Somebody's Voice (Fiction Without Frontiers)

 “My stepfather nearly killed my mother, and I used to wish he’d killed me.”

– Ramsey Campbell, Somebody’s Voice

🚕I received an e-ARC of this story from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. Somebody’s Voice (2021) will release on 22nd June!🚕

So this was the second ARC I requested and was approved for via NetGalley, and I did so based entirely upon the author – Ramsey Campbell is well-known to me for his stellar contribution to the horror genre, so when I saw this, one of his upcoming releases, was open for requests, I absolutely had to try to get onboard. Somebody’s Voice follows the lives of two wildly different people, as they become increasingly entwined on both a professional and personal level. The relationship between the pair becomes more complex over time, and they realise they may have more in common with one another than they initially thought.

Successful crime writer Alex Grand is in hot water professionally, as his latest book release has been widely condemned for its depiction of two extremely sensitive topics; those of child abuse and trans lives. In an effort to save face and rescue his career, Alex’s publishers offer him an olive branch, in the form of a ghostwriting prospect for a memoir of abuse. The survivor and subject of the book is a man named Carl, who was formerly known as Carla, prior to transitioning. As Alex investigates his subject and the book, he finds that certain aspects of Carl’s account may not be so honest, and what he unearths also causes some of his own childhood memories to resurface too.

As mentioned, I dove right into this one based on the acclaim and reputation of its writer alone, without knowing anything whatsoever about the narrative, or even what genre it was going to belong to. Ramsey Campbell is, quite indisputably, one of the biggest names and a titan of British horror, science-fiction, and fantasy, an accolade he has held and solidified over a career spanning more than fifty years. He’s an author I’ve loved and respected for such a long time. So it really gives me no joy to say that this book did not live up to his usual high quality affairs whatsoever.

Even within the first couple of chapters, I could tell this was going to be an extremely controversial and thoroughly contentious read. Themes of child abuse in Carla’s story, and trans rights in Alex’s, are introduced right from the opening, and these two strands are intertwined closely in the overarching narrative – and its herein, in the joining of these two plots, that the majority of Somebody’s Voice’s problems lie.

If you are going to write a book in which trans lives are at the forefront of the story, it is crucial to depict it in a conscientious and respectful way. I don’t think that Somebody’s Voice manages to do that. It’s not just the fact that Carla’s transitioning is directly tied to the themes of childhood abuse (which is problematic on so many levels in itself), its the perpetuation of gendered stereotypes too, of masculinity and femininity, and how certain actions or attributes are suggestive of gender – which I don’t feel I need to say, is a ridiculously outdated viewpoint on gender in this day and age. Scenes like where Alex shakes Carl’s hand, and suggests the daintiness of his handshake is indicative of traces of the feminine in him. Things like this are peppered throughout the narrative, and it’s just so backward.

The irony is not lost on me, that this book whose plot concerns an author who mishandles and misrepresents trans issues is, in itself, often disrespectful on the subject. The thing is, even in spite of the triggering topics, in spite of the woeful handling of certain issues, there are glimmers of Campbell’s typical flair for storytelling here, which just makes it all the more infuriating. Campbell really can have an enviable way with words, an aspect that is evident in the way he writes Carla’s side of the story. I thought that the deception of her abuse at the hands of her stepfather as a child was very effectively done – it felt scarily genuine and realistic in a truly terrifying way. I’m not sure exactly which decade Carla’s childhood is supposed to be set in (I can’t recall that it is ever mentioned), but it felt very much like a Britain of somewhere around the 1960s to the 1980s, based upon the way the characters spoke and acted.

This section, and the locations it takes place in, is so vividly depicted. Every character in Carla’s story was believable, and often so infuriating, in a most excellent way – what I mean by that, is that their dismissal of Carla’s claims of abuse was gut-wrenching and chilling in its authenticity. From the girl’s mother, to the neighbours and their daughter Bridie, all of them were incredibly well-written, and the way they acted made me furious with how realistic it felt. The abuser in question, Carla’s stepfather Malcolm Randal(l), simply made my skin crawl with his grotesqueness and deplorable acts.

Most of the problems with Somebody’s Voice lie in the ‘modern’ half of the book, in Alex’s story. As others have said, the dialogue in this part is needlessly opaque, with pretty much every single character talking in a cryptic way. More than all that though, I just didn’t like Alex as a person at all. He was consistently confrontational with everyone, and was lamentably inept and unprofessional with his publishers and the general public. Carl was also poorly written in this section, and despite wanting to supposedly see justice done, he needlessly sabotaged both his own and Alex’s reliability with some truly outlandish and nonsensical actions. The way these two plot-lines tie into one another is disturbing more in the correlation they seem to imply rather than in the context of the plot itself.

To be quite honest, even whilst attempting to process my thoughts on this book and write them down, I still don’t entirely know how I feel about it. I think the best way I can summarize my feelings are as follows; the childhood abuse plot, taken independently, is believable and extremely unsettling. The modern story-line regarding Alex, on the other hand, is confusing and often offensive, with uninteresting characters and wildly unbelievable plot developments. The way these two strands weave together is chaotically jumbled and largely a mess.

In my eyes, this is sadly a misstep for author and publisher, both of whom I’ve loved in the past, and who are usually very reliable when it comes to their output.

VERDICT: Somebody’s Voice is a very confused and confusing read, in my opinion, which, again, is a little ironic given the plot concerns identity crises and the feeling of not knowing oneself. Despite its triggering subject matter, there are some pretty interesting themes at play, but nothing ever comes together in a significant or meaningful way. Couple that with some offensive depictions of trans lives and the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes, and you are left with this; a muddled narrative of some ups and plenty of downs, that doesn’t really have all that much to say on the issues it raises.

For now at least, it’s a ⭐⭐💫/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from this reviewer. I might come back and change that, after thinking on it a while longer. I also want to say a humongous thank you to both the author Ramsey Campbell, publisher Flame Tree Press, and to NetGalley, for providing the ARC and giving me the chance to read and review it early.