The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell

The Doll Who Ate His Mother Reviews

• 
  Eloy Cryptkeeper

  "le daba la impresión de que las palabras no importaban; era la manera de decirlas, el sonido de su voz, las cadencias. Como una canción latente debajo de las palabras. Me acuerdo que decía que le recordaba a la música que tocan los encantadores de serpientes"
  
  "Una vez, por capricho, permití a unos pocos enfrentarse a mi poder. Me mostré ante ellos con el cuerpo compacto y tieso como una maza y los desafié a que me movieran. Algunos apartaron medrosamente los ojos y se arrugaron cuando les di permiso para tocarme. Pero al final habían todos empleado sus fuerzas contra mí, contra ellos mismos y contra los otros, y sucumbieron agotados, mientras yo, riendo, continuaba inmóvil. Algunos parecían abatidos y se vieron quizá como yo los había visto, revolcándose por el suelo con el ansia de complacerme. Todos me comprendieron cuando les hablé de la vara de mi poder"
  
  
  Esta es la primera novela de Campbell. Y todo el tiempo tuve la sensación de estar leyendo borradores. Una estructura sumamente fragmentada e inconexa. El hilo/idea principal (que de por si no es la gran cosa) no lo termina de desarrollar. Personajes intrascendentes. Le sobran una infinidad de Páginas. Un final tan flojo como el resto de la novela.
  Contribuye a mi idea general de que Campbell es un muy buen cuentista.Pero como novelista, en mayor o menor medida queda en deuda.
• 
  Karl

  This hard cover is numbered 40 of 150 copies produced and is signed by:
  
  Ramsey Campbell
  Peter Crowther
  David Whitlam
• 
  Peter

  An absolutely disturbing and extremely sinister novel. What begins with a simple car accident turns into a nightmare and ends in a manhunt. Melancholic prose you can't stop reading when you found your way into the book. Extremely eerie background story (I don't want to give any spoilers here) and what a remarkable set of characters. You really are among them in dreary Liverpool (as the author is from Liverpool he brilliantly describes his town). Visit the Library. Find out about John Strong. Then you go into the basement of the magician to discover... I was extremely fond of this novel and it kept me reading until I had finished it. Great read, fine twists, clear recommendation, an absolute horror classic!
• 
  Jamie Stewart

  With a title like The Doll Who Ate His Mother this novel was bound to be good or so I told myself. Except it isn’t, it’s fucking magical is what it is. That’s mainly due to Ramsay Campbell descriptive pose, which finds ways to make this novel uniquely creepy and eerily beautiful. Find any passage from this novel about the city of Liverpool (where the novel is set) and you’ll think your reading poetry. Or find yourself looking over your shoulder while one character reads a book in a library. The only flaw with this book is in its characters, there are times were I found myself compelled by the writing style and the plot of this book but had no attachment to the characters. However, for once I didn’t care about that from simple awe over the authors style.
• 
  Quirkyreader

  The second time around with this book was even better than the first.
• 
  Cody | CodysBookshelf

  Well, that was a waste.
  
  When reading an author for the first time, if the book I've chosen to pop my cherry with (so to speak...) is his or her debut work, I do take that into consideration. I've never given up on a writer because of a horrid debut. And I won't give up on Ramsey Campbell despite the fact that I did not like his debut, The Doll Who Ate His Mother. I will certainly read more of his works in the future, if only because I've already bought three of them (and they aren't the cheapest). My bad.
  
  If I'm being honest, this was a torturous read. I don't remember the last time I was so bored with a book; my "fucks given" meter wavered between 0.0 and 0.1 throughout. By the story's climax (which Stephen King's blurb on the back of my paperback copy praises as 'one of the most effective sequences in modern horror fiction') I was just surging through to finish as quickly as possible. The characters found within are listless; their motivations are unclear. The plot hinges on the unwavering belief that a certain someone is guilty of crimes committed, without proof. Campbell just doesn't give the reader any reason to care about the story or what happens to the people who populate it. It isn't scary and it isn't mysterious; it's just a big bore.
  
  Technically speaking, Campbell's writing is very capable. His interesting turns of phrase and maneuverings of sentence structure are the only things that kept me reading to the end, hence my 2 stars. I just couldn't bear to give this, a novel I was able to finish, 1 star — but don't think it wasn't tempting.
  
