The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell 1978 Paperback Horror Classic

The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell 1978 Paperback Horror Classic

<Condition is Good+ as Pictured> (normal wear with markings, visible edge-wear, light creasing/rubbing, corners chipped, toning to interior pages, afew page corners are folded) size is approximately 7” X 4.25”

—The Doll Who Ate His Mother is Ramsey Campbell’s first novel. He was already a veteran of short fiction. As a debut novel this book is astonishing. I don’t think it’s Campbell’s best. No, not by a long shot. I am partial to The Wise Friend, or perhaps Incarnate. The Doll Who Ate His Mother is raw, charged with energy, and is an anomaly in horror fiction: It is actually frightening.

The novel begins with a young woman named Clare who is reluctantly giving her ne’er-do-well disc jockey brother a late night ride home. It’s a surrealistic night, and Campbell puts his hallucinogenic prose to excellent effect. A strange man appears in front of the car, and the brakes fail. There is an accident and Clare’s brother is injured and he is belimbed. The mysterious figure is seen darting away into the night clutching something in his arms.

Investigations into the situation lead Clare, a true crime author, a theatre owner, and a previous victim of the strange man into a dark and terrifying search for the legacy of an alleged Satanist. The story unfolds into a grisly scenario of terror.

With The Doll Who Ate His Mother Ramsey Campbell manages to write a story that is subtle and also deeply grotesque. He never needs to linger too long on gory details. Campbell sets a tableau and his reader must fill in the details. I think this approach is much more difficult than spelling out disgusting image after image. I also think imaginative readers will find it more disturbing.




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