Book Review: Strange South Seas by Beatrice Grimshaw

I first came across the work of Beatrice Grimshaw in Swan River Press’ excellent anthology Bending to Earth – Strange Stories by Irish Women, edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers and published in 2019. It featured a piece by Grimshaw called ‘The Blanket Fiend’, which tells the story of an expedition into the wilds of New Guinea that chances upon a tribe that on first appearances has had no contact with white men before. As the main character discovers more about the tribe and its surroundings, he learns that it is threatened by an entity or creature that the tribe has been attempting to appease with the sacrifice of its livestock. As this does not seem to be working, the tribe’s chief is considering more drastic action unless the main character can save the day. The story is reminiscent of the work of H. Rider Haggard in setting and tone and is redolent of the Boy’s Own Ripping Yarn school of writing.

Mike Ashley has included ‘The Blanket Fiend’ in Strange South Seas, a new showcasing of Grimshaw’s short fiction he has put together that presents her work to great effect. Grimshaw was born in 1870 in Northern Ireland and worked as a publicist for various shipping companies out of Liverpool, which involved much travel back and forth across the Atlantic and all over the Mediterranean. After four years of this, she secured a position with Cunard and extended her travelling adventures further afield. She developed a particular fascination for the islands of the Pacific Ocean, writing many travel guides to the whole area along with much fiction, long and short, and eventually she settled in Papua.

As the title of this collection suggests, the stories gathered here are tales of the supernatural and the strange set on various islands in the Pacific. Grimshaw demonstrates an impressive range in terms of idea and theme. In ‘Through the Back Door’ a potential charlatan offers people, via a form of hypnosis that is never fully explained, the chance to relive there lives. In ‘Lost Wings’ an early and successful attempt at manned flight that predates the Wright brothers is rediscovered on a Pacific atoll. Both of these stories have more than a hint of Ray Bradbury to them, so much so that I wonder if Bradbury ever read Grimshaw’s work, as they contain not just Bradburyesque ideas but his trademark melancholic nostalgia for bygone days.

‘The Cave’ tells the story of a man charged with the care-taking of a mining concession on a remote island while the new owner of the concession tries to drum up funding to restart the mine. The man is all alone on the island and he’s heard stories of the previous miners’ decent into madness from unspecified influences. As he explores the island for something to do, he uncovers the cause of the untimely demise of the miners in a series of very effective and chillingly written scenes.

Grimshaw is particularly good at setting scenes and building a sense of the uncanny as a story progresses. Other highlights of Strange South Seas include ‘The Devil’s Smithy’, about a Mission’s work to convert the natives of the Sheba Islands to Christianity, ‘The Flaming Sword’, a love story set on the island of Bali, and the especially creepy ‘The Forest of Lost Men’, which involves gold prospectors running afoul of a tribe that has a frightening way of protecting itself from discovery.

Not all the stories contain supernatural elements, but they all share a sense of the strange. A notable quality of Grimshaw’s writing is a wonderful sense of place, augmented by vivid imagery and a wistful lyricism. It has to be said that a few of the stories display racist attitudes when it comes to depictions of the island natives, and Grimshaw’s occasional attempts at casting them in a good light come off as unintentionally condescending. That said, I feel the stories have to be judged by the standards of the day, without at all condoning such attitudes, and I applaud Swan River Press and Mike Ashley for leaving those aspects untouched.

Strange South Seas by Beatrice Grimshaw (Swan River Press, hb, 243pp, €40.00)