  I will give Campbell more chances in the future; I have Incarnate on my TBR shelf and will probably read that in a few months. As for The Doll Who Ate His Mother . . . well, color me disappointed.
• 
  Plagued by Visions

  A fine example of a mighty ugly tale. British horror almost always leaves me feeling the off-putting sensation of wet socks. Good stuff.
• 
  Don

  Very strange and often disturbing book, rarely a dull moment though, review to come.
• 
  F.R.

  I’d only read Ramsey Campbell’s shorter fiction before this but had always been hugely impressed with his distinctly British tales, but I can’t say I was blown away by this 1976 novel. The chief problem is that Campbell doesn’t grasp the characters and make them convincing, they never achieve depth and sometimes their motivations are frankly baffling. Of course, a bunch of stereotypes and ciphers working their way through a scary situation is something horror cinema does ad nauseam, but in horror fiction you do need people to care about or otherwise the tension of the writing just dissipates.
  
  A radio DJ dies in a car-crash, and immediately afterwards his arm is torn off and stolen by a passerby. This leads a true crime writer, named Edmund Hall, to conclude that this mutilation was the work of a boy he went to school with, who was always a bad ‘un. (It’s an element of the book that I found particularly unlikely. Why does he conclude this so certainly, without the slightest shadow of a doubt? In a large city, isn’t there just the smallest chance there’s more than one psychopath?) He hooks up with the DJ’s sister, a cinema manager who lost his mother and a young actor who lost his cat, to track down the culprit.
  
  The horror element at the centre works really well, and Campbell does expertly weave the black magic into the narrative without making it sound preposterous. What’s more – in Liverpool – he captures an industrial city on the decline. Unfortunately, other elements are flatter. The group’s questioning of the various friends and family of their quarry becomes slightly repetitive, and – after all the shocks – the ending doesn’t quite live up to its promise. As such there is some entertainment to be had, but nothing that’s going to make me tear out to pick up another Ramsey Campbell novel.
• 
  Tara

  Review available on my blog:
  
  
  https://fireflyfiend.wordpress.com/20...
• 
  Carl Bluesy

  I never read a book from Ramsey Campbell before, i’m definitely glad I started with this book. It was dark and creepy. I only wish it was longer, I couldn’t be pulled away from this book. So that ended with me reading through it far too fast. At least the characters in this novel will stay with me for a long time after I put this book down.
• 
  Stay Fetters

  "The Devil had made him clever — pretending to be a little boy, waiting for the chance to be a monster."
  
  This book is one I definitely judged by its creepy cover and the just as disturbing title. There was no way that I could turn my back on something so evil.
  
  The first chapter blew my freaking mind. It was interesting and super weird. Who steals a guy's arm after he's been in an automobile accident? I had so many questions after that happened.
  
  The second chapter is where you lost me. It started to drag and I got bored very quickly. I did push through because I wanted to see if this could get any weirder. I am so very sad to say that it didn't It went in the direction that I thought it would and that really sucked. Where was the creativity in the rest of the book like there was in that first chapter? It was b***s**t!!
  
  The Doll Who Ate His Mother has a great title and an even better cover. That is really all it had going for it. Okay, that first chapter was awesome but you can't let that carry the entire book because it won't. The author certainly did try though. There are so many other and better horror books out there and I suggest trying one of those instead.
• 
  Cobwebby Eldritch Reading Reindeer

  Review: THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER by Ramsey Campbell
  
  This 1976 publication is not my top-favourite of Ramsey Campbell (so far, that's ANCIENT IMAGES and the collection HOLES FOR FACES) but I quite liked it. Unusually, my 5-star rating is not due to the horror and paranormal elements. Instead, I rated it highly due to Campbell's incredible grasp of and ability to delineate, character. This applies to his human inhabitants, but also to animals and to Place. Looking back through my reactions to the novel, I remember many occasions when I marveled at his revelation of character--just when I thought he had peeled back the remaining layers, he demonstrated more! The horror element is well done, and it's subtle, but I shall remember the novel for its characterizations.
  
  [Note: in the case of Mr. Campbell's explication of the "villain's" inner state, the resonances are positively Poe-ish. See for example, "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Telltale Heart."]
• 
  Melanie

  2 stars, one for that spectacular cover-art (the main reason I bought it!) and the creepy title, the other star for the sinister reveal about half-way through the story which was the only thing that kept me going....on a road to nowhere!!!!!
  
  This is my first Campbell read, and while it feels very much like a debut novel (it was one of his first published works), you can see the beginnings of the prose so many people talk about. Unfortunately, that's about it. I had to concentrate pretty hard at times to work out wtf the characters were up to, and the climax was....well....unsatisfactory.
  
