Review of "Tales from the Black Meadow" by Crab Man - Mythogeography

Crab Man aka Phil smith (Author of Counter-Tourism The Handbook, Counter-Tourism - The Pocket Book - 50 Odd Things to do in a Heritage Site, A Sardine Street Box of Tricks and Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways) has written a review of "Tales from the Black Meadow". 

 It is reprinted in all of it's glory below.

Tales from the Black Meadow Chris Lambert Exiled Publishing (Reading, UK) (with double CD ‘Tales from the Black Meadow’). 

 Chris Lambert has made a world. Like those of many a demiurge, his is more flawed than floored. Around the Black Meadow you are always in danger of having the earth, let alone the carpet, pulled from beneath your feet. There, it is far from easy to tell a divine spark from a black sphere.

 ‘Tales from the Black Meadow’ is neatly framed, Machen-like, in their collection by a lay historian, the fictitious Roger Mullins. From the off we are somewhere unmapped between the realunreal and the unrealreal. Among the tales gathered by Mullins are those of bodies of fog and blackberry and rags, floating eyes, a psychic litter bin (a standing stone), boy to foal and vagabond to apple tree transformations, and a stepping stone that does what it says on the tin. Told in prose that sits somewhere between storytelling and antiquarianism, visceral dread slowly rises from its mustiness, catching the reader in complacency. Thinking you stand safely outside the mythology, you come to read: “[M]any of the tales of the Black Meadow try to explain how the world disappears from its borders... to the world it is the village that vanishes but this is of course a simple matter of perspective” and then you grasp that this pseudo-place’s perspective has quickly made a “simple matter” of you. Its floating eyes are in your head now.

‘Tales from the Black Meadow’, with its accompanying double cd (including a fine spoof Radio 4 documentary) sits well with similar recent cultural productions like the music of Belbury Poly, Emily Jones’s ‘The Book of the Lost’ album and the movie ‘The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill’ which is soon to spawn its own book by its writer Kevin Gates. They wed a Hammer-like sensibility for a polluted rurality to a pseudo-local history; wildly flagging their falseness they lure us pleasurably onto an ambiguous ground where the question of ground itself, frozen and vaporous, can be asked. The ‘land’ becomes an agent here; one with a “sacred relationship with those who toil upon it and those why live by it”, one who comes a-calling, who gives birth, who snarls at the door.

 “Will you take our hands in yours?
Wake our fairest land.”
 Crab Man

Amazon Review of "Tales from the Black Meadow" - "A fine piece of British hauntology"

A fine piece of British hauntology 4 Oct 2013 By Gareth This is a beautiful, compelling book of folklore. What's most haunting about this book is that the stories feel like they've been lingering at the back of your mind all your life. The sparse, propulsive prose gives it this sense of timelesness. This is Britain's past reimagined so vividly that it becomes as real as a memory, albeit one shrouded in speculation, rumour and mystery. A fine piece of hauntology but also good storytelling with lots of twists in the tale. It gets grizzly, absurd and murderous in parts, if you like that kind of thing, which I do.

Amazon Review of "Tales from the Black Meadow" - "Little gem of a book"

Tales from the Black Meadow 3 Oct 2013 By Mervyn Williams `Tales from the Black Meadow', by Chris Lambert, is a little gem of a book which exploits and revels in the concept of `gothic' to the very full. The way the book is structured around a collection of ` would be' sinister stories, and extracts from a fanciful array of macabre sources, is a witty pastiche on more established publications. Such is the brevity of each tale, and the clarity of writing, Chris Lambert provides the reader with no refuge from his ceaseless accounts of the grotesque and inexplicable. Lambert's clear skill in `spooky' narration is accentuated by a clear relish for dark humour and the unexpected. The book is illustrated by some equally haunting and evocative images created by Nigel Wilson. Whether in the schoolroom or by the fireside on a dark cold night, `Tales from the Black Meadow' is an essential short read. Mervyn Williams

Amazon Review of "Tales from the Black Meadow" - "An absolute treat of a book."

5.0 out of 5 stars Send a shiver down your spine........ 24 Sep 2013 By Kerensa Faragher I literally could not put this book down. It will make you gasp, laugh, cry and will send a little shiver down your spine. Although a series of poems and short stories that could be dipped in and out of, I read it from cover to cover in an evening. The wonderful illustrations do this book great justice and my personal favourite, Beyond The Moor, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The Fog House and The Rag and Bone Man were fascinating pieces of macabre literary works. An absolute treat of a book and I, for one, cannot wait to see more from this author.