Ambit #192

There are only three stories in issue #192 of Ambit, the first of which, “Mrs Cohen’s Conversion” by Carol K. Howell, exemplifies what appears to be a theme common to all of them, that of transformation in response to nature.

It’s a darkly comic fantasy in which the narrator, academic Marvin Cohen, tries to understand and respond to his wife’s conversion to Enki, an ancient pagan religion which seems to draw on a belief in the power of nature to transform its believers. Complicating matters is Marvin’s obsession with obtaining the tenured post of Schiffelbein Chair at the nondescript university at which he is employed. There’s also his Jewishness, which makes him more of an outsider among his Wasp colleagues and more sceptical about his wife’s dalliance with Enki. In fact, he views her conversion as little more than an attempt to get him to pay more attention to her, but when she starts inviting his colleagues and their partners round for introductory sessions and workshops on Enki, Marvin sees his chance at the Schiffelbein Chair being seriously jeopardized. Although largely comic in tone, there is an undercurrent of menace, even paranoia, to the story, particularly as it builds to its climax, where Marvin’s failure to understand what is happening to the community around him brings to mind Edward Woodward’s police sergeant’s fatal misinterpretation of events on Summerisle in The Wicker Man.

A striking illustration from a story by Douglas Thompson graces the cover of the magazine. A blood red sun is glimpsed through a forest, hanging low over the horizon. A man stands with his back to us, gazing at the fireball. The painting conjures up an air of menace and illusion that captures vividly the mood of “Sylvow” a surrealist fantasy, itself an extract from a longer piece, to be published in Elastic Press’s slipstream anthology later in the year. Perhaps the fact that the painting, and three others that accompany the story, are all by the author’s brother, Ally, has something to do with the seamlessness between word and text here. The story’s fragmented narrative moves between Claudia, a vet and mother; Anton, a patient of Claudia’s psychiatrist husband; Leo, Claudia’s brother; and Vivienne, Leo’s estranged wife. All of these characters are affected to varying degrees by their contact with the natural world and seem to sense that it—nature—is changing in response to their impact on it. Some—Leo in particular, who has uncovered some of the secrets of a mysterious hidden realm called Sylvow—are more conscious and receptive of these changes than others. Others can sense the imminence of transformation but are as yet uncertain as to what it means for them. Certainly, some of what is revealed in a letter from Leo hints at nature’s resistance to man’s intrusion and despoliation of the forest. It’s never easy to offer anything more than a tentative opinion on an extract from a longer work, but with its visual allusions to Max Ernst, and literary echoes of J. G. Ballard, William Kotzwinkle’s Dr. Rat, and Jonathan Carroll’s “Friend’s Best Man,” among others, “Sylvow” offers a mysterious and tantalising glimpse into what promises to be a rich and compelling fantasy.

The final story is the only disappointment. Ian MacDonald’s “Winter in Arabia with a Model and a Camel” is as pretentious and shallow as its title suggests. While both Thompson and Howell use the tropes of the fantastic in unique and compelling ways while at the same time creating vivid and fully realized protagonists, Macdonald’s piece struggles to conjure up the sense of alienation and disconnection portrayed by, for example, Jack Nicholson’s character in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. The author namechecks his reference points in the short biography that follows the story—”Bukowski, Irvine Welsh and Hemmingway” (sic)—and while it dwells on recreating the emotional blankness induced by narcotics and alcohol, there’s precious little of Hemingway’s narrative economy and nothing at all of his insight and ability to convey the reality of a relationship between two individuals. While MacDonald does manage to set up an intriguing scenario—young model and her dependent husband find themselves mysteriously stranded in the Arabian desert—there’s an absence of explanation as to how they got there. There are vague hints beforehand—Chad, the drunken husband, accepts drinks from an Arab man in a bar while failing to challenge his veiled insults—but nothing that convinces. It seems as if the author has deployed an element of fantasy for no other reason than as a shorthand manner of getting his characters where he wants them to be. It smacks of cynicism and laziness, and it simply doesn’t work. Even then the story might have succeeded if either Chad or his junkie wife, Sandra, had managed to evoke my sympathies, but neither character spoke to me. Instead, like their author, they simply stood around and struck already over-familiar poses.

There are a series of interesting collages—”Cycling around Spain Found Objects”—by Ken Cox and some grotesque but endearing images by Gavin Thorogood which play on the theme of transformation, as does “Generatico Aequivoca,” a series of macabre illustrations rendered in a compelling horror comic book style by Christopher Roantree. There are also quite a number of poems, the best of which was his last poem for the magazine from regular Ambit contributor, the late Vernon Scannell’s “For Those Reliefs …” This is a marvellous, funny, wise, and earthy poem that conveys the author’s self-deprecating wit, honesty, and above all, his humanity.