  I'll be reading more of Campbell (mainly because I've already bought a few second hand) but this one will be displayed on my these-covers-are-fucking-awesome-but-don't-look-inside-them shelf.
• 
  Иван Величков

  Първият пробив на Кембъл в дебрите на романа. Ако сте чели каквото и да е от него, трябва да знаете какво да очаквате. Проза приближаваща се до лилавата с богат език и бавно промъкващ се под кожата ужас от нещо неизвестно. До последно не сте наясно какъв точно е проблема с който се сблъскват героите. Описанията на ЛИвърпул, в който се развива действието, са толкова живи, че става ясно защо Стивън Кинг предполага, че самоя град е злодея, а не Кристофър или, задочно, Джон Стронг. Което пък поне малко е допринесло за Дери.
  
  Разследващ писател, обсебен от крайно кървави престъпления, е решил да пише нова книга. На прицел са няколко мистериозни случки, за които е сигурен, че е отговорен негов бивш съученик от гимназията. Той се свързва с няколко роднини на предполагаемите жертви - детска учителка, чийто брат е загинал в катастрофа и после някой преминаващ случайно е задигнал ръката му; собственик на кино, чиято майка е починала от удар след като някой е убил кучито ѝ; млад уличен артист, чиято котка е наполовина изядена. Те провеждат няколко интервюта с хора от миналото на предполагаемия убиец и скоро нещата започват да изглеждат доста по-мрачни от обикновена социопатщина.
  
  Има го онзи момент, където до последно се чудиш дали всичко е плод на случайни съвпадения и антагонистът не е просто жертва на обстоятелствата или са замесени сили отвъд приетите за нормални. Някой от разказите направо ти изправят косата, без да си наясно защо точно.
  
  Героите ми бяха леко дразнещи, честно казано, а финалът малко претупан, но хей, говорим за първи роман на човека, който ще нарекат най-големия хорър писател на Острова. Класата си личи.
  След "Паразитът" се бях зарекъл да прочета нещо от по-късните му неща, а стана точно обратното, та вина си имам и аз. Ама тази си стоеше на киндъла поне от три години, а ме мързеше да търся нещо друго. Моята книга има разкошен послеслов, писан 20 години след издаването на романа за първи път, изпълнен е с доволно количество скромност и самоирония, а показва и някой аспекти на занаята с които се е сблъсквал всеки решил да твори в дебрите на макабреното, явно половин век не е променил нищо или ние сме си с половин век назад. Или и двете.
• 
  Rowan MacBean

  I had some doubts about this book pretty far into it, but I'm glad I gave it a chance and finished it. I realized the major plot twist ("at it were," as the author himself says in the afterword) almost the moment it was possible and I thought I was going to have to be bored through more than half of the book until it was revealed at the end. Fortunately, it's actually revealed to the reader and the characters about two-thirds of the way through, and it's dealt with at length instead of in half a chapter of crazy action, like a lot of horror/thriller novels.
  
  It's purple-prosey and might have benefited from some (more?) editing, but if you keep in mind that this was Ramsey Campbell's first novel and cut him a little slack, it's really not a bad piece of horror writing. If this genre is your thing and you're in the mood for brain candy (little to no nutritional value, but quick and tasty), give this book a shot.
• 
  Charles Dee Mitchell

  The second best thing about this book is its title.
  
  The best thing is an incident in the first chapter. After a car crash, the first person on the scene, rather than offering help, steals the severed arm of one of the victims who subsequently bleeds to death.
  
  After that there is a so-so tale of a true crime writer, the sister of the man with the stolen arm, another man whose mother was eaten on after dying of a heart attack, and a young hippie street performer. (This was written in 1976.) About halfway through there is a twist that will come as a surprise to anyone who hasn't taken a couple of minutes out of reading the first half to figure out what is going to happen.
  
  This is yet another Ramsey Campbell novel that comes slathered in praise from other horror writers and is described as more frightening than The Exorcist. I don't get it.
  
  What Campbell does best is capture the beat-down world of Liverpool in the 1970's.
• 
  Katsumi

  Campbell's style is extremely strange; his prose is cool, almost icy, and his characterizations unsympathetic in the extreme. All this, however, makes this novel somehow more affecting and horrifying than a more dramatic approach would have. This grisly tale of an evil child (told with overtones of Satanism and Black Magic) set against the somewhat drab and mundane backround of modern Liverpool, sets your teeth on edge from the first page and holds you spellbound. The undramatic way Campbell handles his tabloid-style subject matter lends an extra chill to the book that engulfs the reader as well.
• 
  Debra

  Stephen King recommended book and author.
  
