A fearless faith in fiction — Various passions of the reading moment — Reviews based on purchased fiction books since 2008 — Elizabeth Bowen, Robert Aickman and many others — INFORMATION and NAVIGATION on this site’s front page — Let us now triangulate each book together!
Although I have decided to read this book outside the scope of my real-time reviewing, I show below a transcript of my earlier review when one of its stories was recently reprinted for Best British Horror 2018:
[[ TING-A-LING-A-LING by Daniel McGachey
“A clock without a key has as little use as a key without a clock.”
Thank goodness I bought this book, despite having read most of the stories already. This novelette is an unmissable horror story, or a ghost story made into clockwork flesh? It is like a clock itself, with layers of workings within it, told stories within told stories in out-permutated Jamesian fashion, a clock with a cursed lock, a clock that is its own community of church, pub, graveyard and houses paradoxically both in miniature and in magnitude, the magnitude of 20th century European wars, and the ambiguity of monsters and of lost soldiers as revenants. The quandary of keeping such an accursed clock despite its monsters. It has even more tantalising power TODAY as I read it, because, tonight, in the UK, we will be adjusting our own version of the “as-yet-unawakened Awakening Clock” by the span of one hour! You will perhaps know what I mean, when you read it. It may save you! ]]
The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews 
It is possible that I shall not be able to commence reading this until after any seasonal business!
Although I have decided to read this book outside the scope of my real-time reviewing, I show below a transcript of my earlier review when one of its stories was recently reprinted for Best British Horror 2018:
[[ TING-A-LING-A-LING by Daniel McGachey
“A clock without a key has as little use as a key without a clock.”
Thank goodness I bought this book, despite having read most of the stories already. This novelette is an unmissable horror story, or a ghost story made into clockwork flesh? It is like a clock itself, with layers of workings within it, told stories within told stories in out-permutated Jamesian fashion, a clock with a cursed lock, a clock that is its own community of church, pub, graveyard and houses paradoxically both in miniature and in magnitude, the magnitude of 20th century European wars, and the ambiguity of monsters and of lost soldiers as revenants. The quandary of keeping such an accursed clock despite its monsters. It has even more tantalising power TODAY as I read it, because, tonight, in the UK, we will be adjusting our own version of the “as-yet-unawakened Awakening Clock” by the span of one hour! You will perhaps know what I mean, when you read it. It may save you! ]]