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oga publications and i came away highly impressed both with the way in which she tells her stories but also by her erudition the sixteen stories contained within this collection attests to both slatter s storytelling and her consistency in creating entertaining tales with deep almost primeval resonances and she does this time after time the traditional fairytale is her starting point or rather what we have come to think of as fairytales as i observed in my previous review many of the most famous tales that have been handed down to us transmitted by the likes of hans christian andersen and the brothers grimm were corrupted and sanitised by a christian victorian and patriarchal oriented agenda where women were often portrayed as not only being fallen but the begetter of evil deeds the dangers were still there but they were meant to show the child their rightful place as well as to educate and prepare them for their roles in adult life through moral instruction here slatter tears those outdated notions apart reaffirming and restoring the power of the feminine and the pagan all her female characters display strength of one kind or another whether it be a refusal to bow down to the dictates of the patriarchal stage on which these tales are played out gallowberries for instance or the willingness of a young girl to sacrifice herself to atone for a wrong or in a time of need the navigator a porcelain soul or the power of a woman to transform and renew the angel wood little radish conversely the men in slatter s fictional locale of lodellan are often portrayed as the epitome of stupidity greedy the robber bridegroom in the story of ink cruel and warlike the duke and dante velatt in a porcelain soul weak the king in sister sister and ultimately afraid of the innate power of women hence their need to subjugate them the town council and judge in gallowberries before you imagine otherwise not all the women are saintly however there s gwenllian the rich mistress who asked blodwen to heal her horrific burns giving her young child away as payment for her services through blodwen we learn of the consequences of going against nature of denying the bond every woman should have with her child and that doing so without thought can sometimes have dire consequences then we meet the cruel spoilt little rich girl fiancée in sourdough who through her arts with potions causes her husband to be peregrine s true love to lose their child that dead child then turns up in a later tale lavender lychgates a wonderful story of the scheming ghost of the spoilt girl to bring him back to life in order to exact revenge against emmeline his mother and the girl who did go on to marry peregrine and her daughter slatter s women are also more than capable of a darker magic too as is evidenced in the bloody the bones remember everything a decidedly hallucinatory tale additionally they can also be viciously poisonous like polly using malign whispers to usurp her sister theodora s place as the king s wife in sister sister ultimately however the wrongs that are perpetrated by these bad apples are corrected by other stronger in the moral sense females women are portrayed as the real runners of the show the glue holding society together and the life givers and life takers in dire need too they may be downtrodden vilified rejected and outcast but each possesses an inner strength an inner conviction to go on and do what s absolutely necessary just like the fairy tales we grew up with the ones given to us by our victorian forefathers these stories deal in archetypes however the difference here is that slatter s characters are not the stiff cardboard cut outs created to make a moralistic point they are eminently believable and well rounded thus enabling us much more easily to identify with them and their plight s on top of this slatter is also a master world builder but a very subtle one with it the central conceit is that each of the stories is connected in some way to the story ies that have gone before characters places and events turn up or are reused in some way the connections are fluid however several names turn up in different stories for instance but sometimes their link to the first instance is tenuous and yet the connection is most definitely there nonetheless this fluidity creates a subtly strong weave that helps us build a picture of the world where the characters live their lives and have their being in the language used to delineate and map it out it isn t extraneous or richly detailed it s precise and economical yet is highly effective for all that despite the fact that it s all set in a fairy tale world there is that about slatter s writing that ultimately connects it to the world we live in these are real people the kind of people we know ourselves they re just dressed up in the finery or rags of a world that s just beyond this one it just as surely reflects our reality as the original fairy tales mirrored the times when andersen and the brothers grimm collated the ones that have come down the years since slatter then isn t so much reinventing these tales as realigning them rearranging them in effect to better fit the 21 st century and the collective sensibilities we hold today the world has moved on considerably since the triumphalist days of queen victoria s glorious empire of which slatter s native australia was a part but those victorian retellings haven t slatter is merely fitting them around today s values another angela angela carter as jeff vandermeer points out in his afterword started that whole process of updating re envisioning and restoring the fairy tale to its rightful place in our richly embroidered cultural tapestry and with something of its original earthy power slatter has confidently taken up that gentle torch and illuminated her own path through what in lesser hands may be considered something of a minefield and in this reviewer s opinion long may she continue to do so 0 000000 0 000000 comments leave a comment tags angela slatter book collection review simon marshall jones sourdough and other stories tartarus press categories book review there be monsters 1 11 2010 you ready for monster awareness month you sure comments 1 comment tags mark s deniz monster awareness month promo categories monster awareness month ghost appreciation month the end 1 11 2010 written by assistant editor and ghost appreciation month member sharon ring ordinarily it would have been mark deniz beyond fiction s editor in chief writing the round up of this past month s appreciation of all things ghostly however mark has been at an undisclosed location enjoying some pre birthday celebrations so it has fallen to me to pick up the mantle on this occasion and say a few words on ghost appreciation month gam we ve enjoyed thirty one days of movies at beyond fiction i ve had the chance to watch some old favourites the haunting don t look now jacob s ladder and the shining rating highly on that front i ve also had the opportunity to see four fantastic films which had previously managed to slip under the radar the frighteners session 9 shutter and saint ange house of voices it s been great to see how trends in ghost movies have come and gone over the decades from silent movies to the talkies black white to colour from hollywood through europe and asia with the exception of a handful of films on the ghost appreciation month s list such as ghostbusters and the frighteners the driving