Laird Barron
La cerimonia

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In the landscape of contemporary horror literature, it is possible – besides the narratives of various authors like Stephen King and Clive Barker, who have distanced themselves from H. P. Lovecraft's Cosmic horror in favor of settings where horror tends to be anchored to an anthropocentric “vision” of reality – to find a darker and more visionary movement that renews the tradition of “weird” through genre contamination. In this perspective, writers such as Thomas Ligotti, who is thankfully starting to be talked about in Italy, John Langan, Simon Strantzas, and Laird Barron come into focus. The latter has already received several awards in the past, winning the Shirley Jackson Award in 2007 and 2010 and the Bram Stoker Award in 2014 with collections of stories such as The Imago Sequence And Other Stories, Occultation And Other Stories, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, and the novella Mysterium Tremendum. And it is precisely another of his longer works, La cerimonia (The Croning – 2002), that is now published by the increasingly fierce Edizioni Hypnos of Milan, by Andrea Vaccaro. In fact, Laird Barron had already been mentioned in the second issue of the magazine Hypnos, where Andrea Bonazzi introduced the author and his story L’Intimidatore, an original pastiche of western and Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror. The translation of La cerimonia, very attentive, is entrusted to the expertise of Bonazzi himself, surely one of the greatest Italian horror experts while the cover art is by Ivo Torello and fortunately, in my opinion, moves away from the overly minimal style of the collana Biblioteca dell’immaginario.

I will say right away that La cerimonia is a grand and weighty novel of contemporary horror that shows how it is possible to write Cosmic narrative of Lovecraftian style in an original and fresh way while inevitably remaining anchored to the original models. Curiously, the title recalls another horror novel, Cerimonia di sangue (The Ceremonies - 1984) by T.E.D. Klein: the two books share the clear influence of Welsh writer Arthur Machen. La cerimonia is well-written, and the plot is cleverly crafted. Throughout its 348 pages, suspense is not lacking, and there is a skillful use of atmosphere. The ability to maintain a genuine sense of terror without resorting to coarse effects would surely have pleased H. P. Lovecraft. We are faced with a kind of anthropological fantastic: the protagonist, Donald Miller, is a geologist with a nebulous past filled with dark and inscrutable events: from his researcher's memories emerge frightening disjointed fragments that seem to foreshadow the existence of a Secret Cult propagated by the mysterious “Children of the Old Leech.” This “unnamable cult” echoes the Little People evoked by Machen. It is the classic book that any follower of the Cthulhu Mythos would want to read. One of the major merits, in my opinion, is the use of a genuine dreamlike atmosphere where the Nightmare manages to subtly make its way and penetrate everyday life. Perhaps the pace is sometimes too slow, and the impression is that the novel is too long. Nevertheless, without a doubt, it is a small classic of the “weird” genre that should absolutely be rediscovered and reevaluated.

La cerimonia is a volume that all fans of fantastic narrative and connoisseurs of less trivial horror should make their own without hesitation. The volume can be purchased directly from the online store of Edizioni Hypnos or on Delos Store or on Ibs.

Laird Barron “La cerimonia” – – 347 pages – 2016 – Euro 17.90 – ISBN 9788896952306