It's already been said, but it seems like Campbell should have let this story be told by someone else, someone with the experiences. It's a well-plotted story with interesting and provocative ideas, but I often felt uneasy. I also, personally, have trouble reading about sexual assault on a child. This story surprised me as being from Campbell because it doesn't seem of his wheelhouse judged by what I normally read from him.

My more in-depth review will go online soon.

In the beginning of the book, which hooked me in immediately, Carl Batchelor tells his life story to ghostwriter Alex Grand, which is heartbreaking and in parts difficult to read, as are many biographies and fictional stories centered around abuse.

Overall, the storyline admittedly confused me a bit at the halfway in regards to where it was going and a puzzling ending.

Also, there are different points throughout the book wherein Alex and various characters constant inner monologue and dialogue about questioning the true meaning of what each other says, got to be too much, though I understand it’s meant to be a means to reflect Alex’s insecure mind in some scenes.

There are other misgivings I have that venture into spoiler territory that I won’t reveal.
Not my favorite Campbell book, but most definitely not my last.

Thank you, NetGalley and Flame Tree Press Publishing, for loaning me an eGalley of SOMEBODY’S VOICE in the request of an honest review.

TW/CW – Child Sexual Abuse

4 Stars!

It is always interesting when a favored writer switches genres. Sometimes it can be very good while at other times leaving the beaten path may leave the reader and even the writer feel a bit lost. I really was not sure what to expect when I picked up Somebody's Voice by Ramsey Campbell as it looked different than a lot of his other works but I trust the writer and the publisher, Flame Tree Press, to provide a high quality read so I jumped right in.

Alex Grand had been a successful crime novelist for a while but his most recent book had been heavily criticized for exploiting the victims of abuse. His reputation took a huge hit and he and his publisher decided to take a new direction with his next book. Instead of a crime novel, he was going ghost write an autobiography of an actual victim of abuse. His publisher connected him with Carl Batchelor and Alex begins to learn the story behind Carl and the events of his childhood that led him to change everything about his life in an attempt to escape the past.

As the story begins to unwind, things get to be a bit strange and Alex begins to question what he is doing. There are discrepancies that come forth in Carl's narrative as he details his transition from the abused child Carla to the haunted man Carl that he has become. But the past will not rest easily and Alex is left to grapple with the question of whether the story he has written is real or fiction. Or maybe the past is even darker than Carl is telling and the ghosts that lay there are still seeking revenge.

Somebody's Voice was completely unexpected but it sank its hooks into me right away. The story that began to unfold around Carl/Carla was difficult to read at times but also compelling and almost impossible to put down. It was in some ways like watching a car wreck but also gave a glimpse into the dark side of the human mind and how personal history is formed. Campbell does a good job of balancing the horror of her story with his dark wit to keep the reader from becoming completely lost in the darkness. Make no mistake, this is not horror in the traditional sense, but this novel starts off very dark and horrific in its own right. I almost felt sick. I almost wanted to stop. I just could not put the book down.

I found the second half of Somebody's Voice less compelling than the first half. That is not to say that it was bad by any means. Just that the first half was five stars and the second more three-and-a-half. The plot thickens and more of the story begins to play out in the present tense rather than the past but I just could not get into it quite as much as I did the first half of the novel. I do not want to say it was predictable per se but the shock value was missing. In any event, the novel seemed to slow down for me some as it approached the home stretch but I still enjoyed it all the way through. Campbell has a story to tell and a moral to push and he does it very well in Somebody's Voice. This is not a run of the mill novel. Campbell does push the envelope and puts the reader on edge in this novel. It is definitely a change for him but in reflection not as much as I first thought. This is not a horror novel but it has many of the same psychological elements and the dark humor that I have come to expect from Campbell and that is what makes this novel work. Highly recommended for Campbell's fans and anyone who is not afraid to face the dark side of humanity in an attempt to open minds.

I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. Somebody's Voice is available now

“Somebody’s voice” is so twisted that it left me speechless. I feel it’s one of the best psychologically creepy novels I have read this year.

I have read quite a few of the author’s previous famous works, where he dabbles into the paranormal and supernatural. This book is not that, so you will be disappointed if you expect a gory horror novel. This book, however, is psychologically creepy and frightening and relates more to the horrors of what the human mind can perceive. However, this book is not for everyone. It has themes of child abuse, and I don’t think it would be everyone’s cup of tea.

