Anyone familiar with the short stories of MR James will know that their appeal lies not just with the plots, but also the locations. They’re mostly set in the English countryside among mediaeval churches, old manor houses, and the landscape of lanes, fields, hedgerows and copses. That was one of the things that most delighted me when I first moved here; I felt I was living in MR James country. Even the old rectory around the corner is so redolent of how I imagined some of the houses in his stories to look.
So what a pleasure it was tonight to sit in the garden until well after sunset reading The Tractate Middoth. Enhancing the sense of place makes a world of difference.
4 comments:
Oh goody, a new author to look up! Funny how when you run out of something to read a whole new library pops up.
MR James is much revered over here as a master of retrained, intelligent, supernatural fiction. You might find his style a bit dry and archaic, though. He was an academic (an antiquary to be precise) who lived about a hundred years ago. It shows.
I'm going to have to look him up, too. His settings sound very appealing to me and so do your descriptions of where you live.
I keep hoping somebody will visit one day, Andrea, and they can see it for themselves. It nearly happened!
Dear Montague does harp on a bit sometimes about old manuscripts and architecture, but generally he doesn't overdo it.
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