  Book noted as "important to the genre we have been discussing" from
  Danse Macabre, published in 1981. Book and author discussed in chapter 9 where King also said this about the book: "My Plan is to discuss ten books that seem representative of everything in the genre that is fine; the horror story as both literature and entertainment, a living part of twentieth-century literature..."
  
• 
  Cameron Trost

  I read this book many years ago when I was a teenager but could never remember who wrote it. Today, I found out it was Ramsey Campbell, who is one of Britain's most famous horror writers. How could I give a book that has stayed in my memory for so many years a lower rating than 5 stars?
• 
  Courtney

  Bleak and tense.
  
  Clare Frayn was giving her brother a ride home on night when someone ran in front of her car and caused an accident. Her brother died instantly, but they never found his arm. The man who ran in front of the car seemingly disappeared around a corner shortly after the accident, carrying something looking suspiciously like an arm...
  
  A couple of months later, popular true-crime writer Edmund Hall contacts Clare for help in researching his latest book, "Satan's Cannibal," about the man he is certain was responsible for Clare's brother's death. As a child, Hall went to school in Clare's neighborhood with a creepy kid named Christopher Kelly. Kelly was a maniac who attacked, killed and ate small animals - and badly scared the school bully by nearly biting off his nose.
  
  Clare and Edmund play detective, with a few friends, to track Kelly down. Of course, with that much attention coming his way, it can't be too long before Kelly turns the tables, and comes looking for them...
  
  
• 
  Jade

  This was an interesting one--I was not loving it at the beginning because it was throwing me off kilter a lot but that came to be a part of the fun. A very quick read, 153 pages including the afterword by the author (which was terribly charming in and of itself--almost an apology for any flaws--very sweet). Creepy without being terrifying and for me, quite original--there was a twist in the middle I did not see coming (I admit, I am slow about such things but don't hate--it makes reading more fun for me than it does for wise asses). Another reason to keep reading Ramsey Campbell.
• 
  Amanda

  I don't know if my mood wasn't right for this book, if I wasn't used to Campbell's style, or if it really was just a dumb book, but I hated this. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I even finished it other than that I wanted to see if there was going to be a big reveal.
  
  The story was stilted, the characters were unlikable, and the plot was contrived to get from one "disturbing" scene to the next.
  
  I'm going to try Campbell again in the future, but it's going to be awhile.
• 
  Jim Smith

  'Doll' is a vivid example of Campbell's literary genius for unsettling descriptive prose. Although the plotting doesn't hold up (the initial conceit of them stumbling upon the killer due to a childhood recollection is impossible to buy) and the characterisation lacking compared to a King or Straub novel, what matters is that this is a creepy book with a powerfully disquieting atmosphere of menace throughout. Campbell is a master of mise en scène.
• 
  J.w. Schnarr

  A Slow burner, and the ending seemed like it didn't really fit the story, but Ramsey Campbell can put words to paper in a way few others can. Beautifully written, so much so you may not care as much about the ending or the fact that he gives away the mystery in the last 50 pages or so...
• 
  Tom Britz

  Ramsey Campbell is considered a top name in the horror field. This is his first novel and he is clearly not in top form here. There are glimpses however of better things to come. This is also my first time reading him, so it will be interesting to watch how he grew.
• 
  Oliver Clarke

  Review coming soon on scifiandscary.com
• 
  Isabella

  Poor characterisation, lacklustre prose, far too much extraneous detail and a plot line that goes downhill after the first chapter but the title is great.
  
  1.5/5
• 
  Thomas

  Earlier this year, when I decided to tackle all of Charles Grant's fiction, I remembered that I had never read much of Ramsey Campbell, either. Both authors are well known in horror circles for their own brands of "quiet horror", and when I finished off Grant's works, I decided to start with Campbell's body of work next. I've only read a small number of Campbell's works ("The Words That Count" being the one that had the strongest impact on me), and considering that he's considered a modern master of the genre, I figured it would be a good project to take up after Grant.
  
  This wasn't my first time reading The Doll Who Ate His Mother. When I was in high school, I was such a Stephen King junkie that I pretty much read just his books, along with any books he recommended. That was how I discovered Peter Straub, Shirley Jackson, and the Dell/Abyss line, and when I saw that King had no small amount of praise for The Doll in Danse Macabre, I figured it would be worth my time to read. As I recall, I didn't get around to reading it until I was in college, and what I remember of the book (nothing at all, which is a bit of a surprise, given the opening chapter) suggests that I was underwhelmed.
  