The author does relate his classic style of writing, where he sets the pace in a slow-burn fashion. We get two storylines, one of Alex, who is ghostwriting a memoir for Carl, and Carla (Carl’s childhood), who talks about the horrors of her childhood. As the story progresses, you slowly start to see both the storyline merge and blur the entire cast of characters. I honestly loved the second half of the book because you don’t know what is happening or who to trust. Some highlights of the book were the catechism incident at the restaurant and when the police make an arrest. This book is probably one of the few where the plot completely engrossed me more than the characters (although there were characters like Randal who creeped me out).

Overall, I have to say that this book surpassed my expectations and made me appreciate the author on a grander level. “Somebody’s Voice” is one of those stories people will love or despise, and I loved reading it.

I probably should have stopped reading this one early on, but I slogged through to the end. The first quarter includes lengthy passages of the book that Alex and Carl are writing. I knew it was going to be about a survivor of abuse but wasn't at all prepared for how graphic the depictions of sexual abuse of a young child would be. The chapters about the writing of the book within a book are rambling and disjointed and the ultimate conclusion wasn't worth reading to get it. I don't know why Netgalley has this book listed as horror.

A super clumsy and potentially damaging depiction of trans lives written by a cis author is not a great look. The dialogue and story was also clunky. Not a great entry into the work of Ramsey Campbell for me!

Let me begin this review by saying how much I LOVE Ramsey Campbell. He is truly a master of the horror genre and many of his books are on my bookshelf. I did not even read anything about this book other than who the author was and immediately requested the eARC from NetGalley. Campbell did not disappoint with his eloquent use of the English language and he is a true storyteller. This book deals with an crime novelist who writes about a character who suffered abuse as a child who transitioned as an adult. This causes the author a good amount of backlash because the author was neither a survivor of abuse not a member of the trans community. His publishing company wants to help the author atone for his faux pas by ghost writing a memoir for an individual who did survive abuse and who is a member of the trans community. Unfortunately, this partnership leads to a story that may not be entirely true. This results in many questions of how people remember events (in particular traumatic events) and how those memories impact others. Campbell’s prose is always a delight to read, but there was some confusion as to what actually happened that never fully gets resolved which left me wanting for more. Trigger warning: there are descriptions of childhood sexual abuse which may be disturbing for some readers.

The more I read from Ramsey Campbell, the more aware I am of three continuing aspects:
1. Although he is not Lovecraftian and instead he is in a category all his own, Mr. Campbell is keenly aware of the world as layered, as if the reality we encounter and experience is but a thinly veiled surface above what is real, akin to a sheet of ice in winter atop an unfrozen lake. His characters,  many of whom appear either schizophrenic or possibly possessors of extremely heightened awareness, often experience through many senses that Otherness existing just beyond, or below, our consciousness.
2. It seems to me that Parasitism is a frequent recurring theme, appearing often in the scenes where the protagonist "sees beyond." An example in SOMEBODY'S VOICE is writer (and newly ghostwriter) Alex Grand noticing pedestrians on cell phones and considering the phones appearing to be "battening on them," a sort of apparently symbiotic relationship which is in reality as much parasitic,  as say, Cordyceps Fungus in ants. Such reflection from our characters subtly ratchets that chill of intensifying horror, a subtlety at which Mr. Campbell is a past master.
3. Many of his characters,  which is not unlikely given their "ability " to perceive beyond,  experience issues of identity,  their own and others', and concerns of their own mental stability. This is especially prevalent in SOMEBODY'S VOICE, a novel ostensibly dealing with the horrifying reality of hidden child abuse and its ramifications, plus the multilayered complications of transgenderedness in a basically homophobic, closed-minded, reality. All of this is essential to the story; yet, just as Campbell's characters "see below," or "beyond," there is another existence of this story below and beyond and apart from the ostensible story line: Identity. Mirroring. Memory. What do we know? What do we remember? Is Memory malleable? Is Memory what we recall, or what someone else tells us? Can we trust our own "Voice?" Or must we rely on someone else's "Voice?" Ultimately: Who Are We?

