Review by William D. Gagliani
When Oswald Priestley raises his young daughter Amy onto his shoulders to peer into the window of the foreboding old abandoned mansion on Nazareth Hill, what she sees and what he senses forever change their lives. So, too, are they changed by the auto accident which soon widows Oswald and leaves him to fend for himself and Amy in the shadow of the many-eyed monster which seems to watch over the village of Partington.
Indeed, Amy knows she saw some sort of bony, open-mouthed creature inside the mansion that day, and her father hides the arachnophobic jitters the house caused him until years later, when he illogically rents a luxury apartment in the now-refurbished building dubbed Nazarill. Amy, now 16, has become a typical rebellious teenager -- liking cacophonous music, wearing multiple earrings and garishly colored hair, and developing a sense of being stifled by her increasingly possessive and demanding father. Thus the scene for conflict is set early, as father's and daughter's points of view diverge in almost every possible way.
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"Nazareth Hill" is a superb example of successful disturbing fiction. |
When Oswald calls their eccentric neighbors together to discuss routine building safety, it becomes obvious that some have also noticed that something is amiss. But close-mouthed British ways keep their fears and apprehensions suppressed. When a death rocks the building just before Christmas, a series of frightening events is set into motion. To nearly everyone's displeasure, Amy begins to seek out the building's long history, convinced the answer lies in the past.
Amy escalates the warfare between herself and her father by relating some of her experiences and fears on a radio call-in show. Suddenly, the entire village judges this rebellious daughter, and ranks close around the father -- stalwart, God-fearing single parent that he is, symbolically fighting the excesses of a generation no one understands.
In Campbell's gripping, frustratingly deliberate narrative, tiny incidents become magnified as Amy clashes with her father and other authority figures.
The leisurely rhythm of Campbell's fastidiously picky prose, especially the dialogue, consistently surprises when compared to the shorthand we Americans have begun to call fiction. At first disconcerting, the pace and diction blend to form a rich and heady brew. Before long, you come to expect the full-bodied language, and appreciate it, too.
While superficially comparable to Stephen King's novel, "The Shining" -- in a strange building father descends into madness, child must suffer as a result -- Campbell has other plans. The novel envelops the reader with increasing low-key, sinister weirdness, as a good ghost story should. The climax is a stunningly written ballet of the bizarre all the more effective for its inexorable, incremental steps. And Ramsey Campbell's refusal to let it end simply and predictably makes "Nazareth Hill" a superb example of successful disturbing fiction.
Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.