BOOK REVIEW: CATFISH LULLABY BY ​AC WISE

Folklore and cosmic horror mashup in a tale effortlessly spread across the 1980s and 1990s

I am not 100% certain whether ‘Catfish John’ is a real American myth, or whether the character is inspired another similar tale, the top results on Google referred to a song of the same name with no creature being referenced. So, perhaps he’s a shaggy dog story dreamed up by the author. Many of the chapters of Catfish Lullaby begin with extracts from the book ‘Myths, History and Legends from the Delta to the Bayou’ (2016) which Amazon indicates is a fabricated publication, so it looks like author AC Wise has fun weaving a cosmic horror story out of what, may or not be, based upon a local folktale of some kind.
 
The story is set in the small town of Lewis, opening in 1986, when central character Caleb, the son of a local policeman is a small boy which concludes when he is an adult, still living in the same location. Along the way the plot makes jumps of a few years, firstly from 1986 effortlessly sliding into 1992 before into adulthood. As a child Caleb is both fascinated and scared by the local legend of ‘Catfish John’ a creature which is supposed to lurk in the local swamps and which the local kids believe to be responsible for the disappearance of a couple of local girls. Or perhaps these are just stories they use to scare each other and there is a genuine killer on the loose? Caleb lives with his father and grandmother after the death of his mother a few years earlier.
 
Interestingly, Catfish John lurks within the story rather than dominating a plot which has other intriguing strands. In 1986 the house of a family with a dubious reputation (the Royce clan) burns down and with nowhere else to go Caleb’s father temporarily takes in the little girl, Cere, who survives the fire. Initially Caleb is wary of Cere because of her family’s reputation, but eventually they develop a peculiar connection which threads throughout the period the story spans. Other local children are also scared of Cere, and there is an outstanding scene when on the school bus she is able to scare off two bullies by announcing she is a witch and their fear of not knowing causes them to lose face.
 
The childhood and adult sequences are interconnected and themes of sexuality and race are also convincingly explored. As an adult we realise Caleb is gay and he is also black, which is more apparent in the childhood sequences when he is bullied because of his colour. I was not entirely convinced by the cosmic horror (or magic) element of the story which was vaguely defined and I struggled to make sense of some of it, especially the idea that Cere could be connected to the world ending, was a jump too far. Having a swamp monster legend was one thing, but the manner in which the two stories connected was not quite so neat and perhaps the intriguing entity Catfish John could have had more page time himself?
 
Caleb was an impressive leading character who showed a lot of compassion and although Cere drifted in and out of the story she was also outstanding and they were ably supported by Caleb’s dad who was also larger than life.  Horror, fantasy, evil and the pain of family are also nicely interwoven in a novella which covers a lot of ground. The themes of childhood and memories lurk below the surface; can the adult Caleb really trust his own memories of what he saw the night the fire occurred and the other strange things which followed him around when in the presence of the decidedly odd Cere?
 
I do enjoy stories which are rich in folklore but the mashup with Lovecraft’s brand of cosmic horror failed to click entirely for me. It was ambitious for sure, blending Catfish John, which could be based on a thousand swamp myths, with an entirely different type of otherworldly  horror was very ambitious and might have worked better if the story had been longer which would have also allowed for a number of other loose ends to be tightened or tied up. Having said that, there is a lot of fun to be had here and this very engaging novella was very good company by an author I had previously never read before but will happily revisit in the future. 
 
3.5/5
 
Tony Jones

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