By BILL GARNETT (Sphere; 1982)

This early 1980s paperback original is now, it seems, completely forgotten. That’s a shame, as THE SHADOW (admittedly not an especially great title) is a veritable master class in psycho-horror that holds up beautifully.

… a veritable master class in psycho-horror that holds up beautifully.

Author Bill Garnett (of DOWN BOUND TRAIN and THE CRONE) relates this twisted tale in the form of a confessional by Stephen Clements, a British school teacher, to an unidentified someone (a Japanese someone, based on the politically incorrect epithets Clements uses). His recollection begins with the death of his father, after which things change mightily for the troubled Mr. Clements.

Clements finds people looking straight through him as if he doesn’t exist. He often has to shout to be heard (an especially pressing problem given his profession), his strength declines to the point that he can barely open a door or even part a curtain, and he suffers from debilitating fevers that come and go. “I felt my exclusion was so total, I was being pushed into another dimension” he proclaims, and that feeling is only heightened when he’s faced with monstrous people bearing faces that seem “unfinished.”

Worst of all, Clements’ deteriorating marriage is becoming even more strained, with his wife Claire growing increasingly distant and unpleasant, and he growing quite intolerant of her moods. His behavior in public also changes, with this formerly meek, well behaved fellow finding himself doing things like pushing a young boy down an escalator, killing a squirrel and exposing himself to patrons of the ultra-swank Ritz Hotel—where “no-one, not one of them, took any notice at all.”

This novel begins in the manner of a paranoid Richard Matheson fantasy (albeit with a gritty-bordering-on-hallucinatory depiction of London that recalls Ramsey Campbell) and climaxes like something by Philip K. Dick as Clements’ sense of exclusion becomes so severe his reality decays entirely.  In this otherworldly realm furniture dissolves into mush and mirrors open into alternate universes where the faceless people mentioned earlier reside.  This leads to Clements electing to perform “the ultimate act of reality” in a desperate effort to make things right.

…one of the most harrowing and unnerving depictions of first-person insanity I’ve ever read.

THE SHADOW is, quite simply, one of the most harrowing and unnerving depictions of first-person insanity I’ve ever read.  If the novel occasionally seems repetitive (in Clements’ constant complaints about nobody noticing him), incoherent (in the intentionally jumbled recountings which at times grow quite scatterbrained) and unpleasant (particularly in the final pages), that’s the price it pays for its author’s focus, integrity and sheer skill.