Caution: The nature of the story line is emotionally difficult and psychologically wrenching. Readers who have experienced any type of child abuse (or adult domestic abuse) directly or through loved ones or friends should be aware that the subject matter is likely to be triggering.

“An absolute master of modern horror. And a damn fine writer at that” - Guillermo del Toro.

This is the screaming blurb that greets you on the cover of Somebody's Voice, the latest offering from Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell. I'm going to preface this review by stating that I've never read anything by Campbell before and I requested this book solely based off his his glowing reputation in the horror community. However, I believe I was mistaken in starting here.

I'm going to be blunt. Somebody's Voice is an absolute mess of a novel. While I was reading it, I was actively comparing it to rubbernecking at a car crash scene where I was slowly chugging along only due to some sort of morbid interest in what bizarre and implausible turn the narrative would take next. We are introduced to Alex, a "crime" novelist fresh off a book that's been widely panned for its depiction of trans characters. Alex, who has no experience with trans people at all, is then inexplicably chosen to ghost-write a memoir for a trans survivor of child abuse. The narrative follows this by alternating between scenes of Carl's (the subject of the memoir) abusive childhood and Alex's struggles with his publisher and writing. The main problem for me was the portrayal of the two main characters. Carla/Carl is shown to be untrustworthy at best and a villain at worst, and with Alex we have the author trying far to hard to portray an unreliable narrator which results in muddled confusion every time his chapters come up. It eventually becomes completely unclear as to what, if anything, Alex is responsible for throughout the narrative and the dialogue of the characters seems set up purposely to mislead. There are multiple instances of almost dreamlike dialogue between the characters where they seem to make bizarre factual mistakes and misidentify characters and their actions, which I would imagine is Campbell trying to reinforce Alex's unreliability. This would be fine if there were any payoff to the endless red herrings, but...there isn't. The conclusion serves to merely leave the reader wondering if it was worth it to get there.

As other reviews have also touched on more eloquently, the depiction of trans characters is absolutely problematic here, something that comes with some unbelievable irony considering Alex's character arc. The book comes off as a bizarre and meta experiment best left on the cutting room floor. I'm not closing the door on Ramsey Campbell based off of this novel, but this was unfortunately not the entry point that a new reader of his should have taken.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Flame Tree Press**

I have not read anything by Ramsey Campbell before, but my research informs me that he is ‘one of the great masters in horror fiction’. His previous books seem to be traditional horror stories containing ghosts, monsters and demons. However, if you are expecting this kind of book from ‘Somebody’s Voice’, I would step away now and read one of his many other stories instead!

There are a lot of ironies to reading this book. At the beginning we meet Alex - an author whose books are being boycotted due to his poor handling of child abuse and transgender issues within its narrative. Somebody’s Voice seems to have gotten a lot of low-star reviews on Goodreads, most stating Campbell’s bad handling of transgender issues within the book.
Also ironic is the fact that Alex is described as a proof-reader - he edits typos on the boycott placards that are being waved against him. This entire book is in dire need of a proof-read and a good edit itself. I understand that I was given an ARC copy, however having read over 300 ARCs now I am used to poor formatting or the occasional typo. There are a lot of sentences in this book that make no sense, for example: ‘And are we to be to what took you there?’. These are littered throughout the book and are really jarring and confusing. I really hope that these will be corrected before the publishing date in a month’s time.

There are also a lot of plot points in Somebody’s Voice which make no sense and as such make the book feel completely unrealistic. For example, I don’t understand why a publisher would choose an author whose books are currently being boycotted for bad handling of child abuse and transgender issues to ghost-write a memoir for a transgender person on their experience of child abuse.
I also didn’t understand why Alex was ghost-writing the book and yet his name is on the cover, he is invited to all the press events and even interrupts those events multiple times to talk about how he wrote the book.
It was also so frustrating that no-one in the book seemed to understand how writing works. Friends, family and strangers all assumed for some reason that Alex was writing about his own experiences which made no sense. If I help write a biography for Katie Price, for example, no-one would even dream to think that I was actually Katie Price – I’d just be an author being paid to help write a biography.

