The Respectable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry

A review by Geoff Nelder of

The Respectable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry

Spectral Visions Volume 1

Published by Spectral Press April 2012  website here

Suppose you are a recently divorced man with a typical teen daughter to bring up and protect. Stress enough for most ordinary people. Then add acute financial problems resulting in having to live in a caravan on a cliff top and you need fortitude. Into this mix your caravan is in the enigmatic landscape of Whitby, North Yorkshire, and you have more imagination than Roald Dahl seeing what might be hallucinations on the beach where the dinosaurs lived, and you too would wonder what life is all about.

Gary Fry has crafted a cunning tale here. No quotidian (his word of the month I think, and I like it) ghost or horror story but a recipe for madness, and yet a grasp for sanity as Josh sees symbols of his financial woes in the Jurassic landscape. This story, like others, by sheer coincidence – in the Spectral Press unique collection – have a personal resonance for me. I too have fossil hunted on Saltwick Bay, wondered about the disintegrating concrete boat from a World warring era, and smelt the metallic tang of pebbles but also the pungent nose-pinching odours of seaweed. I am a keen admirer of fiction that uses real geography and it is cleverly used here.

Praise be to the ammonite god that Whitby Abbey is used and yet no mention of Dracula is called for. Yeay – a first, surely. No vampire is needed to make this story stand out as a literary gem. A dwelling on life’s struggles in the static dwelling on the cliff – where strange electric flocks might be the children of the creatures of that coastline’s geological strata.

Who isn’t beset by financial problems in this global recession? If they lost you your marriage, home, and gave you new problems, how your mind would contort to find solutions. Yet, only in Gary Fry’s imagination has these elements combined – the ancient and the modern, past souls and contemporary life.

Thank you to Gary’s publisher, too for allowing font size changes to great effect. For example – On the beach    ‘… heard the sound return to him several times, on each

occasion quieter, quieter, quieter’

This is reminiscent of Walter Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz p83 where Brother Francis timidly speaks in a tiny font to the Lord Abbot, then when asked to speak up, blurts out in capitals. Hah. That was in 1960, and generally it’s been discouraged since and can look childish, but masterfully done here.

A theme in the story is on tattoos. Teenage Sally wants one, of course, and dad doesn’t want her too, of course. Cliché so far, but it develops in an undercurrent way, and I love the way she teased him. Also the tattooed man in Whitby Fair so reminded me of Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, as does – in a good, ironic way – Gary Fry’s publisher himself: Simon Marshall-Jones. You are in this story, just as delectable.

This story isn’t to missed by those readers of the noir side to contemporary life, tainted by ghastly visions, supported by love. Cleverly done.

king death by Paul Finch

Another fine piece of short literature from Spectral Press. link and purchasing here.

 

Rodric cannot believe his luck during the medieval black plague. He was immune, unlike virtually everyone in the area he wandered – between Cannock Chase and the Welsh border. So he looted with impunity though he theatrically dressed in black armour just in case he met resistance. Of course England wouldn’t be the green and pleasant land in the song, and award-winning author, Paul Finch, steeps us in the stench of rotting bodies, and plays with the retaking of the environment by Nature. To keep us engrossed in the medieval experience we are treated to a wonderful lexicon of the ages: Jongleur, rambraces, rerebraces, miniver, bascinet, seneschal, sokemen, and my favourite – ouches of gold. To save you reaching for Dictionary.com there is a glossary bringing up the rear though the context is usually enough to keep you going. Rodric meets a young unnamed lad with the result of more potential riches and yet an undoing. The former servant takes Rodric to his castle and its subjugation from the terrifying plague is described with splendid detail.

 

Readers might consider some of the tale as overdescriptive and the style could be tightened but it is excused by the beauty of the narrative: ‘The implacable silence was haunting. It was a listening silence, Rodric fancied, an eavesdropping silence…’

There is a wonderful peak in the story’s suspense and it is right at the end. Whether the boy or Rodric is the true king death is up to you.

 

 

Abolisher of Roses by Gary Fry

 Abolisher of Roses by Gary Fry

From The Spectral Press Volume II due out in May 2011

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

If you go down to the woods today…  make sure you are not an adulterer, unless visceral art of such a personal nature is your noir passion. As Peter reluctantly helps his wife participate in an avant-garde woodland art-trail he experiences a moment of epiphany. They and their marriage are “knee-deep in the middle period of their lives” with no surprises left – except this one. She had a zest for life with these arty-crafty types that he didn’t see at home. He led a duplicitous life, but didn’t expect her to. He is shaken to have his ideas tested by his subservient wife – firstly by her ‘hobby’: “…we go to art to be challenged, to have our . . . our sedimented habits shaken up.” Peter is shaken up and so is the reader in this modern morality tale.

Fry’s writing style is subtly misleading in that the slow paced start is in danger of allowing you to relax, then a paragraph makes you sit up. The story has no arc, it is an exponential curve of a rocket taking off. If you have a mistress, then you might have to read Gary Fry’s Abolisher of Roses through your fingers.

22pg A5 print booklet with card covers, signed and numbered, 100 only – published May 2011.

Available from the publishers – Spectral Press, 5 Serjeants Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 6HA, UK for £3 (plus 50p P+P) either through Paypal (spectralpress@gmail.com) or cheque (made payable to ‘Simon Marshall-Jones’) to the address above. Subscriptions for 4 issues available for £13.50UK/£16EU/$30US/$40RoW – payment details as above.

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