The Face of Brilliance

If you're fan of horror/wierd fiction, and you want to read something new, then you could much worse than buy Mark Samuels' The Face of Twilight - I finished it last night, and absolutely loved it.

Essentially, it's a zombie story but without mentioning the z-word, but it's much more than that; in just 130 pages, Samuels crams in such detail and imagination, it takes a couple of sittings to finish. It took me three attempts to actual start the book, the density of the prose does take a little getting used to, but on the third attempt I was forty pages in and hooked!

The main thrust of the story, though, is of the gradual mental decline of its protagonist, Ivan Gilman - an author with a modicum of success - who moves into a new flat, with just one neighbour, the rather strange Mr Stymm.

130 pages maybe short for novel by today's standard, but Samuels' inspiration are the great 19th/early 20th Century practioners of wierd/horror fiction who wrote not in quantity but the quality of words; TfoT is an incredibly well-written piece of literature, that just so happens to also be work of horror, set in a contemporary London that is beautifully realised, in all it's smog and grandeur.

Whilst reading, I detected various influences (apart from Machen, Poe, Lovecraft, et al) but also Romero (obviously), Cronenberg and Richard Matheson's I am Legend. What surprised me more were the essence of two films: Dark City and They Live.

This is not to say that Samuels has written a ripped-off hack job, far from it: TFoT is wholly original tale, which everyone who likes horror/wierd tales should read.

'Tis expensive, but surely £10 for the paperback is a small price to pay for such a great work.

Very recommended.