BOOK REVIEW: AND CANNOT COME AGAIN BY SIMON BESTWICK

1/9/2022

Overall, this is a hell of a collection; fierce, incendiary, and brilliantly written. Though I have mentioned some of the ways individual tales play with format and style, at no point does Bestwick fall for style over substance; these are well-crafted tales

And Cannot Come Again: Tales of Childhood, Regret, and Innocence Lost by Simon Bestwick

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Horrific Tales Publishing (19 May 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 342 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1910283266
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1910283264

A Book Review by Kit Power

And Cannot Come Again is a collection of fifteen tales, running from short story to novella length, all firmly in the horror category. It’s gritty, often harsh, and quite brilliant. The collection manages to both feel thematically resonant (with examinations of loss, ageing, violence and its long shadow, and the crushing weight of poverty), while containing enough variety that each story feels to have earned its keep as a distinct part of the whole.

Bestwick's writing has many strengths, all showcased in this collection. His character work is superb; there are many first-person tales here, and in each case, the author finds a different voice and mode of expression, even when dealing with characters with common backgrounds. Angels of the Silences, about which I have written before, is a standout example, but the unfortunate soul telling us the story of And Cannot Come Again is equally, though very differently, realised. There’s a confessional quality to that tale, and the narrator's pitiless self-examination adds greatly to the atmosphere, deploying a twin timeline unfolding to thrilling and ultimately devastating effect. The School House takes the technique a step further, interweaving first and third-person perspectives with incredible skill, creating a building sense of doom and dislocation long before the fur beings to fly in earnest. The overall effect reminded me of the feeling I got from reading Ramsey Cambell’s Concussion, from his Demons By Daylight collection, and praise doesn't come much higher than that from me (Cambell provides this collection’s introduction). It’s a story that feels to be exerting psychological pressure on the reader, and manages to disorient while still feeling like it’s driving, inexorably… somewhere. It’s an absolute tour de force, and in a collection with no remotely weak stories, it still stands out as something exceptional; challenging both formally and in content, yet captivating and genuinely disturbing.

Elsewhere, Hushabye, Left Behind and The Proving Ground all find different ways to engage with the increasingly common horror of poverty, though in each case, Bestwick finds distinct things to say. I especially enjoyed the atmosphere of Left Behind, which felt like a tale examining the underbelly of already-dystopian cyberpunk aesthetics - almost as if to say, yeah, yeah, but how do the people not the stars of the story live? And, sure, Not Well, obviously, but it’s a tale I haven’t read before, an angle that looks the arbitrary nature of power dead in the eye and says, yes, it really is like this. Similarly, The Proving Ground takes generational trauma into the mix, examining the special pain that can only come from those we trust.

Violence haunts many of these stories, including sexual violence, most powerfully in the genuinely shocking The Children Of Moloch. There are scenes in this story that will linger long in the memory, but, again, much of that comes from the exquisite character work; the damaged children of this story, and the survival strategies they employ, display an unflinching psychological realism that is even more impactful than the frank depiction of the brutality they experience.

Overall, this is a hell of a collection; fierce, incendiary, and brilliantly written. Though I have mentioned some of the ways individual tales play with format and style, at no point does Bestwick fall for style over substance; these are well-crafted tales, told in an unshowy fashion that allows the stories to do their work. As a result, this collection will linger long in my memory, and I’ll be adding more Bestwick to my ever-growing To Be Read pile. Recommended, though not for the faint of heart.

KP
5/6/22

And Cannot Come Again: Tales of Childhood, Regret, and Innocence Lost
by Simon Bestwick

"One of the most accomplished and eloquent British horror writers is Simon Bestwick, and here is a feast of his work." --Ramsey Campbell

Funny, frightening and moving, the stories in Simon Bestwick's new collection explore how our childhoods mark us, our regrets haunt us, and how our innocence is sometimes lost--and sometimes taken away.

A young policewoman is drawn into a dreadful bargain. Murdered girls walk the streets of Manchester beside their still-living friends. Tormented children call on an urban legend for help, and the events of a long-ago summer and first love return with lethal consequences for four childhood friends. All this and more besides, in these seventeen short stories and novelettes from the author of The Faceless and The Feast of All Souls.