It's Always More Complicated

I recently acquired, at considerable expense, though not as much as most copies have been offered at, Jane Gaskell*'s 1964 vampire novel, The Shiny Narrow Grin. I had been telling myself that if I ever saw it on offer below [a certain figure] I would (assuming I was feeling reasonably financially flush at the time) buy it, damn it, because I have been trying to get hold of a copy for years.

What I have is an ex-library copy with the date-stamp form still in the front - apparently no-one borrowed it from the Belfast public library system after June 1968.

I am aware that I paid a fairly ridiculous amount for it (though still well under that being asked for copies by other dealers). On the other hand, most of my other Gaskells I acquired for prices between 5p and £2, so averaging it out...

I was not expecting it to replicate in any way the experience I had many decades ago upon reading Gaskell's The Serpent (1963), in the original long version rather than split up into 2 or 3 separate volumes.

It's really short and spare and elliptical, very unlike The Serpent, which is the commencement of her id-vortexy fantasy sequence, set in prehistoric South America and Atlantis before and during its fall, centring on the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes, of the princess Cija, which was being regularly reprinted well into the 70s and possibly later. (If it ever does get republished, I suspect it will be without the late final volume, Some Summer Lands, 1977, narrated by Cija's daughter Seka.)

Gaskell also wrote several novels which appear to be realistic novels of early 60s 'youth culture' (Mods, Rockers, etc etc), though I'm currently wondering to myself whether these are in fact fantasies about certain kinds of contemporary urban life. Especially as she wrote two novels with this sort of setting but one being a vampire story (TSNG) and another more or less sf (A Sweet Sweet Summer [1969]), in which London had been conquered by aliens.

The Shiny Narrow Grin could be described as urban fantasy, except not very much like what that has come to mean.

Gaskell pretty much specialised in rather unsympathetic narrators or viewpoint characters, and the protagonist is an alienated, anomic, disillusioned, embittered grammar school girl, Terry (I think stroppy would possibly be rather too strong and definite a term: passive aggression and dumb insolence are her weapons more than direct confrontation). Her parents are separated, she is sharing a bedsit with her friend Kathy, she hangs out with a Mod crowd in West London. Her father has just come back into her life after many years absence. She has a 'steady' boyfriend but also has sex with others. Relationships with both sexes are characterised by rivalry, competition, and struggles for dominance.

The only exception to this is that Terry does seem to have some kind of affection for her mother and for Kathy, even though she also is intermittently embarrassed by them. She perceives them as vulnerable and in need of protection, in a rather condescending way from the heights of what she considers her own sophisticated outlook on life. The reader does rather wonder what Terry is getting out of her exploits with men: at one point she thinks to herself:

I even like lesbians, that most girls shudder off from. There's something so clean about the idea of sex without men.

Anyway, there is a low-key vampire - in that hints are dropped, and the reader may well pick these up, but until very late in the day Terry doesn't realise what she is dealing with.

The novel is signally lacking in the kind of drama one tends to associate with this theme - her life is so unattractive being undead surely couldn't be much worse, indeed, when the vampire asks her 'What is keeping you in your world?' she replies 'Nothing really' and cites Kathy calling her crowd 'All zombies'.

The ending is unresolved and ambiguous. (Am I being a bit too precious in trying to avoid spoilers for an obscure novel which most people are very unlikely to read?)

Interesting things going on, but I may find that because I do tend to be fascinated by early/mid 60s novels, just pre-sexual revolution and the revival of feminism, which revolve around issues to do with gender and sexuality. This may be a weird form of nostalgia.

I can quite see that there would be problems with this novel and its mismatching to different kinds of reader expectations. All the same, there's something there.

Though it doesn't strike the note of horror which Simon Raven got into his 1960 contemporary vampire novel Doctors Wear Scarlet, I'm not sure that's what Gaskell was aiming at anyway.

*NB that entry is slight and the bibliography not even complete. What we do note is that Gaskell was fairly prolific in the 60s and then rather faded out - don't know if that was because she stopped writing or publishing issues.