  The thing is, the kind of horror I was reading then is very different from the horror Campbell writes. I didn't appreciate Charles Grant back then, and this book, which wasn't just a huge departure in style for me, but was also full of British terms and slang that were slowing me down, didn't speak much to me, either. Today, I still have trouble reading the book because Campbell uses an awkward narrative style. There were sentences that took me two or three reads to understand just what he was trying to say, and there were some scenes that were downright confusing the way they jumped from person to person without any real segue between them. One particular sentence that stood out to me was in a passage where Campbell was describing the setting on the street (emphasis mine):
  
  Beyond the wire fences at the edge of the pavement, people emerged from small shops with the evening newspaper. Buses honked; ducks flew over them back to the park, honking. Children watched a large green maggot writhing in televisions.
  
  I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Is it symbolic, or literal? Is this a reference to a children's show in England? Is it supposed to be surrealism? Campbell doesn't elaborate on it; he just moves on with the narrative, as if that one sentence makes perfect sense. I was stumped on it for a minute or two, searching for further context in the surrounding paragraphs.
  
  Overall, the story here isn't very interesting. It starts off well, and shows some potential, but then it just devolves into uninteresting characters doing uninteresting things. I had my suspicions as to who was going to turn out to be the antagonist, and was proven right, but much earlier in the story than I expected. Then the story became about the chase, but it wasn't exciting, nor was it engaging. It just became a matter of waiting to see how it ended.
  
  This was Campbell's first novel, so I don't want to give up on him completely for misstepping, but I do wonder what it was about this novel that made it such a classic. Aside from King making a big deal about it, T.E.D. Klein did, too, especially around the time of its release. It didn't feel atmospheric, and the characters all felt dull and two-dimensional. The reveal happened too early, and the ending came too quickly. Tack on a conclusion that doesn't answer any questions nor add anything to the story, and I'm mystified. Is it just a bad novel, or am I just a bad reader for not getting it?
• 
  Andy

  Even when I don't LOVE a Campbell novel, I always find them highly enjoyable, and most notably: I keep returning to him.
  
  I've heard mixed reviews on his first novel, but I was curious, and ultimately quite impressed. It's no masterpiece, but the story grabbed me from the start with such an inexplicable, weird event and this sets an eerie tone that's maintained well throughout. There's quite a few memorable moments which are pretty damn scary too.
  
  The urban grittiness comes through here almost better than anything else I've read by Campbell (6 novels, 3 story collections). Liverpool is as a place full of urban blight, yet also has a very "alive" flair of 70's culture. I would say the language here is more surreal than I've found in some of Campbell's later works.
  
  Some examples...
  
  Describing a mirror in a shop: "The convex mirror overhead sucked up their heads from their dwindling bodies."
  
  A drive at night: "Clare drove by, into the flood of orange light. The light covered everything, thick as paint. It sank oppressively into the car, filling it with shadows that moved like submarine vegetation as the lamps sailed repetitively by."
  
  A particularly surreal passage about a bus ride: "The driver had been playing ninepins with the press of passengers in the aisle; the bus swung a child screaming at the length of his mother’s arm, too far ahead for Clare to reach [...] the cramped ventilation whose breeze came nowhere near her face, the soft thighs that thumped her shoulder as passengers rocked in the aisle, the flaw in the window glass that pinched thin everything that passed before letting go with a jerk..."
  
  Walking in a park at night: "As she talked George glanced about constantly, at the trees. She looked, and saw what perhaps he was seeing: great feathers against the sky, conical leafy beehives as high as a house, swelling billows like smoke from a factory chimney, a bent old man scratching his armpit beneath a covering of shaggy lumps of dust. Beneath she could make out the winter patterns, thick vertical piping, candelabras sprouting candelabras sprouting candelabras, intricate webs of twigs gliding over one another and changing, all standing still against the sky—until a branch stood still almost into her face and she slipped on a twig."
  
  Campbell at his best is always giving glimpses of horror, fooling us into maybe seeing things which aren't there, but put the hint of it into the mind. In his first novel this isn't as well-developed, but still comes through at times.
  
  In one effective example, a man walking a deserted street late at night has the following encounter: "It was laughing at him. It had come to the window to jeer. The wide mouth in the flat, drooping, almost noseless face hung open; the pink tongue lolled out, shaking; the small eyes stared at him. He had to cross to the pavement before he made out that it was a bulldog."
  
  It has been my experience so far that I usually like Campbell's early work the most. I wouldn't say his later work isn't as good, it's just my preference.