The Long Lost [Mass Market Paperback]

Ramsey Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

During a weekend in the country, David and Joelle Owain explore an abandoned village - and discover that its last living inhabitant is distantly related to David. Lacking other family, the young couple embrace Gwendolen, and soon the independent old woman has set up housekeeping near their home. Gwendolen keeps a watchful - perhaps too watchful - eye on the Owains. Joelle feels that Gwendolen is judging them, their friends, and their business associates. At the Owains' annual barbecue, Gwendolen serves special cakes, made from a secret recipe. Before long that recipe is the only secret left unrevealed. One party guest, Bill, a TV star, finds that his hidden contempt for other people can no longer be contained - it spills uncontrollably from his mouth until one of his victims brutally slashes Bill's face, forever ending his television career. Another of the Owains' friends, the driver of a commuter train, long-convinced that his wife is having an affair, kills her supposed lover and himself in a horrible train crash. A third man decides his family must not suffer the shame of his bankruptcy and the criminal charges sure to follow - even if he has to kill them to keep them safe.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Long Lost begins with a sequence so haunting and bizarre that it almost seems a chapter out of legend. A witty, sexy married couple who live in urban England drive to the coast of Wales on a weekend holiday. On a lark, they clamber down a steep cliff to a seaside town that turns out to be utterly deserted. There's an island just off shore and the tide is out, so they walk out across the exposed sand. The empty streets and eerie absence of human voices, followed by the overgrown beauty of the island, seem to transport them into another world, another time. They stumble on an ancient stone cottage, where an old woman with long white hair lies motionless on a pallet. At first they take her for dead, but she slowly awakens. She turns out to be a long-lost relative. She offers no explanation for why she lives alone in a nearly empty, crumbling cottage on an uninhabited island next to a deserted village. The tide comes in. The three of them end up spending the night in the dark cottage. The couple take the old woman back to England with them.

Then their lives, and the lives of everyone who knows them, begin slowly and inexorably to fall apart.

As Joel Lane writes in the horror review magazine Necrofile, "The Long Lost ... is written in a clear, vivid style which encompasses precise visual descriptions, ambiguous metaphors, and sudden changes of mood. The prose is so attractive that the fundamental strangeness of what is going on takes a long time to sink in; and the ending doesn't so much explain the story as send you away to think about it. The reader is, at various times, entranced, mystified, disturbed, appalled, provoked, and amused. Only twice before--in The Influence and Midnight Sun--has Campbell written at such a pitch of creative intensity."

The Long Lost is a dark novel about sin, guilt, scapegoats, and the fragility of the self. It is leavened by black humor, and the distinct, if elusive, possibility of redemption. --Fiona Webster

From Publishers Weekly

Campbell may be the most protean of horror writers, adept at quiet terror in the classic tradition (Midnight Sun), eccentric horror that plays for laughs (The Count of Eleven) or, as in this tightly wrought work, fiction that uses the genre as a staging ground for deft psychological and sociological commentary. The occult element here is almost incidental to the mayhem unleased in the English town of Chester after home renovators David and Joelle Owain discover a withered old woman barely alive outside a remote Welsh village and take her home with them. Soon, the lives of the Owains and their friends and neighbors take a precipitous turn toward madness: train engineer Herb Cantry, enraged at his wife's leaving him for another man, crashes his train and kills both himself and his rival; computer consultant Richard Vale, his business in tatters, poisons his entire family; David Owain falls out with a close friend and falls in lust with a sexy teenager. Meanwhile, the old woman grows ever more vigorous. At novel's end, in a revelation that feels arbitrary and even unnecessary, Campbell lets on why, but the reason hardly matters because his main aim here seems not to be the delineation of supernatural agents and horror but the tracing of what happens when conscience gives way to license. At this he succeeds admirably, though with its minimum of occult bells and whistles this novel is more suited for a mainstream audience than the vociferous horror readership the author has courted for so long.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812550862
• ISBN-13: 978-0812550863
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,256,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most well-deserved 5 stars I've ever given., October 13, 2000

By 

K. Carpenter "Mettle" (St. Petersburg, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Long Lost (Mass Market Paperback)

I must agree with the "reader from California" on this one -- the "reader from Idaho" didn't know a good thing when he/she read it. I've never read a Ramsey Campbell novel before this, but now I can't wait to delve into the rest of his body of work. I just finished THE LONG LOST this morning on the subway, and I can say I was riveted by this book, cover to cover.

I like that idea about "quiet horror." That's precisely what I felt from this story. No flash and dazzle. No otherworldly monsters. Basically, no bull. Just skillfully delivered almost real-life horror.

Throughout the central story line of a couple and a mysterious old woman who has entered their lives, Campbell has woven together several gripping vignettes, including the Owains and their circle of friends, which are utterly horrific because we've all read of similar events happening in real life.