force behind any decent ghost movie has always been the power of suggestion the best films in the genre from my point of view at least are often those which play with image and sound in such a way as to render the actual seeing of a ghost almost unnecessary asymmetrical cinematography discordant music and sound effects these tools all lead the way to making a film s audience feel uneasy taking them out of their comfort zones and into the unknown gam contributors reviewed around half the movies on mark s film list with a few extra film reviews thrown in for good measure it s always interesting to read another person s take on a movie you love even more interesting to read a friend s review of a movie on which you weren t so keen point in case the blair witch project i have seen this movie several times over the years but never all at once i d watch the beginning and fall asleep i d get back from the pub and watch the last twenty minutes never all in one go however now mark deniz loves this movie positively raves about it what the heck i thought now s my chance to give it the full attention it apparently deserves i watched it it didn t do for me what it seems to do for mark and so many other people reading mark s review and listening to comments over on facebook when i mentioned having finally seen the movie i can appreciate that this was a groundbreaking film i wish i could have seen it when it was released at a time before spoofs and countless half watches i believe the impact it had on people back then is something i may have experienced myself never mind mark and i will have to agree to disagree on this one either that or fight it out at fantasycon next year in comedy sumo suits yes mark that is a challenge i will be the one in the red mawashi victory shall be mine aside from my rather bizarre encounter with a ghostly charles dickens man that is one ghost with serious acceptance issues gam had two interviews in the line up gary mcmahon and stephen volk gary and i talked about his own ghost experience the cultural and historical background of belief in ghosts a little mitchell dissing check out the guardian article from david mitchell to see how that came about ghosts as metaphor and finally onto a few words about his new book which centres on a man who is able to see ghosts stephen and mark discussed stephen s current hectic schedule how and why ghostwatch came to be stephen s thoughts on the afterlife some advice for budding screenwriters and a little industry talk and wrapped things up with a quick question on stephen s favourite authors this second interview along with a review of ghostwatch the following day could not have been better timed halloween 2010 was the eighteenth anniversary of the original screening of the drama and for reasons natalie kingston explains in her review it has never been shown since throughout the month dotted between the reviews and interviews were a series of articles and real life experiences from our gam contributors i should say at this point that i have my own particular thoughts on the subject of ghosts i ve seen some i definitely believe in the existence of them but i maintain a healthy scepticism when it comes to other people s stories as i hope they would do with my own reading through this month s posts i think the one which affected me most was probably alison littlewood s short piece on the isle of the dead no cheap thrills and ghostly apparitions here just a poignant telling of the trip to a small cemetery island off the shores of loch leven so there s been plenty to read watch and think about over this past month there is a dedicated page for all the ghost appreciation month posts for ease of reference on mark s behalf i would like to thank everyone who took part in the past month s fun and to everyone who kindly tweeted and shared links on twitter and facebook now for those of you who know mark you know this is a man who never rests i think there s a fairly good chance we ll see another of these themed months sometime in the future perhaps we ll see you there it s time for us to say farewell comments 1 comment tags conclusion film ghost appreciation month ghosts sharon ring categories article ghost appreciation month ghostwatch review 31 10 2010 written by author nkkingston we don t want to give anyone sleepless nights we don t want to cause a panic on october 31st 1992 at 9 25 a seminal piece of drama was aired for the next two decades it would regularly top scariest ever polls frequently compared to orson welles war of the worlds it would not be shown by the bbc again but it s been aired by other channels around the world legitimate dvd s are so hard to get hold of these days even the show s writer suggests you watch it on youtube though personally i think you lose something with all the stops and starts if you can get hold of a dvd lovefilm has it i don t know about netflix watch it without pausing rewinding or otherwise taking advantage of the fact it s a dvd if you want to really relive the experience watch it at 21 25 the original time of broadcast it s the 18th anniversary tonight have you done so good are you going to sleep tonight i didn t think so but why does it work well if you re british you ll understand the kind of weight michael parkinson brings to the proceedings if you re american imagine it presented by oprah winfrey they ve both interviewed tom cruise after all add to this the presence of well known presenters sarah greene and mike smith married couple and comedian craig charles in his red dwarf heyday bear in mind that all those psychic shows you see now like most haunted and paranormal investigation live didn t exist that very few people had satellite or cable television and thus no info button to explain the premise of the show to them that since it didn t start on the hour many people missed those all important writers credits in the first few minutes it s not all good casting and serendipity of course i felt someone all over me in the first clip claiming to offer evidence of the ghost you ll note that the banging of the pipes doesn t start until one of the girls leaves the room for the first hour of the show the majority of phenomena can be explained as the actions of one girl or the other usually suzanne there s some false scares and a lot of larking about amongst the crew as you d expect from a live broadcast parkinson explains that other shows will come on later and ghostwatch will offer updates between them until midnight except at the hour mark the show is still running do you think mr pipes wants to hurt you i think he wants to hurt everyone i think he wants to do bad things it s around this point that suzanne is caught fabricating phenomena parkinson becomes thoroughly convinced of the hoax while dr pascoe tries to explain suzanne s behaviour away dr sylvestri had the americans done something to offend us recently that s the only explanation for such a dud performance in an otherwise sterling show our out and out sceptic has a field day with it meanwhile even the most unobservant audience member has probably seen pipes at least once he s actually appeared four times now we thought you d leave us all we were is noises to you the non plot ghost stories told by audience members and the taped interviews and even sarah greene s own are all true sadly we don t get to see as many as we d like because pipes strikes the ghost is literally in the machine callers are getting hysterical parkinson has been wrong foot...