For as long as I can recall, my favourite writer of ghost stories has been M.R. James. He was a very Edwardian figure – a bachelor, an Oxford don and, later, Provost of Eton, the most prestigious private school in the UK. His stories, like his life, were almost entirely focused around male characters steeped in knowledge of arcane medieval manuscripts and Christian superstition. He was deeply conservative and many of his stories focus around the lure of forbidden knowledge and the dangers that lie therein. He was almost certainly a suppressed homosexual and a deep fear of sexuality is evident in some of the veiled but disturbing sexual undertones in some of his best stories.
His personality and background were nothing like my own, then. Yet I still often reread his best stories, among which I would include Casting the Runes, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Lost Hearts, Count Magnus and Oh, whistle and I’ll come to you my lad.
If you have never read anything by him, I envy you, as you are in for a real treat!
Why is he so good?
His plots are incredibly clever, informed by his rich knowledge of arcane writings, and capture a real sense of evil and foreboding. He draws effortlessly from a convincing pageant of superstitions, religious and apocryphal texts, and a deep belief in powerful supernatural forces that can be harnessed by evil people to the detriment of their unsuspecting victims. That many of these victims are book lovers and academics creates a point of connection with the life and interests of J C Lee, the author of Seven Curses.
Anyone who reads Seven Curses, now published by Graveside Press, is likely to spot the influence of M R James in characterisation and plot, even from just a quick reading of the previous paragraphs. In Seven Curses, most of the characters, both male and female, resemble those in James’s stories inasmuch as they display a level of arrogance and vanity as well as a fascination for the forbidden, for the unknown for – dare I say it – the exotic. Given the very different social and moral contexts of the contemporary world in contrast to Edwardian Britain, sexual predilections are varied and overt, yet still strive to maintain a sense of the forbidden, of the dangerous, in the manner of the storytelling.
A major difference between the works of M R James and Seven Curses lies in the centrality of South East Asian settings and the cultural background of Xie Fei, the supernatural character who unleashes the curses at the heart of the book. I knowingly used the word ‘exotic’ apologetically in the previous paragraph as it is nowadays seen as an ethically flawed western perspective, viewing the beauties of the east as a playground for westerners to use and abuse at will. In Seven Curses, this process is reversed, inasmuch as the lure of the exotic is consciously used by Xie Fei, the central female character, to lure her victims into the traps she has woven for them. They become the victims of her play, not vice versa.
I hope you read and enjoy!
Written by Jo, the J in the Anglo / Chinese authorial partnership that is J C Lee