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Overnight by Ramsay Campbell check out website: www.pspublishing.co.uk and www.herebedragons.co.uk/campbell
Although 'The Overnight' draws on a place familiar to him, Campbell has populated it with characters of his choosing and overlain (or in this case, underlain) the whole with horror. The setting is a bookstore, a British branch of an American chain. It is part of a newly built retail estate accessed from the motorway. There is another route in, but most people don't use it although there is a bus service, used by one of the store's employees. It is November and fog seems to hang over Fenny Meadows Retail Park. Even when it is clear elsewhere, the mist clings here.
Already there is that eerie sensation of deadened sounds and looming shapes that can make this kind of weather unsettling. In some ways, the atmospheric conditions are not surprising. Fenny Meadows suggests the kind of damp, marshy ground that tends to ooze miasma during the autumn months. Added to this, the employees often have to come and go in darkness. Even with a shift system, they are working long hours. The retail park is not finished. There are a few other outlets open, such as the supermarket and the fast food place, but other units are still skeletal. Also, being out of town there, as yet, do not seem to be huge numbers of people flocking to the site. The human characters are as mixed a group as you might expect to be working in such a shop, though they all have a love of books. Woody, the manager, is American, sent over by the parent company to get the enterprise up and running. His ideas about running the store successfully are based on proven American retail philosophy. As a result, there is a degree of tension between himself and his staff although he does not recognise the problem. He tends to blame them rather than external circumstances for the under performance of sales. So, when a team from the parent company plan an inspection, he hits on the idea of working through the night to get the store into perfect condition for the visitation. Before the night that is to be the focus of events, there have already been incidents that will alert the reader to what might well be awaiting. There are the books that untidy themselves overnight, the lift that has a personality of its own, the feelings of being watched and the death of one of the employees. The latter is blamed on kids stealing a car running her down. Problems that elsewhere are minor or do not exist are magnified. Wilf is a dyslexic that has overcome his problem to become a voracious reader. In the shop, the words do not make sense. Jill has to create a display for a visiting author but the ideas she has at home, evaporate while at work. Connie's ability to proof-read a flyer fails her completely as a different error creeps in to each version. Videos are returned as faulty and when Gavin takes them home to view them he finds blurry battle scenes on the tapes instead of rock concerts. When the time arrives for the overnight stint, things deteriorate and it becomes a question of not who will survive, but how will they die and will any of them see daylight again? This is not just a novel about supernatural happenings with the retail park taking the place of the island or isolated country house once commonly used as crime scenarios (the small group locked in with the demented, unknown killer) in earlier decades. It is also a study of the deteriorating relationships between people trapped in the situation. In many cases like this, it is expected that the victims would band together to work towards the solution. Here the opposite to happens. They get more and more edgy. The situation is not helped by Woody, trapped in his office by a door that refuses to budge, shouting what he thinks are encouraging instructions across the tangy system. What he considers as motivation has the opposite effect, making the others more frustrated and short-tempered, especially when the power fails. This well-crafted book is also beautifully packaged.
It is a quality hardcover with coloured endpapers. A limited edition, it has a
signed and numbered plate bound in with the pages. The deluxe, slip-cased edition
is also signed by Mark Morris who wrote the introduction to this novel. Whichever
you can afford, it is a desirable item. Pauline Morgan
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OTHER REVIEWS - November 2004
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Beginner
writers are always told, 'Write about what you know.' The idea is that not only
will it be accurate in detail, but it will also be more evocative. This is a stricture
that even established authors follow, drawing on their own experiences for ideas,
plots, atmosphere. Not long ago, Ramsey Campbell took a temporary job in a bookstore.
Like any good writer, he observed, storing up images to use in the future. The
result is this novel.
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