73. A new skin for Doctor Forrest… forthcoming in paperback, March 1 2012

Dare you walk that North London street again…?

72. ‘Kelly’s brand of modern macabre’: A Durham Reads/Book Festival write-up

Yes, I’ve been away awhile… Been doing a little surgery, heh heh. On myself, heh heh. But I’m sure I’m still recognisable as me, whoever that is, heh heh… (Enough cod-EC Comics yucks. Ed.)
I should have linked to this nice write-up of the Dr Forrest event in Durham a good deal sooner. It’s by a promising young scribe named Marian Shek. And it brings back cheerful memories of what was a very lively evening, which Marian pleasingly thumbnails as “a celebration of the rich tradition” of literary Gothic, through the glass of “Kelly’s brand of modern macabre” (heh heh…). I like the expression “delicious darkness”, just as I’m pleased to be commended for “rich, luxurious language” (as opposed to, say, odd archaic anachronisms…) and to have it observed that my onstage manner is “teasing as ever”… Which is where, on this occasion, we came in.

71. D.E. Meredith on Doctor Forrest: “Howling-at-the-moon kind of Gothic”

The author Denise Meredith is someone with whom I’ve lately become Twitter pals, and she and I are kindred spirits in our love of the fog-beset and gas-lit aura of Victorian crime literature. In this line Denise has begun a series of mysteries centred on the double-act of pioneering forensic scientist Professor Adolphus Hatton and his mortuary sidekick Albert Roumande. The first was Devoured (2010), the second, just published, The Devil’s Ribbon, a deliciously dark and page-turning treat for all souls who are similarly drawn to the red meat of sensation.
Denise was recently asked by the Writers Read blog to offer some impressions of things she’s enjoyed reading lately, and she was kind enough to give Doctor Forrest the following reference (in which I especially like the comment about women):

“This book is a one off. Highly original, despite the fact the book is (in many ways) a homage to all things gothic – think Dorian Gray, meets Bram Stoker, meets Dr Faustus meets Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde meets I’m not sure what. It’s about three middle aged men, once schoolboy friends, now medical doctors. One of them – Dr Forrest, a vain, sexy cosmetic surgeon – goes missing, presumed dead. The men have complex relationships with each other, mainly revolving around failed ambitions, lies, envy, ego and their relationships with women. It’s very intriguing on the last score, especially reading it as a woman. I loved Kelly’s emotional honesty, his take on London which was spot on from the slightly scuzzy impression of Parliament Hill and Hampstead Heath to the oh so hopelessly middle class-ness of serving up scallops and salsa verde for dinner. As if. Only in Hampstead, darling! I relished the descriptions of cloying bourgeoisie pretension, overarched by howling at the moon kind of gothic. Just what the doctor ordered, especially as my current book’s set in London, too!”

70. Durham Reads ‘Doctor Forrest’, with Diverse & Fascinating Opinions…

Last week I had the pleasure of taking Doctor Forrest to the Durham Book Festival, this after 7 weeks’ worth of the novel being widely and freely distributed around the county as part of the Festival’s first ever ‘big read’ initiative. My author event at the Gala Theatre last Tuesday night was a delight for me on umpteen counts, maybe chief among them that I was joined onstage by a trio of excellent actors who got on their feet and performed some choice filleted passages from Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Monk, interspersed with my own (thematically complementary) readings from Doctor Forrest. The chairman of the conversation was the excellent Dr Simon James of Durham University, some of whose students were in the audience and who are all, clearly, relishing the Gothic module of their Literature degree. And most of the rest of the house was comprised of people who had read the novel as part of their regular book groups, thanks to the Festival’s giveaway munificence, and who were kind enough to make the trek to Durham so as to hear what I had to say for myself.
Feedback from those reading groups was regularly relayed back to me over the seven weeks of the ‘Durham Reads’ countywide project, and the comments certainly made for a valuable and thought-provoking mix. I can gather them broadly if partially under the following headings:

SOME CUSTOMERS WERE FULLY SATISFIED

‘This novel is intelligent and interesting with well-drawn characters – intriguing storyline that draws the reader to the end.’
‘Found this novel very fascinating and would read other gothic inspired novels by this author.’
‘Enjoyed it. Shades of Dorian Gray…’
‘Echoes of Jekyll & Hyde, a fascinating exploration of the gothic genre.’
‘Liked the diary format & Confession at the end a little like Frankenstein’s Monster.’
‘Weird, wonderful and very enjoyable.’
‘Loved the book. My suspicions on ‘whodunnit’ crept in on page 73.’
‘Read this on holiday and really enjoyed it.’
‘My favourite character was Dr. Forrest – power crazy!’
‘I think R.T Kelly would be a very good crime novelist.’
‘Brutality of the medical language added greatly to the genre.’
‘Very successful plot. I didn’t guess what was happening until the Confession.’
‘If you enjoy a good mystery it is worth taking time to read this one.’

