[net.books] THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER by R. Campbell

leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (10/10/85)

               THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER by Ramsey Campbell
                             Tor, 1985, $3.50.
                      A book review by Mark R. Leeper

     Ramsey Campbell is a popular British horror story writer and editor.
He has become a very familiar name in horror circles for such a young man.
He was born in 1946 and has been publishing stories for 23 years.  As with
most horror writers, I'd never read anything by him until recently.

     THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER is every bit as grim a horror novel as the
title indicates.
                          [*minor spoiler alert*]
The story (which rumor has it has been banned in Britain) concerns a pretty
vicious young man who not only enjoys killing for fun in all sorts of
creative ways, he also likes to eat his victims.  There is just enough of a
supernatural bent to the story to make it fantasy instead of simply a
gruesome murder mystery, but not enough to make it really worthwhile as a
supernatural horror story.

     Some of Campbell's prose is crisp and sharp, yet other chapters I
thought were really hard reading.  When things really start happening the
prose becomes so terse that I found I had to read some scenes two or three
times before I could piece together exactly what was happening.  Other
places he has whole chapters that do very little to advance the story.

     THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER is not a very creative horror story, but it
is told in crisp tones of black and white, much like the cover of the Tor
Books edition.  The story is cold and grim.  The characters are pretty flat
and uninteresting.  But it does tell a story of moderate suspense.  On the
scale of -4 to +4 it probably should get a non-commital +1.