A Christmas Ghost Story

Somerset Morn

A Christmas Ghost Story
by Kim Newman
Titan Books
ISBN 9781835410691

A short snip of a shout out of a review to the great Kim Newman’s latest, relatively short novel, A Christmas Ghost Story. Heralded on the front cover as “A chilling tale of dark days and long nights”, the story introduces us to Rust (formerly Russell), a teenage-ish boy and his mother Angie, a somewhat successful crime fiction writer. They live at Six Elms in a part of Somerset easily cut off from the rest of civilisation when bad, winter snow hits... which it does throughout the course of the novel, which takes place from the 1st to the 25th of December.

The basic plot is that they, or rather Rust, receives threatening and ultimately supernatural post, one a day for 24 days and, as they carry on over the length of the month, things get decidedly eerie. Is it all related to Angie’s imagined but seemingly fictional broadcast of an edition of Christmas Ghost Stories from the old BBC ones of the 1970s and 1980s, which were often adaptations of the works of M. R. James (amongst others)? Or is something even more sinister taking root in the household (and believe me, that first day advent calendar chocolate is a bitch)? Either way, it makes a good subject for Rust’s paraphenomenon podcast for sure.

The book is playful with shrewd insight and ideas, which is kind of what you expect from a writer with the talent of Kim Newman but, I always forget just how naturally he weaves his words and how his phrases and observations zing off the page. There’s some beautiful stuff in here, such as the idea of the mother using her computer spell check and the young boy’s response that a computer is just a box and it’s a subroutine of software she’s running. And I practically cheered (and quickly highlighted to my friends over whatsapp) when he says, in a scene flashing back to the mother’s earlier years... “Dad and Angie would have already been through the double issues of the Radio and TV Times with highlighter pens, flagging conflicts of interest.” He then goes on to absolutely nail, in the following paragraph, the difference between the golden age of 1970s Christmas TV and the current poor showing these days, when there’s rarely ever anything good on and the chaff hugely outnumbers the wheat, so to speak.

And throwaway lines such as “Supernatural curse delivery isn’t what it was before Brexit.” certainly liven up the prose and helps to build two central protagonists who are completely likeable in every way. People you care about and who the reader wishes to see no harm come to. Subsequently the wit and attitude of the prose blazes away into high gear and, to risk summoning the obvious clichés, makes the book absolutely binge worthy, like a really good TV show.

My only slight criticism is the supernaturally abstract nature of the book’s ultimate denouement. It felt a little less edgier than the rest of the novel but not entirely inappropriate and, to be fair, the good ship Newman did even surprise me with the direction the last part of the book took... which is something so rare that I always respect it in a writer when they are able to take me unawares.

People of my old age will also get something out of the many pop culture references (and even the made up parodies of such things) that litter the pages. References to stuff like Quatermass And The Pit, The Thing, Doctor Who and even The Shining are also all present and correct alongside the company of those old BBC Ghost Stories I mentioned earlier. So there’s a lot crammed into the book’s relatively punchy 150 plus pages, for sure.

So, a quick but also pacey read makes Kim Newman’s A Christmas Ghost Story, bulging at the seams with style and entertaining truths, something of a fulfilling read for the Christmas season, to be sure. This one makes a nice companion to the yuletide meanderings and rituals many of us go through each year and you could do a lot worse than to mark it up on your Christmas list, as far as I’m concerned.