[Book Review] ‘The Flaw in the Crystal and Other Uncanny Stories’

Weird fiction is a notoriously difficult genre to define. It lingers, surreptitiously, in the borderlands between the realms of more traditional horror, science fiction, and even decadent romance. Often identifiable more for what it isn’t rather than what it is, if there’s one persistent theme then it’s one of isolation. Or, put perhaps more accurately, of separateness. I say “separateness” because weird fiction is interested in far more than simply physical isolation. Characters in weird tales regularly find themselves removed from their daily environments, whether that’s by travel to strange and distant lands or through the more metaphysical experience of being “lost in time and space,” but that could easily be said for characters from other genres. What makes this removal weird is when the physical isolation leads to experiences the character not only can’t explain, or sometimes even articulate, to their fellow humans but which changes their ability to reason in a way that makes them different from their fellow humans. They become other, separated; what Lovecraft, driven by his repugnance at physical intimacy, would’ve thought of as an Outsider. 

What, though, if there was another side to this equation? What if, rather than becoming separated and different by extremity, human relationships could intermingle and overlap? What happens beyond mere intimacy and empathy, where the boundaries between individuals start to blur and interpenetrate? What would it be like if love truly were stronger than death?

These are questions that May Sinclair seeks to explore in this collection of deeply uncanny tales.

A deeply private woman—editor Mike Ashley tells us that “she kept no diary and destroyed most of her personal papers”—it perhaps seems initially strange that Sinclair should be so concerned with the inner workings of relationships and, by extension, the people who make up those relationships but, as Ashley’s introductory biography explains, her own life was scarred by traumatic relationships. When his once-prosperous business started to fail, Sinclair’s father fell into drink and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1881. His daughter was only 18. With family finances now in disarray, the strain of maintaining the household fell onto Sinclair’s brothers. It was a weight that proved too heavy and Sinclair was forced to watch as, one by one, they left home or died themselves. This eventually left Sinclair alone with her mother, a grief-stricken woman who clung obsessively to the memory of the daughter who had been born, and who had died, almost a decade before. Burdened by the weight of her dead brothers and constantly compared to a spectral sibling she had no way of competing with, Sinclair grew up in what must have been an almost unbearably stifling environment; the claustrophobic corridors of a haunted house. 

All of this, naturally, penetrates Sinclair’s writing to varying degrees. Most obviously, “The Intercessor” features a lonely house inhabited by a mother-father-daughter triumvirate and an atmosphere that almost vibrates with unspoken tension. This tension builds to breaking point when Garvin, Sinclair’s narrator, intrudes upon their suffocating grief and witnesses the weeping child-spirit that wanders the house at night. Yet what could have become just another ghost story in weaker hands is made instead into something heartbreaking, where the plaintive ghost stands not for an intruding presence, but rather an absence at the heart of a family hollowed out by the cancerous effects of loss. The parallels with Sinclair’s own family cannot be overstated even if she, sadly, never received the assistance of her own “intercessor.” 

This lingering of strangely ambiguous spirits repeats in other tales from Sinclair. In “The Nature of the Evidence,” one of the few pieces of Sinclair’s writing I was aware of before reading this collection, the newly-bereaved Marston finds that his first, dead wife is not entirely satisfied with his second, living one. Yet, again, where this could easily have become a fairly stereotypical tale of retribution from beyond the grave, Sinclair instead is more interested in what love might become when removed from our “soft and horrible” corporeal bodies. What is most remarkable is that Sinclair achieves this without falling into over-romanticisation or tweeness. The phantasmal perfection of Rosamund, Marston’s first wife, is contrasted with his second wife’s naked and “writhing” body which, as the story builds to its unsettling climax, “drew itself after him, like a worm, like a beast.” The imagery, and the unearthly events it leads to, are shocking even now. They must have been almost unthinkable in 1923. Both “The Token” and “The Victim” approach a similar narrative from different corners of the room; an apparently-wronged spectre lingers beyond its allotted time not to wreak revenge but to bring restitution and heal the fractures their untimely deaths have caused in the living they have left behind. 

Sinclair is a realist, however, and understands that not everything which has been broken can be repaired. In “Portrait of my Uncle” she explores a relationship, much like that between her and her mother, which has become toxic by its unrelenting proximity and how the mental trauma of that toxicity manifests in physical symptoms. “Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched,” perhaps Sinclair’s most famous tale, takes this realism into a more metaphysical arena as the increasingly nightmarish unlives of Oscar and Harriot, corrupted by guilt and lust, crack and repeat and crack once more into a chilling vision of one’s own, personal Hell; “We shall be one flesh and one spirit,” Oscar explains. “One sin repeated for ever and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other.” There is something deeply horrible about “Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched,” far more vile than any more traditional vision of punishment or purgatory, that’s made only more intense by the matter-of-fact way the story unfolds. 

This leaning towards the metaphysical does make some of Sinclair’s work ponderous for the modern reader, however. A large section of “The Finding of the Absolute,” for example, is taken up by a lengthy discussion with the shade of Immanuel Kant which, albeit representative of the philosopher’s thought, doesn’t make entirely riveting fiction. Stranger than this, though, is “The Flaw in the Crystal” itself. By far the longest tale in the collection, almost a novella in itself, the eponymous work introduces us to Agatha who, through some inexplicable “power,” can subtly influence the actions and well-being of others. At least that’s what Agatha believes, and what she leads others to believe. We, as readers, may be more cynical because the small cast of characters spend so much time talking past each other in oblique half-sentences that we’re never entirely sure what it is that they want, or don’t want, in the first place. Agatha is in an adulterous relationship with Rodney Layton, but in a strange contrast to Sinclair’s more explicit work, the extent of that relationship is never really explored. Equally, Harding Powell, an acquaintance of Agatha’s, is suffering from an ill-defined, possibly mental, ailment that has led him and his wife to take lodgings not far from Agatha’s remote cottage. Agatha’s fumbling attempts to make everyone happy through the application of her “Power” fail, inevitably, and a genteel form of mayhem ensues. “The Flaw In The Crystal” is a frustrating piece of writing; the palpably cloying sense of growing hysteria and a genuinely terrifying scene, where Agatha is plagued by visions of Powell’s illness made manifest, are undermined by irritatingly prim characters and a narrative vagueness that doesn’t feel sure of where it’s going, especially when compared to Sinclair’s tighter works.

Overall, The Flaw In The Crystal is very much a mixed bag. It contains some very fine weird tales, with pieces like “The Nature of the Evidence” deserving a far wider readership than Sinclair has been granted, but it can also be hard work in its denser moments. That said, it’s remarkable that Sinclair’s taken a life which could so easily have led to bitterness and mean-spiritedness and used it to fuel some quite beautiful meditations on the nature of love, duty, and forgiveness. For that alone this is a collection well worth the extra effort and readers willing to delve into the uncomfortable weirdness of human relationships pushed to the very brink of extremity will find imagery and ideas that linger long after the final page has been turned.

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Article written by Dan Pietersen

Daniel Pietersen is the editor of I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist, part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird' series. He is also a recurring guest lecturer for the Romancing the Gothic project and a regular contributor to publications like Dead Reckonings, Revenant and Horror Homeroom. Daniel lives in a very old house in a very old town and is slowly becoming very old himself. You can find more of his work at pietersender.wordpress.com and pietersender.substack.com and follow him on Twitter, @pietersender.

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