The book alternates chapters between author Alex and extracts from the book he is writing which focuses on Carl/Carla’s childhood experiences. I felt these chapters were really well written and engaging. They are of course hard to read and deal with very sensitive subject matter, but the characters were so realistically frustrating and those chapters really transported you back to another time when religion was at the forefront and children were seen but not heard. However, I don’t really feel that the transgender elements were explored in this at all. Carl seems to make their choice to transition solely based on seeing an old friend make the change themselves. This comes out of no-where and it feels a bit like wanting to follow the latest fashion trend rather than a deep-seated unhappiness with the gender Carl was born into. I feel that the book would have been a lot stronger if it had just focussed on the child abuse rather than the author trying to write about something he has no experience in.

The chapters that feature Alex are quite frankly a mess. I understand that the author is trying to be clever and the whole thing feels very ‘meta’. There are times when characters completely mistake something simple in a conversation in a way that is not at all realistic. I went through so many ideas as to what was really happening – was Carl not a real person at all? Just an alter-ego for Alex? Was Carl using Alex to get back at him for his previous book? Was Lee actually just Alex? By the end everything was spiralling out of control but the conclusion did nothing for me. I still don’t really understand the truth of what was going on. The final chapter also throws up a lot of uncomfortable questions about what it means to be transgender – it isn’t a virus you can catch or an identity you can just put on whenever you fancy!

Overall, Somebody’s Voice is a mess – the author is trying to be clever but ends up just insulting and confusing his readers. Thank you to NetGalley & Flame Tree Press for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll start by saying this is much less a horror than a mystery, and it took me some time to adjust my expectations- in fact probably until my expectations were reset again by a growing sense of paranoia, verging into psychological horror and fundamental questions of identity. This is all handled interestingly, with a distinct sense of confusion and dread building.
What was less successful for me was Carl’s story - as a general rule I don’t read the type of misery memoir that was being told here, and - whilst effectively told - I wasn’t looking to read it here either. I felt the general approach to identity politics and the trans community was at the border of being uncomfortable - the character makes mistakes, but Campbell I think steers the fine line away from making similar errors. Others may disagree, and in that sense it’s a brave choice.

So all told something of a curate’s egg - I enjoyed the last half much more than the first half or so, and I gave serious thought to not continuing past the earlier scenes of abuse. I’m glad I persevered, but it’s best to go in with open eyes. Not my favourite from Campbell, but such a prolific author will be back with something new before long.

The latest novel from Bram Stoker Awards winner Ramsey Campbell is a mystery almost up until its final pages.

Campbell does a real job of getting the reader to scratch their head and wondering if we are dealing with an unreliable narrator.

We follow the journey of Alex, an author who has been tasked ghost writing the life story of Carl, a man who has transitioned from being a woman after being abused as a child.

This was quite a difficult read to begin with as we are taken through Carl’s memories in graphic detail in some cases. It is interesting to see an author tackle transgenderism when attributed to historical sexual abuse.

Things do become quite convoluted as things progress and the lines between Alex and Carl become blurry and it will certainly put anyone off becoming a ghost writer anytime soon.

Carl is quite a difficult character to empathise with despite the abuse claims, as his vagueness of most things and projecting onto Alex becomes quite infuriating. Alex on the other hand exists in a grey area with some chapters allowing us into his world whereas others he appears quite distant and forgetful.

Somebody’s Voice is an intriguing read for the most part but it will certainly require patience to get through some of its slower chapters.

I’m tempted to say this is the book where one of our leading horror writers, Ramsey Campbell, writes a non-horror novel — only, you might not notice, considering the levels of anxiety involved. So instead I’ll say that here Campbell is writing in his own special genre, what he has termed “the comedy of paranoia”, and a distinctly dark sort of comedy it is.

It could also be called a deal-with-the-devil tale, as, although there’s no devil, protagonist Alex Grand certainly enters into a bargain with seriously unintended consequences. A crime writer with a long-running series, Grand is criticised over his latest novel, which dips perhaps too superficially into the world of child abuse and gender transition. His publisher, at the aptly-named Tiresias Press, suggests he helps write the memoir of an abuse survivor, gender-transitioned Carl, as a way of making amends. (And we get the chapters from Carl’s early life as Carla as part of the narrative, which make for some pretty uncomfortable reading.) But it’s from this point things start to go a little weird for Alex. He begins to find it hard to recall which passages of Carl’s story he embellished as part of making them into a readable narrative, and even starts recalling passages of Carl’s story as though they were his own memories. And when some parts of the Carl’s story prove to have been somewhat less than true, the need to disentangle an already knotty mess of fiction, memory, lies and truth starts to push Alex over the edge.

