Synopsis:
December 1st. Angie and her teenage son Rust prepare for Christmas, stringing
fairy lights around their isolated home on the Somerset levels and decorating a tree
with traditional ornaments. The first door of the advent calendar is opened, but the chocolate inside tastes off. Rust receives his first Christmas card; it’s unsigned, and the message is ‘pinch, punch… first of the month’. The robin chirruping on a bough in a snowy woodland picture looks like a nasty piece of work.
The cards keep coming, one each day and each more sinister than the last, and a
frightened Angie recalls ‘The Cards’ – a seasonal TV show from her childhood that featured similar happenings, and while she remembers it vividly, there is no evidence that it was ever broadcast…
Christmas cheer is gradually poisoned, with cruels instead of carols, the turkey rotting in the fridge, unwelcome visits from the Merciless Gentlemen and the Jingle Basterds, and Rust becoming increasingly unwell. Angie begins to wonder if her childhood Christmases were in fact as joy filled as she remembers…
Review:
Kim Newman’s “A Christmas Ghost Story,” is a barb-wrapped bauble, far from your run of the mill yule-tide yarn, and mostly lacking in tinsel and good cheer. Although Newman’s latest is decidedly unjolly, it filled my little horror-loving heart with tidings of joy… the jury’s still out on comfort. It’s sardonic, wry, and overflowing with slowly mounting dread, yet also a sincere commentary touching on the trials of parenthood, the tumult of adolescence, and the frost creeping into the once-warm glow of the holiday season. As its goodreads rating suggests, this one is controversial in its meandering, tangent-filled, stream of consciousness prose, and certainly won’t warm the cockles of every reader this winter: but it sure worked for me. Endearing in its tangents, and so foggy and fuzzy around the edges, that at times I had no idea what on earth was going on- this fever dream reads like Stephen Graham Jones rewrote the Christmas gothic classics of Dickens, Blackwood or Joyce. Ashamedly, I can’t yet say how this meticulously gift-wrapped bundle of dread fits into Newman’s oeuvre, but I’m excited to read more.
Angie Wickings, a self-published mystery writer lives in her childhood home with her podcaster son Russel (Rust). Christmas is a massive deal, the season arriving with many traditions such as Angie’s signature over-stuffed mince pies, and the meticulous arrangement of Christmas cards on the mantle. But this year is not quite so joyous- more humbug than ho ho ho. The chocolate in Rust’s advent calendar is not so tasty, the Christmas carollers, later comically nicknamed the Jingle Bastards, swap goodwill for absolute menace, and the cute Christmas card tradition is ruined completely by the vile contents of the cards that mother and son are bombarded by. The once cozy glow of their yuletide traditions is gradually dimmed and replaced with a creeping unease. As the season unravels further and further, Angie reflects upon the gilded nostalgia of Christmases passed, finds cracks in her once cherished memories, and that the strange occurrences of this year seem eerily familiar…
Newman’s stream of consciousness prose is dry yet sincere, and ambles much like an inebriated uncle at Christmas dinner- full of sardonic asides and unexpected tangents, something that certainly takes a little adjusting to, but works. The sentences, ranging from incomplete to long-winded, perfectly capture just how disjointedly emotions and memories surface. The narrative chaos wrought by Newman is a controversial way of writing, but after an initial adjustment period, I found it rather charming. It demands patience, and for you, the reader, to get used to its rhythm, but once you’ve settled into its peculiar cadence, it’s all the more immersive.
“A Christmas Ghost Story,” thrums with a sly, meta quality. Rust’s obsessed with making sense of the bizarre occurrences he and his mum are subject to, and Angie is terrified on her son’s behalf, considering it is he who receives the malicious christmas cards. Their shared anxiety, in conjunction with the enigma of whether these grim parodies of goodwill, herald a vengeful spirit or something darker, pulls the plot forward like a sleigh downhill (my supply of Christmas similes is dwindling). An unsettling duality between nostalgia and dread is crafted, contrasting the season to the creeping horror that pervades the family’s home- it’s kind of like biting into a mince pie, only to find a piece of gristle. The mystery at hand is no Angie Wickings novel, and Newman refuses to let us rest easy, offering only more unease with every turn of the page, which only fills us with the queasy compulsion to keep reading, think harder, and feel less festive.
An existential crisis and 3 hot chocolates later, “A Christmas Ghost Story,” is a novella that revels in upending the very notion of tidings of comfort and joy, treating readers to an unsettling charcuterie board of dread and disillusionment. Gleeful in its dousing of the season’s warmth, this slow-burn, cryptic gift is to be unwrapped slowly and deliberately. Absurd, profound and hilarious, this is one I’ve heard far too little about, and hope you indulge in this Christmas.
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