The first story, ‘Last Year’s Doll’, is accompanied by a striking illustration by Humphreys. The narrative opens on a young woman trying to find a shortcut to work. It takes her into a cul-de-sac of neglect: “the mountain of spilt binbags, the wary slink and dart of an army of half-starved cats.”

The opening brings to mind the rundown housing estate of Clive Barker’s short story, ‘The Forbidden’. But Granville’s story is quite different. The young woman, Jane, passes into the shadow of a building. Suddenly she is freezing. The temperature has dropped. A little girl appears and says, “Hello.” She sees the girl a day later. The child looks neglected, with old and mismatched clothes. She says it’s her birthday the next day, but when Jane asks her if she knows what she’s getting, the child doesn’t understand. She has no concept of birthday gifts. She does reveal that what she wants most is a doll with yellow hair. Jane buys her one. Delighted with her new doll, the girl retreats. She’s not there the next time Jane passes. A conversation with one of the neighbours reveals the truth.

This story moves along at a good pace. Although the ending is not exactly a revelation, ‘Last Year’s Doll’ is a good introduction to the rest of the chapbook. It’s perhaps the tightest written of all the works, and the child and her surroundings are well described.

’Paradise Betrayed’ comes with an illustration of snowdrops by Humphreys. The story features flower lore and superstitions: “bring a Snowdrop inside, and Death swiftly followed”. The characters in this story live in a place called Paradise. It’s a far cry from any mythical Paradise. The boy at the centre of the story is confused by references to Paradise and Hell (where, according to his mother, they used to live). He believes the superstitions about snowdrops, but in time comes to have doubts. It becomes clear that his mother was repeatedly battered by his father, and they’ve had to flee into hiding. The boy doesn’t know the truth. He decides to go and find his father, who doesn’t know where they are. When he knocks on the door, he carries a gift, a bunch of Snowdrops.

If there’s any criticism to be made of this story, it’s that the details of mythology and flower lore are sometimes overlong, slowing things down or creating a distraction. Some judicious editing would sort this out easily enough. The first one and a half pages are perhaps the most affected because it takes longer for the actual story to get under way. Structurally, this is a more complex story than the first, weaving more threads together. By and large, Granville pulls it off.

’The Waiting Room’ is set in an old folk’s home. This story suffers from an overly dense opening, but otherwise illustrates well how the past and the present are intermingled in the minds of the elderly characters. Pauline is a care home worker, and she’s just coming to the end of her shift. However, understaffing means that she has to deal with four elderly people on her own. Meanwhile, we enter the minds and memories of the elderly people around her. The present becomes a distant voice, literally, through Granville’s use of smaller text. The past is more immediate, but it is also a dark place. One man, who has successfully repressed his wartime memories for half a century, finds them flooding back. An old woman’s perfect ladylike behaviour masks the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father.

’The Waiting Room’ treats its characters with compassion. Even the care assistant, finally provoked into anger by the behaviour of her charges, is sympathetic. She is as much a victim of circumstances as the residents. Perhaps what the story really accomplishes is to show that elderly people are also the young people they used to be. In this story, the past and the present run alongside each other, so that time is no longer linear. The story expresses the individuality of its characters, something the old lose in the eyes of younger people. The flitting back and forth between past and present almost constitutes a form of time travel, and this is especially so when the first character, Bronwen, comes out of a memory to be confronted by her elderly body. Carole Humphreys has provided three illustrations for this story, and the last one in particular is beautifully executed.

The last story, ‘A-Z, in Descending Order’ is a kind of alternative ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. The story is told in 26 sections. The unnamed narrator lives in a house in the country with a much older man, Lewis. This man seems to force himself on her. She’s a passive, withdrawn character, but up in the attic there’s a looking glass where she discovers another version of herself, and another brighter world. The story creeps along, slowly revealing itself. “We all know he was years older than her.” This could be a reference to Lewis Carroll and his obsession with the real Alice who inspired his books. “What makes women stay?” is a question posed at one point in the narrative. The character is “trapped, netted, caged, encased…” ‘A-Z, in Descending Order’ is a story that works as much through the spaces in the narrative, as through the narrative itself, which is ultimately disjointed, fragmented in its themes, like a mosaic, or a broken mirror. Granville takes the reverse order of Z-A, and juxtaposes it with fragmented themes and subjects. In the first section, entitled ‘Zillion’, there’s a couple of sentences that apply not only to this story, but in many ways to the whole collection. “Some believe that… many alternative realities exist for each of us. All we have to do is find our own doorway and have the courage to cross whatever constitutes the liminal.”

’Whispers in the Dark’ costs £1, including postage and packaging, and is available through the ‘Whispers of Wickedness’ website.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.