Paul Jameson

The titular Nightjar of Jameson’s lyrical novel shares his moniker with the striking nocturnal bird, a creature very real but possessing an appearance delivered straight from myth and storybook. This liminality, the meeting point of different worlds, the intersection of the apparent real and unreal, dominates the book. A bird active at dusk and dawn, the nightjar moves in half light. Jameson incorporates this elusive nature, using the bird as a magical symbolic presence, in the way of a spirit animal.

As in the greatest folk horror, landscape is representative of the narrative movements of the characters, and the environments Jameson visits capture atmospherically the interiority that drives the story. Set in a detechnologised and indeterminately placed future, the ground retains only echoes of a long distant industrial past. Nature has been busy in reclamation and ancient places able to abide these changes retain an ageless mystical quality. Superstition is in resurgence, as for unclear reasons learning has fallen to the wayside, leaving room for religion and ritual to assert themselves. A natural cataclysm is hinted at, and the land carries pollution and corruption, the consequences of which are demonstrated in anatomical anomalies and disfigurements common at birth.

Two boys let themselves be stolen, perhaps enchanted, away and the majority of the novel follows their adventure. They excitedly embrace roving far from home and Jameson proceeds to create a brooding sense of foreboding. As the novel progresses Jameson introduces several different threads, each following characters invested in locating the boys. The language is expressive, and successfully combines rhythmic dialectisms with beautiful examples of description.

An absorbing peripatetic novel, recommended to those fond of unclassifiable fiction incorporating elements of folk horror, uncanny suspense, and atmospheric mystery.… (meer)