FELLSTONES by Ramsey Campbell -- review and interview (both spoiler free)
FELLSTONES by Ramsey Campbell A review by Gary Fry After last year’s gripping excursion into (what we might clumsily call) social realist territory, SOMEBODY’S VOICE, Ramsey Campbell is back where perhaps he truly feels he belongs: the supernatural weird with more than a hint of cosmicism. Story-wise, FELLSTONES is relatively easy to describe: following the deaths of his parents, the care and supervision of young Paul is taken on by his music teachers, a family – mother, father, daughter – rather more expectant than the role ought to involve. Why on earth are they so insistent that he orient his whole life around music, especially his capacity to sing? We the readers join the story with Paul in later life, having fled the manipulative Staveleys, but he’s about to be brought back into the fold – a return to his native village, where seven mysterious stones stand, each a prompt to memories he’d rather remain dormant. Thus begins one of Campbell’s typically accumulative narr...