He wasn't as bad towards the servants as he was towards Sir Stephen, but I don't think he was likable enough to deserve the affection some of the servants demonstrated later on in the book. I tried to cut Michael some slack, at first, but his sullenness got a bit old after a while. The story began right after Michael's mother's funeral, which would have been bad enough, but then he was essentially forced to live with a man he resented. Part of the reason for that, I think, was that there was hardly any time to see Michael at his best. My biggest problem with the book was probably Michael, who I didn't entirely like. When I wasn't reading it and had more of a chance to think about it, I found that certain aspects of it irked me more. This is one of those books that I enjoyed more as I was reading it and in the grip of its creepy atmosphere than when I wasn't reading it. I'm much more of a wimp now and rarely read horror, but I couldn't resist the bit on the back of this book that said fans of Neil Gaiman would enjoy it. The first time I raided my parents' bookshelves, I took Stephen King's Firestarter (which I enjoyed) and a German copy of Pet Sematary (that didn't work out so well – my German vocab just wasn't up to the task). His latest novel, Through Dead Eyes, was published by Bloomsbury this year.When I was younger, I used to read lots of horror novels. Chris’ novel The Dead of Winter is also a Gothic thriller with a meta-fictional twist, which recalls the fictional worlds of Jane Eyre and The Woman in Black. Mister Creecher is an inspired rewriting of Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, by way of Charles Dickens.
Chris’ work has also attracted a number of children’s fiction award nominations, with Mister Creecher recently long-listed for the UKLA children’s fiction award. Lovecraft and Hammer Horror, to name a few. You go into that dark space willingly."Ĭhris Priestley’s unsettling and macabre ghost story collections – The Tales of Terror – are a series of uncanny portmanteau narratives, an uncanny concoction of all things Gothic from M.R. It also acknowledges the transgressive attraction the evil can have. The Gothic is an acknowledgment of that blurred line between the fear of death and the thrill of fear. I don’t think this is always the dismal exercise it seems.
"I think that some people – maybe most people – do not want to look into the shadows.
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