When I was looking out for Pan Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks I would sometimes see on the shelves or in catalogues a book that was not part of that series but seemed to be of a similar kind. This was Jormundgand (1986) by Nigel Frith, a Norse epic with a picture of a gigantic sea-serpent on the cover. In fact, he has also written other epic fantasies: The Legend of Krishna (1976), The Spear of Mistletoe (1977, reissued as Asgard, 1982), Dragon (1987) and Olympiad (1988). As the dates show, these were perhaps a little late in the game to take full advantage of the Tolkien-inspired peak in high fantasy of the Nineteen Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies. Even so, they suggested an author with a strong commitment to the field and it seemed surprising his books were not better-known, though there is a website, The Frith Archive, devoted to the author’s work.
Some years later, however, his writing took a different turn with the publication of Snow (1992), an unusual supernatural novel with a contemporary setting, though it does not seem to have attracted much more attention. This has at least four enjoyable aspects that place it both in the classic tradition of the ghost story and also somewhat in the metaphysical or occult thriller field exemplified by Charles Williams, Dion Fortune, David Lindsay and others.
Firstly, it is set in a closely-evoked Oxford with a wintry atmosphere, so there is a pleasing setting: “when snow comes,” says the dustwrapper flap, “Oxford has a penchant for turning into fairyland . . .” Secondly, it has a sub-plot about varsity politics, somewhat in the mode of C.P. Snow or Michael Innes, although less urbane than those. Thirdly, it is a thorough-going haunted house story, which introduces a cavalcade of eerie figures with mythic resonances. Fourthly, it has some scenes of a rare, visionary quality.
The protagonist, O’Ryan, is an English Literature undergraduate with old-fashioned views who is at odds with his modish, modernist tutors. Owing to various unfortunate incidents he is at risk of being sent down but is assigned as a last chance to a different don, a venerable and eccentric old fellow who may be more in his line. The author’s own sympathies with the young student’s attitudes, and antipathies to the avant-garde, are evident and occasionally obtrude, but they also serve the story, giving it a narrative energy.
Meantime, the college is debating the design for a new building (Neo-Classical or Contemporary) and is also perplexed by what to do about an old house left to it by a former luminary, a controversial academic who seems to have delved rather deeply into Gnosticism and veered quite close to certain controversial political perspectives. Whenever attempts are made to put it on the market, the agents and the college officials are assailed by ghastly visions.
O’Ryan also encounters an otherworldly vision, but this time one of rare beauty and wonder. Wandering in the Botanical Garden, he encounters a frost-haired old man wheeling a young woman of ethereal beauty in an invalid chair. They appear to be real figures and yet are also elusive, and he cannot draw nearer to them. He believes they are a glimpse of another reality: ‘he felt as though a great mystery had been promised him and for some reason it had not been revealed.’ He is ‘haunted by the realisation that he had not seized the vision when he had the chance’.
The novel draws together deftly these various strands, the college politics, the strange house, the vision in the garden, and manages to achieve both dramatic action and delicate, wistful scenes. It is an unusual, highly personal work, distinctive and told with panache: we never doubt both the author’s relish for his plot and his commitment to evoking the truly unearthly.
(Mark Valentine)
