R. Ostermeier, Nocebo, French Flaps 294 pp. “I believe that religion did a great disservice to the word soul by grabbing it for its own goody-bag. The soul has eyes and ears that receive signals from the light and the dark, from above ground and below, from the quotidian present to the deep past. The soul in this sense is open to the world at a level we cannot comprehend fully because it lies beyond the reach of words, of explanation. Soul resonates to symbol, ritual. It was what I suspected Birdwhistell was trying to articulate with her emphasis that we’d never know what we’d found, and my sense that the word feel was unspoken—.” R. Ostermeier’s new collection comprises four longer tales of peninsular folklore and history, including the long-out-of-print Upmorchard as well as three new stories— Winn’s Clock and Mommick draw from deep wells of rural disquiet, while the long novella Moving the Yew tells of the unsettling consequences from an act of rescue. Nocebo revisits and reknits themes familiar from A Trick of the Shadow and Therapeutic Tales yet, as ever, it might not be for you—