I’ve said this is a book written in Campbell’s most darkly comic tone, but don’t expect punchlines or a laughter track. (Perhaps a little, as with the Shakespearean-themed restaurant, Aye There’s The Rib, with its punning titles for menu items.) This is squirm-inducing comedy, written with such a straight face it’s easy to miss at first. Campbell has always been a master at those frustrating conversations where everything you say is misunderstood in the worst possible way, and here he has driven that to the max. He’s also great at having the plot pull the ground out from under you at the end of each chapter, and that’s another thing on full display here. Once it gets its grip on you, Somebody’s Voice keeps the anxiety at boiling point. In part a satire on modern cultural sensitivities, in part the story of a writer on the verge of a nervous breakdown, in part a novel about the destabilising effect of trauma on identity, and the borderland between imagination and memory — it might even be an allegory of the creative process — Somebody’s Voice is something new from Campbell, yet distinctly his own.

I've read a few Ramsey Campbell novels now and enjoyed them, however, this one I did not. Clunky writing, lazy editing and issues with the depiction of trans characters. It's a nope from me.

“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.

Wow, that was soooooo disappointing..
The book started strong and promising, i felt so hooked even though the topic wasn't my cup of tea, i was really curious how Alex and Carl's lives would intervene with each other,, but then the downward spiral began.
The events and dialogues felt forced and contrived, and the book was in a dire need of editing, as it was a little bit vague in some places.
Overall, i didn't like it.
*Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review*

I usually quite like Campbell's book, but found this a frustrating and insulting read. The entire running conceit of readers not being able to separate a ghostwriter (which isn't even the write word, as Alex's name is on the book cover right along Carl's) is farfetched and tiring, almost every character is weirdly aggressive with stilted, unrealistically opaque dialogue to drive the confusion between writer and subject even more. The protestors and twitter mob are laughably facile strawmen to the point of being offensive. And that's before even mentioning how badly this book handles Trans matters. The stereotypes Campbell plays into into this book are dangerous and gross. This isn't about how a cis author shouldn't write Trans characters, that is once again a strawman argument that no one is making. But writers should go into writing the experience of minority and marginalized characters with research and care. This book seems to be attacking the Own Voices movement with utter disregard to what that movement is actually asking for.

In recent years horror maestro Ramsey Campbell has been on a fine run of form and has found a berth with Flame Tree Press, who have published several of his new fiction and rereleased a selection of his older works. Once in a while Campbell abandons horror and turns his pen to thriller writing and Somebody’s Voice is a highly entertaining blend of family secrets and hidden truths. I am not sure how long-ago Campbell wrote this latest novel, but it felt very current, and has much to say about the current wave of ‘cancel culture’ doing the rounds in the mass media and wider society, in which individual careers can be ruined by a single tweet or ill-advised comment. The novel does not make any moral judgements, but you may find yourself replacing main character and author Alex Grand for a genuine figure from the current news.

In 2003 James Frey published a huge bestselling memoir of his time in an addiction treatment centre called A Million Little Pieces and his reputation was later tarnished somewhat when it was revealed much of it was fabricated and the title is now often sold as fiction and Frey now concentrates on children’s books written under a pseudonym. Much further back in time Alex Haley also ran into trouble with his American Twentieth Century classic Roots which blurred the boundary between memoir and fiction and the accuracy of his research into his family history going back before the Civil War period. David Pelzer is yet another author who has had a highly successful career in lecturing and as a self-help guru, but the child abuse he writes about in his bestselling memoir A Child Called It has been contested by others in his family. In Somebody’s Voice Ramsey Campbell mixes a cocktail of these scenarios, throws in a tarnished ghost writer, and takes the reader on a journey where it is very difficult to figure out who is telling the truth. Subtlety asking the question whether a memoir really should tell the truth 100%?

