BiblioAddict

NOCTURNES
By John Connolly
Simon and Schuster / Oct. 2007 (Paperback)
$15; 496 pages

There are dark things creeping in the shadows of John Connolly’s NOCTURNES. There are monsters in the woods, demons beneath churches, and vampires in the suburbs. There are old gods on the beach, witches in forgotten towns, ghosts in dark houses, and those blasted creepy clowns at the family circus. Connolly’s stories are fairy tales for our modern times. And if there’s a lesson to be gained from any of these stories it’s that those dark, unknown places in or around your home are best avoided even if you are an able-bodied man and especially if you’re a child. Connolly’s prose is lyrical and haunting, and I would have enjoyed everything about this collection if it weren’t for the last three stories which seemed to play upon a particularly male fear: uncontrolled, “untapped female power.”

I didn’t care for these stories which seemed paint the carnal woman as a threat that either needed to be heroically wiped-out, or avoided. In “Mr. Gray’s Folly” an older couple moves onto a small estate whose grounds is the resting place for the bones of Lilith, Adam’s (as in Adam and Eve) first wife, a demon and the original witch. Her power is her sexuality.

Gray sensed its desire, its base sexual need. It would consume him, and he would be grateful for its appetites, even as its talons ripped into him, and its beak blinded him and its limbs enfolded him in a final embrace.

At the end of the story, after the protagonist defeats Lilith, someone remarks,

“Women …. If they had their way, they’d rule the world” …. But they won’t, I thought. At least not if I have anything to do with it.

And in “The Cycle” (a not-so-subtle allusion to the menstrual cycle), just before the female werewolf eats the teenage boy (an unfunny, unflattering take on PMS), Connolly writes:

In his final moments, he was struck, oddly, by the realization that he had always been afraid of women. Now, at last, he thought he understood why.

This admittedly very mild strain of misogynism was a sour note on which to end, especially since I’d already been wondering, Where are the women? Not the witches and the vampires, but the women? But, I don’t want to discourage you – NOCTURNES is an engrossing collection which magnificently showcases John Connolly’s writing. My personal favorites were:

“The Other Daughter” – A disquieting story of a man’s family under attack by evil fairies.

“The Ritual of the Bones” – A young working class boy learns just how much he’s expected to support his upperclass peers at an elite private school.

“The Erlking” – A short but effective story reminiscent of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS in that there are evil things waiting in the woods preying upon innocent children.

“The Shifting of the Sands” – An excellent tale which reminded me of the horror movie “The Children of the Corn” with its sacrifices to a menacing, unseen, and ancient god.

“The Reflecting Eye: A Charlie Parker Novella” – A refreshing twist on the old haunted house story with a truly evil villain and an intriguing hero.

So far, John Connolly is batting two for two in my book. I’m tempted to read one of the Charlie Parker novels, but I’m less interested in reading his thrillers than I am in reading his take on fantasy and horror. He is the near-perfect joining of imagination and style. NOCTURNES was a pleasure to read, and I can only hope that whatever he writes next is like this or THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS in both style and content. I’d buy that in a minute.