Each character has a distinct, believable personality. The author appears to have an incredible knack for picking up on the nuances of human psyches. The players in this story (primary, secondary and incidental alike) are fleshed out in such a masterful way that I could virtually see each of them before me as I read. That's not to say that he rattles off litanies of physical descriptions. Not Campbell. He gives you the physical stuff slowly and only situationally, when it seems appropriate for one character to notice something about another. It's really quite beautiful how he uses this skill to paint his picture with delicately honed layers.

But, as I was saying, I could almost see each character as I read about them. I suppose it's probably more accurate to say I could really feel them. Know them. Their quirks, their kinks, their movements and expressions. Just as we've all read about the terrible, sad things that humans do to one another every day in the world around us, we've also all known these men and women who are just your ordinary citizen until something horrible happens inside them and they snap.

I raced through THE LONG LOST because this story of sin and guilt born from internalized fears filled me with increasing doses of dread almost from the very first page. As they say, the suspense was killing me. There was no way I could walk away from a chapter halfway through. And even then, Campbell was able to keep me hanging for another chapter or two because he was juggling three or four storylines at one time! I couldn't find out what happened until I was terrified even further by the gut-wrenching things that were happening to other characters. I don't recall the last time I read a story that was so relentless in giving me the chills.

While I'm on that point, I fume when I hear readers criticize authors for giving them too many characters to follow. That's not the author's failing, it's the reader's. It takes a lot of nerve to blame a brilliant writer for your laughably short attention span.

I don't want to tell a lot about the story itself because it would be far too easy to give too much away. The only way to enjoy this story is too let it unfold and hang on. Besides, too many folks around here think a review is a book report, just ask Harriet Klausner. I'd much rather read someone's opinion and recommendation, so here's mine.

READ THIS BOOK!!! Read it if you love Clive Barker. Ramsey Campbell is the only other writer besides Barker who knows how to write about real evil. Read it if you enjoy Stephen King. Personally, I can't stand most of King's books because he fumbles his endings time and time again, but Campbell can show you how it should be done. He carries the ball right to the end zone and spikes it!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A supremely well-written example of the "Quiet Horror" Genre, May 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Long Lost (Mass Market Paperback)

I was moved to write this review because of the negative review below. Ramsey Campbell is one of the most skilled Contemporary writers of Horror and Dark Fantasy but he often gets bad reactions from young readers not familiar with his subtle touch. Campbell is, to my mind, the current Heir Apparent to Arthur Machen who wrote Weird fiction shortly before WWI. Some people feel that Machen was England's Lovecraft. This novel is another example of Ramsey Campbell using the appearence of a stranger or the incidence of a strange event to cause cataclysmic upheaval in the lives of his characters which then brings out the things they fear most. While his books are sometimes described as "Thrillers" because they do not generally have shambling zombies or cool, hip vampires, they are Horror novels. Don't make the mistake of assuming Evil only comes in spectacular packages. Pick up some of Campbell's books and he will take you on a thought=provoking journey of dread.

I enjoyed THE LONG LOST for several reasons not the least of which was the opening of the book which leads you first to the abandoned Village and then, if that weren't creepy enough, across the low Tide exposed Reach out to the deserted Island. The idea of a such a place existing just off England's shore has a haunting, Archtypical feel to it. When they meet up with Gwendolyn, you are expected them to have some kind nightmarish stalk and kill experience during their night stranded on the Island. Instead, she returns with them and that is when the real Horror begins. True, it begins slowly and unravels at its own pace, but the effect works well and Ramsey Campbell is still one of the most readable writers today. he does not enagage in the purple prose plaguing the Horror Genre today nor does he stoop to long passages of deviant sex just to add a little zing. He doesn't need that. His storytelling is straightforward but un-nerving and the horror lies within the revelations the characters make about themselves. This book reminded me of another excellent Ramsey Campbell, OBSESSION, which plummed similar themes. In that book, as children, the Characters all choose to give away something that matters nothing to them and then as adults, they find out what is the real price to be paid for having done so. If you like in-depth, meaningful character study coupled with universal themes of dread and terror, then this here is your book and so are many of Campbell's other fine novels.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars interesting concept, poor execution, August 3, 2009

By 

blowfly13 (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Lost (Mass Market Paperback)

Well, reviews are about opinions, so hopefully we're still allowed to give them without being yelled at by other (domineering) reviewers. I got this book because I read a short story by Campbell, but I liked the short story far more than this book. The concept was interesting, when I finally got to the very end. But the story moved so slowly, and the dialog was so AWKWARD, full of weird, ungainly exchanges. The people often seemed so unnatural to me, and 3/4 of the people were always feeling guilty about something stupid. People were constantly getting bothersome cuts or burning their hands, or banging their shins. It was just too much detail, overwritten unending conversations, and too little plot movement. Then at the end the evil act is revealed, and the person who figures it out isn't even angry! Tons of people dead, and not even pissed about it. I did like the idea (don't want to reveal it), but it was all way too slow, too tortuous, and I didn't care about any of the people. About 1/4 of the way through I started just flipping through to find out what the deal was. Not worth it.