her friend have their eye on him. And so do the resident ghosts. 

Yes, this house is indeed haunted, by an Elizabethan courtier, Giles, and a Cromwell era officer, Lambert. These two are very different in outlook but have been there together long enough to have a bit of an Odd Couple relationship. They were a delight, and their lute playing and fascination with modern technology (tv and telephones in particular) amused me. 

The tone of the book is a bit arch, a bit romantic comedy but with music, academia, fashion, and plenty of eccentric characters. It's clever and down to earth at the same time, with culture right up against more earthy concerns. I really enjoyed this introduction to the Mountjoys and the whole series, any of which can be read as a standalone. But I'm glad I found this one with the two charming ghosts in it to start with. It got me out of a reading slump with its purely entertaining storytelling.