Why An Echo Of Children Stands Out In Modern Horror Fiction

Book Review – An Echo of Children by Ramsey Campbell

‘“They’re too fond of exorcisms in Barnwall for my liking.”’

When it comes to Ramsey Campbell, two things usually become quite obvious very quickly: firstly, that you’re in the presence of a man who has the finesse to warp and manipulate language to incredible ends; secondly, that even in his stories’ non-horror moments, you’ll revel in how their yarns will knit themselves into something truly enrapturing. All of this is certainly true with ‘An Echo of Children’, although here Campbell opens up a new and very dogmatic dimension from which he unleashes his latest horrors.

The heart of the story is Dean, the son of Coral and Allan, who Allan’s parents Jude and Thom have reason to be worried about. When the boy is taken out of school, the religious doctrines espoused to him seem somewhat intense, and Jude and Thom’s latest visit becomes tinged with finical jabs and snipes, the grandparents begin to worry for his safety.

And when Jude’s investigation into Coral and Allan’s house in Barnwall turns up one too many sordid facts, she fears that something evil is about to happen, barrelling towards the child at an unstoppable speed. If such a thing as a page-turner exists, this is what I propose we call a page-vicer – rather than urging you to flick to the next page, it forces you to savour each word as a sort of hesitancy washes over you! It makes you apprehensive of what emotional threshold the next paragraph will dangle you over.

Because the narrative is told through the perspective of Jude and Thom, much of the story plays on the dynamics of the characters. It works to great effect. You can feel both the worry for their grandson and also the way they might be perceived as interfering. The idea of who the protagonists and antagonists gets played about with, almost from page one, and the many moments of using Dean either as some emotional ping pong ball in a match between the parents and grandparents, or just as a guilt trip incarnate, are potent ones. As a child of divorced parents myself, I found the scenario deeply and brilliantly uncomfortable.

That personal context isn’t necessary for the milder moments to share the savage and manipulative undercurrents as much as the more intense ones. It’s strange to think of a novel exploiting exploitation itself, but it does. Armed with an ever-watchful eye over the emotional cores of the plot, the disquiet it keeps you experiencing is proof of how a build-up can often trump any outright statement or jumpscare.

One abject advantage then is that Campbell brings his trademark style of dialogue – full of misunderstanding and prejudices and fallible jumps in logic – to the table, in the process creating a sense of neurosis which fits the story well.

The emotional highs (and tragic lows) aren’t quite as strong as in many of his fictions, and I suppose if his association with August Derleth is what has rung the bell for your Pavlovian dog, you may find yourself a tad wrong-footed; however, I find there’s often bucketfuls more to be said for an insular story. Particularly when the narrative takes its cue from people like Henry James or even Fyodor Dostoyevsky, though pushing them into a more insular world, the novel is never less than powerful.

In retrospect, it’s far from being a hardship to see why Ramsey Campbell has spoken of his affinity for Ari Aster films (including in an interview I conducted with him myself). Both creatives weave together paroxysms of emotions into something altogether more undefinable – and fantastically so.

Both also have a skill for portraying mental angst as cutting and yet fascinating; the contradictions and flaws in their characters are so innately human, and it’s frequently like the unassuming gravitas of a psychologist is plucking the strings in the background. In the style of those BBC2 horror double-bills of the 90s, might I suggest pairing this with Aster’s BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) – or, on the literary front, either Henry James’ ‘The Golden Bowl’ or Algernon Blackwood’s ‘Ancient Sorceries’?

The plot’s general quietness is equally as effective, echoing a kind of Nigel Knealean worry about inherited evils and societal malignancy; but at the same time it feels deliberately retaliatory to books like ‘The Amityville Horror’ (by Jay Janson) or ‘The Exorcism’ (by William Peter Blatty), where one person saunters in and after a heroic struggle soon all is well.

In essence, ‘An Echo of Children’ strives for something far more divorced from that, where the worries about Dean (and how the characters manifest them) are more corrosive and traumatic than any specific course of action. The evil hides in the preconceptions and assumptions, jumping out impermanently and with a tenacity to gaslight you into wondering whether it was actually ever there.

Should a criticism be had – and I’ll be honest that this only dawned on me after finishing the novel – it is that it’s possibly a bit… singular. The lack of subplots doesn’t bother me – actually, here it sharpens your focus on the downward spiral of the narrative. But I think Campbell’s prose generally shines best when it describes someone’s internal frustration; and while that does factor in towards the end of ‘An Echo of Children’, at the same time almost everything is driven by duos or groups of people, meaning there’s not quite the same mentally-invasive insight you’ve come to expect.

The duos/groups themselves are violently believable, however, and they possess the cavilling, pernickety personalities everyone knows (and detests) far too well; even the various ways they interconnect are equally as anguishing and entail those horrible chain reactions of emotions.

Whereas Campbell’s 2024 novel, ‘The Incubations’, explored how even something apparently so simple can be manipulated into something so impenetrable, ‘An Echo of Children’ turns that notion on its head. Here, Campbell finds a vulnerability in both the cosiest and mildest of moments and he seems almost restless until your chilled breath is visible in the warmest of rooms. Fear not, whatever mental parasites he has imparted into his words, they’ll soon have found a new home within your brain.

An Echo of Children (Special Ramsey Campbell Edition) by Ramsey Campbell

The Heart and Soul of Horror Review Websites. Why An Echo of Children Stands Out in Modern Horror Fiction

Coral and Allan Clarendon have just moved to the seaside town of Barnwall with their young son Dean. If an uncommon number of children have died unnaturally in Barnwall throughout history, surely Dean must be safe with his parents. Could their house be a source of peril? Allan and Coral seem to think so, since they call for an exorcism. Allan’s father Thom believes his wife is wrong to think the ceremony has left Dean in worse danger. But if she’s alone in seeing the terrors that are gathering around him, how desperate will her solution have to be?

The Ramsey Campbell Special Editions. Campbell is the greatest inheritor of a tradition that reaches back through H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the early Gothic writers. The dark, masterful work of the painter Henry Fuseli, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, is used on these special editions to invoke early literary investigations into the supernatural.

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