SOME WARMED UP TO IT

‘I enjoyed it from part IV…’
‘Once I was past first 5-6 chapters it gripped my interest. I was hooked on finding out what happened.’
‘Style initially off-putting, but once into the story plot enthralling.’

SOME FOUND IT TOO DARK

‘Enjoyed the first three quarters of the book but found the end unsettling.’
‘The consequences of the last part were evil and menacing – I was glad to finish it.’
‘Dark and depressing. I stopped reading at Page 273…’
‘Shocking and disturbing story.’
‘I found it rather horrid…’

SOME FOUND THE PROSE TOO FUSSY

‘The Victorian style of writing and the modern setting seemed to conflict with each other at times.’
‘Style of writing irritating… Not so much Poe, or Wilde as Alistair Crowley!’
‘Words used archaic and not used in this present day.’
‘There was too much punctuation!’

SOME FOUND IT HARD TO FOLLOW

‘Parts 1 & 2 interesting, Part 3 left me so confused I gave up.’
‘The narrative is good but i don’t think i ever cottoned on to what happened to Dr. Forrest.’
‘Confusion amongst the group as to whether or not he murdered his victims.’
‘No suspense or creeping horror, he took over too many people.’

SOME THOUGHT IT ALTOGETHER TOO FANCIFUL

‘I tried very hard and did read the whole of the book, but could not come to terms with the story, demons and strange goings-on.’
‘Beautifully written, easy to read, shame the story was pure rubbish.’
‘Was none the wiser at the end of the story, very far-fetched.’
‘Better than I expected. Content ridiculous. Not convincing.’

SOME FOUND UNEXPECTED THINGS TO COMMEND…

‘Disturbing, disappointing, but the cover art was great.’
‘Nice clear print.’

SOME WERE UNLIKELY TO FIND ANYTHING TO COMMEND

‘Cover of book makes me think its going to be weird. Is this horror?’

AND AT LEAST ONE READER HAD ME BANG TO RIGHTS

‘Does anyone else think author used old ideas from previous books…?’

69. FantasyCon2011: The Possessions of Doctor Forrest by Brighton Pier…

So I’m gazing into the depths of the black mirror of my first ever fantasy-fiction convention… FantasyCon 2011, in Brighton, this Saturday October 1. I’m down to be reading from Doctor Forrest at 1030 in Room 134 of the Royal Albion Hotel. Beyond that, who knows…?
My slot is between Julia Knight and Reggie Oliver, so I’ll have to bring my game and hope that their fanbases might look kindly, if darkly, on my sacrificial offering. Perhaps I’m lucky to finish just before Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon, gets started for a reading/Q&A in the main assembly space at 1100.
The amusing conundrum is the choice of what to read for 20 minutes or so. One gets into a certain pattern after having done a few events with a book, and it’s only in the last few outings that I’ve tried to vary things a little, which can be a pleasant surprise to oneself. Until now I’ve vaguely favoured readings focused on character, theme, mystery, intrigue, mood… But in a crowded programme of experienced thrill-practioners, perhaps I ought to offer the closest I can to the red meat of sensation…? Some selections from the ‘Confession’, perhaps? Murder by scalpel, radical surgery, taboo seduction, perhaps even ‘the speculum scene’…?
Anyhow, if you’re going to FantasyCon this Saturday or know anybody who is, please do speak of me and speak kindly and let them know where I’ll be at 1030 – that’s room 134, the Royal Albion! – otherwise, being a stranger by the shore and all that, it’ll likely be a case of in and out and barely time for fish and chips on the pier before I’m back off to London, no doubt with Quadrophenia on my iPod.

