Black Mamba

I normally don't choose a book that has either grief and loss as its underlying extended metaphor because I think it can come off as cliché, especially when the book starts off with that very same sense of loss. Now, we move on to the extended metaphor of loss and grief underlying the book Black Mamba by William Friend - which is nothing like a cliché at all. Instead, it sends you kicking and screaming into the centrepoint of fear, establishing the sense of loss and grief in parts of the story - littered around as you go. This, I have to say, was very clever and really quite intense. The reader is pulled around from childhood fear to adulthood grief, from childhood loss to adulthood trauma. It really is quite something.
Pippa, the mother of a lovely family, has died suddenly. She has left her husband Alfie to take care of the children - twin daughters. He wakes up to find them standing at the foot of his bed telling him that there is someone in their room. It is a man called Black Mamba. As the book goes on, Black Mamba haunts the past and present of the family, making it almost impossible for them to live futures and have peace. There is something deeply strange about Black Mamba as well, as if he represents some sort of unresolved trauma, a story that never finished and an ending that never happened. As the atmosphere burdens the story with creepiness and provokes outright fear - you have to really think about what happens when you turn out the lights and whether anything has made its way into the darkness with you.
Black Mamba engulfs the twins as Alfie gets help from Julia, Pippa's sister. As the girls begin to change, Julia must think straight in order to help them out of this malevolent grasp. It may not be as physical as she thinks but it sure is getting violent, angry and hateful. There is something that Julia cannot quite put her finger on and over the course of the book, from the past and the present, we see these girls grow into something else entirely - freaked out and shaken by their encounter with the evil force of Black Mamba.
When it comes to the adults, there are things they must confront in order to stop the girls being consumed by Black Mamba - as if it is out for the truth about things, the reader sees this family come undone as they try to fight this force once and for all. Throughout the book, the psychological nature of the plot is pounded into the skull of whoever is reading it through the darker natures that take place later on in the text. This is something I found to be a lot like The Babadook, in that there must be some sort of confrontation of truth in order to bring this monster back down to earth.
In conclusion, I liked the ending. I liked the plot and I loved the characters. Though I thought Alfie was somewhat unlikable from time to time, I thought that was the entire point. But, one thing I really enjoyed was the descriptions when Black Mamba was approaching. How everything was dark and strange, things were not what they seemed and things began to change the more he visited. I would love to read more of what this author has to offer and when they release another book, I would love to read it. Black Mamba has proven to be one of the strongest psychological horrors of the year so far.

"Black Mamba" was a creepy horror with some great character-driven family plot too. I'd have loved a little more of the family /house / church history and a little less dream-like sequences, and perhaps a more bombastic final battle scene. But the ending was neat and raised some fun questions.

This story was both creepy and captivating. It kept me guessing throughout. I loved the focus on the twin bond and the hints of the paranormal. At times this one genuinely scared me but I couldn't put it down. A really great psychological thriller!

Black Mamba is a horror novel about grief and the bond between twins, as a father tries to deal with the strange figure his daughters see. After his wife Pippa's death, Alfie is struggling to care for his twin daughters. When they tell him they saw a man in their room, a man Alfie can find no trace of, he isn't sure what to do, especially when this shadowy figure, Black Mamba, starts interrupting the family's life. Alfie turns to Pippa's twin sister Julia, and psychotherapist and also dealing with the death of her sister, to try and unravel what the twins are doing, but they are drawn into a strange world of ghosts and belief.

The book is told from Alfie and Julia's points of view, moving between the present and glimpses of the past, especially Julia and Pippa's childhood, to build up a picture of a family grieving, but also a family, particularly Julia and Pippa's parents, caught up in belief. There's the rational world of psychotherapy and a less clear world of belief in demons and ghosts, through Julia's mother's church and her dead father's belief in mediumship. The book explores why people might believe in things, especially after loss, combining that with ideas of a cursed house and connections between twins.

I liked the atmosphere of this book, with an unnerving sense of whether or not there was something more supernatural going on or not, and the way it played on ideas of what is a family. I felt like there could've been more about the church that Julia and Pippa's mother was part of, and they grew up as part of, as it felt like you never quite knew enough about it. However, the ambiguity of the book was also a strength, including the morality of many of the adults in the book, who are flawed and tied up in their own ideas, and the ending has an eerie chill, bringing together the ideas of doubleness found throughout.

If you like slow burn literary horror that focuses on grief and family, Black Mamba does that well, though it's not a book that is actually scary, but more lightly menacing. Some of the subplot twists are quite predictable, but the ending does leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth.

Black Mamba follows a father, Alfie, and his twin daughters in the aftermath of their mother's tragic passing. One day, the girls start talking about their new invisible friend, Black Mamba; a man that can transform himself into various animals and is only visible to the girls. Though seemingly innocent at first, Back Mamba's presence starts to draw stranger behaviour from the twins, beginning to drive a wedge between Alfie and his daughters. As things fall apart, their aunt Julia, twin of their deceased mother, is called upon to help the family. But, in doing so, she must confront the long-hidden demons from her and her sister's own past.

Black Mamba is, in essence, a haunted house story. But it also examines how the people that inhabit this house are themselves haunted; by loss, by grief, by longing, by jealousy. The emotions that the characters go through felt very real to me, something that Friend taps into extremely well. That sense of reality... that this could happen.

I think my biggest praise has to be Friend's writing style. His language was beautiful without being overly-flowery; he seems to have chosen the perfect words and reading through this story was effortless. Everything felt delicate, well-crafted, classic, as if I were holding a fine little china trinket in my hand rather than a story. I could picture the character's world and identify with their struggles. Even their more mundane thoughts rang true.

I would read this novel mostly on my commute to and from work though, as it started to grip me more, I began reading it before bed. I have to admit that, upon turning out the light, some of the imagery actually stuck with me. As a lover of horror, it takes a lot to get under my skin; but the sense of unease, of wrongness, in Black Mamba is permeating and there are some genuine scares. I would recommend this to anyone that has an interest in classic ghost stories.

Something that might rub some people up the wrong way, however, is the ending. While I had no problem with it at all, and actually enjoyed a lot of the ambiguity, I think some could feel a little cheated. If you are not a fan of ambiguous endings, be aware that you could be left wanting more. A lot of threads are left untied. However, I would say that the sum of the book is still worth investing in, even if you were to be let down by the lack of resolution.

Overall, a gorgeous, intricate story. To me, this reads as a new classic. Whilst the general idea behind it may not be original, in practice, Friend has crafted something that feels very much its own. Now I can only wait excitedly for whatever he has in store for us next.

A gripping read….. it’s a suburban chiller of grief, ghosts and sublimated sexual desire. Highly recommended. A perfectly paced and beautifully observed story... I really did race through it.

Well this was wonderful - slow burning and deeply shadowed. Twin girls conjure up an imaginary friend -Black Mamba - after the death of their mother. It is an unerving and gothicky book, unsettling you gently and with confidence, like a snake's ever tightening coils. Loved it.