A fearless faith in fiction — Employing a Kantian or Jungian sensibility and an ‘intentional fallacy’ consciousness — Various passions of the reading moment — Walter de la Mare, ELizabeth BOWen, Robert Aickman and many others old and new — Please click my name below for this site’s navigation and my backstory as intermittent photographer, writer, editor, publisher & reviewer.
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 of Books 
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! ]]