68. Phantom ‘Themes from Doctor Forrest’: My Body is a Cage by Peter Gabriel

No detailed explanation needful as to why this song (originally by the Montreal band Arcade Fire) fits the musical/thematic bill for the Doctor… A little should be said, though, in praise of its interpreter on this version, Peter Gabriel.
Scratch My Back – Gabriel’s 2010 album of cover versions, from whence this comes – spotlights his gifts as a vocalist/interpreter; and Gabriel has always done exceptionally interesting things with his voice and the recording of it, for the sake of drama and feeling and shading of mood. Indeed some of his finest vocal performances have been wordless – chants, groans, ululations, as on his magnificent score for Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. His creativity is restless, questing, ever transforming.
Gabriel has been in music for 40 years, long enough to have worn more than a few cloaks, and in any case it was clear from the get-go that he was especially interested in costume changes – in personae and shape-shifting. The last time I saw Gabriel play live, in 2003, he wore a black ensemble that seemed halfway between the designer garb of a tonsured Japanese monk and the prison uniform of Hannibal Lecter. A few years later it struck me that his learned, kindly and yet profoundly troubled bearing would make him a rather wonderful Doctor Who.
His early fame in Genesis is still an undiscovered mystery to me, as I was too young at the time and have stayed suspicious of the era ever since. But by the early 1980s he was clearly a radical experimental musical force in the Eno/Bowie/Byrne mould, and his fourth solo album, with its special marriage of rhythmic/melodic and lyrical/cerebral qualities, made a huge impression on me as a youngster. Subsequent MTV/pop success didn’t change him: thus the Secret World album in 1992, his finest in my view, conceived and recorded amid five years of therapy, with the avowed intention of exploring his dark and disagreeable side.
It’s maybe easily overlooked now – since the current incarnation of Gabriel cuts such an avuncular figure, the consummate late-career artist-activist, instigator of good works and friend to Nelson Mandela and Mary Robinson – but the Gabriel songbook testifies to a seething quality in him, clearly derived in places from a history of torrid personal relations. As he sings it in Digging in the Dirt: ‘I feel it in my head, I feel it in my toes / I feel it in my sex, that’s the place it goes…’ Clearly he has at times wanted to scare himself, or scare his listeners, or both, while simultaneously wishing to drag into the light the source of that fear – cf. some of the songbook’s eerier entries, Mother of Violence, Intruder, Darkness… And for the listener as evidently for Gabriel himself I believe these songs can offer carthasis – a word that, in its multiple uses and meanings, has been as intriguingly fluid as Gabriel himself.

67. Durham Reads ‘Possessions of Doctor Forrest’: Darkness at the 2011 BookFest

Inside Durham's mighty Cathedral: Photo - Sarah Harris

You have to know that for me there’s no finer place on earth than County Durham. It’s where us Kellys come from – at least where my great-grandparents had got themselves to by the dawn of the 1900s: South Moor and Burnhope, Pelton Fell and Eden Hill. Which is why a goodly chunk of my first novel Crusaders was set in the DH1 postcode – Durham City, Framwellgate Moor, Newton Hall, the exquisitely-named Pity Me. Evocative nomenclature comes with the territory up there, and in Crusaders the main character John Gore is seen in his childhood to be a keen collector of intriguing place-names that point to his future vocation as a solitary Anglican priest: Craghead, Monk Hesleden, Quaking Houses, Sacriston.
All this by way of saying that it means the world to me that the 2011 Durham Book Festival has picked The Possessions of Doctor Forrest for its first countywide civic reading project, and has released a thousand copies of the novel for free distribution through local reading groups, libraries, civic and cultural venues and hand-picked ‘ambassadors.’
The effort has been directed by the truly superb New Writing North agency, who gave a no less staunch support to Crusaders back in 2008 – such that with that book, too, a number of reading groups much more accustomed to spending their valuable reading time on proven/bestselling titles by known/acclaimed names were persuaded to give my stuff a try-out. If you’re not a front-rank recognisable novelist then it’s a very, very precious experience to get your work commended to readers in this manner for inspection and discussion. Consequently you do get a lot of straight-spoken opinions coming back at you; but in this day and age it’s hard to imagine a more meaningful and educational experience for a writer. In these situations the readers who have enjoyed a book tend to evince an embrace of it that’s hugely more ardent than any review you could imagine. And with those who weren’t so struck on it… well, the opinion will usually be candid and also fresh, free of the formula and conveyor-nature of newspaper write-ups. I certainly learned a lot on Crusaders, and very much look forward to the same once Durham’s had a read and made its mind up on Doctor Forrest.
I was asked by Durham Book Festival to create content for a Reading Guide to be used by anyone seeking a bit of background on the novel and what inspired it; along with a set of questions for consideration by reading groups. That guide has been very handsomely designed and is downloadable here.
The Festival is also programming a selection of gothic-themed movies which will tour Durham by mobile cinema, and there will be a number of guided walks around the city that explore the gothic architecture and the darker side of local history. A writers’ workshop exploring Doctor Forrest will happen on Friday 21 October
And on Tuesday 18 October I will be talking about the novel at the Gala Theatre, as well as reading selections from Doctor Forrest and also (abetted by actors) some of the great Victorian gothic classics.
A whole lot of Forrest, then, in Durham come October. ‘Come and play with us’, as those sweet little girls say in The Shining…

