Spooky Month Recommendation - A Night in the Lonesome October - The Perfect Halloween Treat
Hello, little Chogg Blog readers. Spooky Month has come and gone now, but I couldn’t let you escape before I told you about my new October favourite that is going to be a new yearly requirement before I can get in the haunted mood. As I’ve been working on this blog, some short stories, my novel, and the podcast (shoutout Sonicomicast on Spotify), I’ve found myself struggling to get much momentum - especially with my reading. That habit was shaken off and discarded sometime around the tenth chapter of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October.
Horror Concentrate
When I read the blurb, I thought the book would be harder to buy into. Through the eyes of Snuff - Jack the Ripper’s dog - we follow the procedures that the inhabitants of this world have to go through every fifty years or so. On the night of the Blue Moon, the seams of reality are tested by the Great Old Ones, who push to find an entrance to the mortal world. Anyone with the knowledge and the stomach can gather at the site of their entry to either help or hinder them. And anybody who is anybody is here to join in.
Without spoiling too many of the surprises, readers can expect to see a vampiric Count, a Great Detective wearing a deerstalker and ‘The Good Doctor’ who is working on a way to create life in his laboratory. But what makes this book a must-read is not the constant appearance of horror icons, but how Zelazny makes them all fit together. Each of them is faithfully plopped into this world of subterfuge and secrecy and let loose to play their part in the Great Game.
The Great Game
Snuff is, despite his sentience and his immediately winning personality, a dog. The dog of an immortal serial killer, yes, but a dog all the same. And through Snuff we are only ever given exactly as much detail as we need. There is no demonic invention here, just a barebones description that tells us exactly what we need to get it. Snuff spends every morning making sure that the ‘Things in the Mirror’, the ‘Thing in the Circle’ and the ‘Thing in the Attic’ are all secured and have no chance of escaping. Zelazny reveals just enough that we can understand the rules - each player in the game has a familiar that Snuff chats away with to try and work out which side they are on - and the stakes, which are the inevitable death of the universe as we know it. Even those Lovecraftian elements are beautifully knitted through, with the Old Ones waiting for a chance to destroy everything and even a brief canine visit to the Dream-Worlds from Lovecraft’s own writing. And despite all of this horror history swirling through the DNA of the short novel, it never really veers into scary. A Night in the Lonesome October even manages to be funny and heartwarming. It is a love letter to horror itself and reading through this whole book in a few days made me really appreciate just how much care had gone into the crafting of this little piece of affection for the genre in all its forms; with classic literature references, asides that call out more cult fiction and iconic moments from the golden age of cinema all bustling against each other to get in the text and have their moment in the spotlight.
A Month Long Adventure
But, after rushing through and reaching the end, I realised I had done it all wrong. Some chapters here are barely a page long, others reach on with relentless pace, but they are each numbered and each walk us through one more day of October. There are, of course, 31 chapters, and it is only with the last that we reach a satisfying conclusion that allows us to finally breathe out after a climax worthy of the precise polish that the rest of the novel has.
It is meant to be read one chapter a day, keeping you stumbling forward with another clue every day, perhaps in bed while the moon floats outside your window, in the spookiest month of all. Zelazny’s lighthearted romp through horror history, all through the eyes of talking animals, against a macabre countryside backdrop is the most Halloween thing I have ever read. It was when I read the short chapter that sees each of the players, on both sides of the game, digging in a graveyard for the last parts of their rituals and throwing each other fingers, livers, eyeballs - that was when I realised that ‘horror’, at least for Zelazny, is an aesthetic, not a feeling. A flavour that can be terrifying but can also be playful and affectionate and so wonderfully October.
Happy November! I know this one came late, but I think that is fitting given that I expect all of you to read this book NEXT October. I hope you enjoyed the Spooky Month Recommendations; I had a really good time searching through my favourites and exploring some of the classics that I had been ignoring! I’ll be back to normal, not constantly spooky, writing from here on out, but make sure to share this with anyone who might like it! It sometimes feels like I am writing into the void, but then I hear from a new reader, and it absolutely makes it worth it. You can go and listen to the Halloween special of my podcast by clicking that tab at the top of the page. It’s very funny, trust me. You should also go to my about page and follow the Kofi link to buy me a bottle of Pepsi Max to cradle while I write. Thank you for tuning in, and stick around for more of me. <3
