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All Hallows Eve is another Williams ghost story, gently told in his own highly unorthodox style. Two young women have been killed in an accident in the aftermath of the WWII air raids on London, but their ghostly participation in the story is as real as that of any of the living people. It is probably fair to say that this novel, as with most Charles Williams fiction, is not recommended for the overly sensitive person, and could easily be misinterpreted the overly hasty.
Simon LeClerk is a powerful mage, more a Saruman than a Gandalf, and his plan is domination of this world and - more worryingly - any other that he can access. His adoring acolytes form the powerbase of his support for a new world religion. Betty, daughter of one of these acolytes, is the unwilling dupe of the magician, and the key subject in his most daring and horrible experiment. An artist is the bereaved husband of Evelyn, one of the ghosts, and a civil servant is Betty's intended husband.
The characters have depth and robust individual style. While many an author can paint real villains doing convincingly bad things, Williams is unusual in that his good characters and their goodness are equally if not more convincing. Their goodness is genuinely felt and is strongly attractive. There is no hint that the villains have all the fun or that the author really has little idea of how to portray true goodness, or even what it is.
From this novel I also gained a valuable insight into the true nature and function of art. Rather like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', two of the artist's paintings play a pivotal part in the story. The artist manages in one picture to catch and portray something of a hidden truth about the city of London, and in the other something about the magician himself (who approves of the picture). As these things could not be captured by any mere photograph, the art has to say what can best be said, or perhaps only be said, in a painting.
The fact that half the characters are dead doesn't prevent their participation in the plot -- indeed that's its main purpose. All Hallows' Eve presents a vivid vision of the afterlife experienced between this world and the next. For a famously Christian author, there are surprisingly no overt manifestations of supernatural beings apart from the dead themselves.
The language is intelligent without being overly erudite. It does, however, sometimes use constructions that are challenging at the first reading. (Or second, third... For one sentence I had to admit defeat and move on without understanding it at all!)
The characterisations are slender. This may be deliberate if Williams' main intention was to use them to experience/protagonise his representation of the mystical, or it may be a result of the English reserve of his time. One offered an engaging example of post mortem dysfunction, and she therefore set the heroine in a better light too. I only managed to care about the heroine, and found the rest wooden.
Do not read them all in one week. Keep some time for digesting what you read.
They are stunning... Read more
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