66. Wilde’s ‘Dorian Gray’: Deadly Narcissus

Having rehearsed here the influence on me of a good many of the great and obvious classics of Victorian gothic, I turn a little belatedly to Wilde’s Dorian Gray (1891) – a novel the idea of which I like rather more the work itself, I must confess. As a study of ‘the terrible pleasure of a double life’ it is of course a kind of cousin to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but very much the junior partner. Not to say there aren’t many elements in it that I enjoy a good deal. Wilde’s very fine, only slightly embellished evocation of the streets and physical facades of central London, their handsomeness turned eerie during the condition of twilight especially; his fairly heady accumulation of fin de siecle aestheticism in the descriptions of decor; the relishable gruesomeness of the passage where Dorian blackmails an old ex-friend to dispose of a corpse on his behalf… Truth be told, the bloodiness of that last passage comes to some extent as a cheering remedy to the chill bloodlessness of all the fancy furnishings, and their famous debt to the A Rebours of J.K. Huysman, a work that amused me a fair bit as a teenager but which I’ve never been able to feel the same about since a visit to Gabriele d’Annunzio’s skin-crawlingly decadent play-palace in Gardone Riviera, gilded turtle and all…
But hark at me. For what reason in Doctor Forrest is Robert Forrest’s romper-room boudoir octagonal? And why does he keep an antique cassone at the foot at his bed? Et cetera…
The recent 2009 movie version of Wilde is a handsome enough piece, and could be taken as one more example of how, given the influence of ‘steampunk’, the Victorian era on film is now almost a byword for a kind of stylised frock-coated fast-cutting dynamism. But the problem with the story is the protagonist – a void, really, partially filled on the page by Wilde arranging words like flowers but on screen neither an engaging anti-hero or a properly menacing villain…

65. Dr Forrest at large… in Croydon Library

‘The family of noise is here’, sang Adam Ant in happier days, ‘and it’s come to save you and me – in Croydon…’ Here’s hoping, then, that I too may be saved in this manner. I am delighted to be invited to Croydon this Saturday, as a guest of the Central Library, to read from and discuss the strange ‘spine-chilling’ case of Doctor Forrest: that’s 17 September, 2:30 PM, Level 1, Croydon Central Library, tickets free, Adults Only…

64. Edinburgh Revisited, and Lizzy Siddal on the ‘absolute diabolical’ Dr. Robert Forrest

Me & Kevin MacNeil (by L.Siddal!)

I have an unalloyed positive view of The Twitter as a social medium: through its good offices I’ve ‘met’ an awful lot of very interesting people and had any number of stimulating exchanges (however succinct.) Twitter is of course a very useful shop-window and literary trading-post for dedicated book-bloggers, which is how I e-met @LizzySiddal, author of the Lizzy’s Literary Life site. Lizzy is a big devotee of the Edinburgh Book Festival and kindly came along to my reading on the opening day. In the LRB book tent afterward we had a good chat and she snapped the picture herewith of myself and Kevin MacNeil. And she subsequently wrote up the proceedings at her blog, an extract from which I beg her favour to reproduce as follows:

Kelly describes writing The Possessions of Dr Forrest as a gesture of love to the gothic novel and to Stevenson in particular. Thus his novel preserves many of the characteristics of the original: the London setting, the structure and narrative style. He uses diaries and letters though not email. I’m a traditionalist, he said, in the sense that I still punctuate my text messages! His narrators are mostly male. 1 detective, 3 doctors (albeit with different specialisms). In keeping with the intensification of 21st-century angst, all 3 doctors are in crisis. Professional respectability and success is no guarantor of personal happiness. Ironically it is the psychiatrist Dr Hartford who is suffering the most.
“My profession long ago dispensed with Satan, of course, but initially advanced no further than to the notion that madness thrived in the sufferer’s blood, and could be drawn out by a sensible application of leeches. What are the fruits of wisdom that centuries of enquiry now bestow upon me? “Get some drugs into this man! Dampen down those symptoms!””
Psychiatry may have dispensed with the devil but this novel isn’t so adamant. Torment comes in many forms and most of it – in the pre-confessional sections of the novel certainly – emanates from females. The balance is redressed – somewhat- by the male-induced problems of Eloise – Dr Hartford’s patient and the sole female narrator. The greatest destruction, however, is the crazed ambition of Dr Forrest.
His disappearance right at the very beginning of the novel starts a downward spiral that eventually sucks in everyone. We can see this happening, even if the characters can’t but it’s not until Dr Forrest’s confessions that we understand the absolute diabolical nature of his actions. Never likeable, even when viewed through the sympathetic eyes of his friends in prior sections, he transforms through his own words into the most loathsome and contemptible creature I’ve ever read. Just how low can you go? Think about it and I’ll wager Forrest goes lower. Jekyll and Hyde? Jekyll and Hyder, more like.
I’m happy to report that I saw no Dr Forrest in the author (at least not at the festival). And I don’t believe that it was a mask. Kelly is such a genial character. Happy to chat on twitter (@RichTKelly) I love his dry, sardonic wit. On surgeons: The sense of their own prowess is so high, they are happy to have observers see the genius in their own hands. At the signing I had to ask how writing this darker than dark novel affected his head. Well, he said, my wife was very glad when I was finished. She wanted it out of the house!
You have been warned.