The writings of William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) have
inspired a number of later writers, beginning with the first Carnacki, The Ghost Finder (1913)
pastiches of “John Nicholson” (pseudonym of Norman Parcell), Costelloe—Psychic Investigator (1954), which
have been followed by a growing number of other Carnacki pastiches, most
notably those co-written by A.F. Kidd and Rick Kennett and collected in No. 472 Cheyne Walk (1992; expanded
2002). Hodgson’s The Night Land has been “retold” by James Stoddard in 2011, and
Andy W. Robertson edited two volumes of tribute stories, William Hope Hodgson’s Night Lands (Volume I: Eternal Love, 2003, and Volume II: Nightmares of the Fall, 2007). With more originality but
still showing Hodgsonian influence, there are Iain Sinclair’s Radon Daughters (1994) and Greg Bear’s City at the End of Time (2008).
Now comes Avalon Brantley’s The House of Silence (Zagava, 2017). This edition is limited to
only 170 copies, a frustratingly low number because this book deserves a larger
readership. One hopes that an affordable
paperback may be forthcoming. Yet in
general terms The House of Silence is
a difficult book to describe and a more difficult book to assess. Some aspects
of it are brilliant, while others seem strained by self-indulgence on the part of
the author.
Ostensibly the book is an example of the found-manuscript
trope, and the bulk of the story is purported to have taken place sometime in
the late 1940s. It is the first person
narrative of Ashley Acheson, who is returning to his boyhood home near Ardrahan
in the west of Ireland. Ashley ran away
to go to sea when he was thirteen, and this homecoming is brought about because
of the death of his father, an Anglican priest. Here you begin to see the
resonances with Hodgson’s own life—he ran away at thirteen to go to sea, and
for a short while when he was young, he lived near Ardrahan where his father
was an Anglican priest for a few years beginning in 1887. Names recur in the
novel from Hodgson’s real family—his father was Samuel, mother Lizzie (plus a
sister Lissie), and he had brothers Frank (Francis) and Chris. In The
House of Silence, Ashley has siblings named Samuel, Lizzie, and Francis,
and a cousin Chris. Hodgson published in 1917 a silly poem he wrote called “Amanda
Panda.” In The House of Silence, Ashley has written a poem of the same title
about a childhood girlfriend named Amanda whom he called Amanda Panda. What the point of all these casual references
are I do not know.
More seriously, The
House of Silence evokes the specifics of two of Hodgson’s novels, The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912). The locale of Ardrahan and specifically one
unique house comes right out of the former novel and finds its way into The House of Silence. There are other
resonances taken right out of The Night
Land. What is entirely non-Hodgsonian is the way that Brantley tries to
bring what might be called the Hodgson mythos in line with early Irish
prehistory, its gods and heroes. It’s an intriguing attempt to align the two
together, but I don’t think it works. Indeed, what Hodgson set out to do with The House on the Borderland in terms of
cosmic significance seems to work very much against the bringing of any of it
together with Irish mythology. The attempt seems to me to diminish the power
one finds in Hodgson. Which is not to
say that Brantley fails completely. It’s entirely to her credit that she brings
it all together as much as she does.
Alas, this book is evidently Brantley’s only novel. Just
after publication it was announced that she had passed away. Given the details
of her life (1981-March 5, 2017) and residence in West Virginia, I could find
no corroborating evidence that such a person really existed. For this and other reasons I assume “Avalon
Brantley” was a pseudonym. She published
two other books, a play Aornos (Ex
Occidente, 2013) and a collection of short stories, Descended Suns Resuscitate (Zagava, 2014). I hope sometime we learn the real story
behind this author and this book.