However, authors such as Frey, Haley and Pelzer wrote the aforementioned works in the days before the truly vicious modern version of cancel culture which sees the literary equivalent of a lynch mob destroy them on Twitter. Massively popular authors with controversial views, such as JK Rowling, will rise above the pitch-forked mob, but many other names will not. Alex Grand, from Somebody’s Voice, is a convincing example of an author who puts his foot in his mouth, with his publisher’s help, tries to rebrand himself and save his career, but still gets caught up in a Twitter wave of discontent.

Alex Grand is a reasonably successful author of detective thrillers which have a recurring character and at the start of the latest entry in the series gets heavily criticised and widely condemned for the insensitive way he portrays victims of abuse. He comes off second-best in a book signing event in which he has a heated argument with a survivor of abuse who uses this as a platform for his own agenda and before long the book is in trouble and his publisher quickly distance themselves from him. Grand’s publishing team played a key role in proceedings and gave a fascinating backroom look at the dynamics behind how they gage public opinion via Twitter and other social media.

With his latest thriller in trouble and his publisher already cooling towards accepting his next book they offer Alex a new proposal, which should be taken as a charm offensive to save his career, ghost writing a memoir of abuse on behalf of a survivor, Carl Batchelor. Initially reluctant, Alex accepts the job and interviews Carl extensively and Somebody’s Voice is ultimately about the fallout of what happens when the memoir is published. If Alex thinks he had a hard time over his thriller, that was nothing compared to the dropped bombs which follow the release of the memoir.

Somebody’s Voice has a fascinating narrative which interchanges predominately between ‘Carla’ and ‘Alex’ but then blends in slightly different versions of these key characters, such as ‘Alexander’, ‘Carly’, ‘Carl’ and eventually ‘Mr Grand’ with the point being that the truth is either being blurred, misremembered or embellished to provide the ‘truth’ with a more striking narrative. The ‘Alex’ narrative, written in the third person, is the most straight forward, however, the ‘Carla’ section, written in the first person, is considerably more striking as this takes in the abuse suffered by Carla at the hands of her stepfather. None of these characters are traditional unreliable narrators, but neither are they trustworthy and that is a great strength of the novel.

I found the voice of the little girl Carla to be considerably more sympathetic that that of Alex, although they balanced each other well. Alex was not particularly likable, was forever tetchy and seemed to repeatedly answer questions with other questions, but this needed to be rebalanced with the adult version of Carla who had lost the charm of her child voice, with the reader having fun trying to figure out her genuine agenda.

You might find yourself asking how accurate a ‘memoir’ must be? Should a survival memoir, such as both Pelzer’s A Child Called It and Carl Batchelor’s book be more accountable than any other autobiography? Inaccuracies in any type of memoir are often pointed out by wronged third parties, but more generally, is there anything wrong with ghost writers fictionalising a memory? Surely this is part of their job and what they are paid for? Somebody’s Voice very cleverly explores these questions.

Thankfully, the novel is tasteful when it comes to the physical abuse and as the plot thickens Campbell drops in some great plot twists and it had me on the hook right to the end on how things might play out. Somebody’s Voice was a great thriller and shows the versatility and range of one of the giants of the horror world.

“Somebody’s Voice” is destined to be incredibly contentious and controversial. Provocative, compelling, trashy, and a tad melodramatic. It raises reasonable and fascinating questions about identity, memory, how we know and define ourselves and how our pasts, our memories of our past, whether real or imagined, shape and mold us. There was potential here for something incredibly powerful and profound, but where I would have appreciated subtlety and nuance the author instead brought a sledge hammer. Even still it could have worked if It had led to more justifiable and believable endings for the characters. Full of sometimes mind numbing dialogue and insane plot twists that didn’t feel logical it all felt so overwrought and over the top. It gave me Lifetime movie vibes. Still I couldn’t stop turning the pages until I reached its incredibly unsatisfying conclusion. This novel is sure to outrage many. I am not easily offended. I like to read everything, especially things that others may find controversial because I think it’s good to confront yourself with ideas and world views that may not be your own. Ramsey Campbell has the foundation of something intriguing and alluring here, but it’s messy and confused like its characters and never fully captures or wrangles the enormity of the issues its trying to confront.

DNF. This is the first book I’ve not finished in 31 years. I skipped ahead hoping I was wrong, but Mr. Campbell disappointed me in exactly the way I was dreading. He’s used tired and harmful tropes and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the trans community.