Case of Charles Dexter Ward [Mass Market Paperback]

This novel has both good plotting and an otherworldly atmosphere that pervades the book. The setting is 1920's New England where there was a revival in interest in the occult. However, the key to the tale is the 18th Century New England scene that Lovecraft had a lifetime interest in.

The character of Charles Dexter Ward was based on Lovecraft himself: a lonely intellectual who was an antiquarian who detested the Industrial Revolution. Ward's research into the occult leads to the reincarnation of one of his ancestors who in turn hatches a plot with both Ward and one of Ward's friends for a mass resurrection of the dead who would become mindless zombies dedicated to both the destruction of heavy industry in America as well as the forced expulsion, if not mass murder, of the Roman Catholic immigrants who Lovecraft detested so much from America.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a fantasy/horror novel that tells you a lot about its author. H.P. Lovecraft was a self-styled aristocrat from a decadent Old Money family who bitterly hated the Roman Catholic Church and especially the Irish and Italian immigrants who by 1928, when this novel was first published, had already assumed a position of political power at the expense of the WASP elite that Lovecraft was a member of. Clearly, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward was reflective of Lovecraft's religious bigotry and his hateful tendencies towards certain ethnic and religious groups. It should come as no surprise that during the 1930's, Lovecraft frequently praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a uniquely powerful and compelling work by a master of horror fantasy.

The story, unfolding slowly but with an ever increasing pace, revolves around the uncanny relation between one Charles Dexter Ward -a young antiquarian of an old Providence family, quite an alter ego of Lovecraft himself- and his ancestor Joseph Curwen, a Salem warlock from the 17th century. The descriptions of old Providence and its surroundings are exceedingly beautiful and graphic and reveal much of H. P. L. 's affection for his hometown. The story, of course, also has its great moments of cosmic fear, and the accounts of the good people of Providence's raid against Joseph Curwen and that of Dr. Willett, the avuncular and benevolent medical doctor of Ward's family, descending into the sheer abyss of horror (without even a drop of blood being splattered) belong to the most frightening and effective episodes in all of horror literature.

Lovecraft delves deeply into occult lore and black magic, much more so than in most of his other stories, where he mainly relies on some name-dropping, usually of the Great Old Ones and his own invented grimoires (like the Necronomicon & Cie.) to provide a touch of witchcraft, but he does it with utmost effectiveness, in total contrast to many of his contemporaries (and successors). The reason for this is certainly that he was a complete non-believer concerning anything supernatural.

The way the ever increasing atmosphere of threat and madness is built up is masterful, even though the end of the story is not really a surprise for an intelligent reader (especially anyone used to Lovecraft's work, which almost never offers that kind of thrill, "The shadow over Innsmouth" being probably the only noteworthy exception). Nevertheless he manages to keep a tantalizing amount of uncertainty for quite a while, much more so than, e. g., in the much-admired "The shadow out of time".

The so-called Cthulhu Mythos plays only a very minor role in "The Case". To give an example -for those cthulhuoid guys out there- I fully agree with S. T. Joshi who once admitted that he never could really figure out what Yog-Sothoth exactly meant in this novel (does anybody know what it really meant in any H. P. L. story, by the way ? I don't talk about August Derleth's and Lin Carter's kids and grannies versions of the Mythos, which have become so well-liked by most of the would-be Lovecraftians. Except for Cthulhu himself, H. P. L. always kept a veil over the deities of his pantheon).

The novel offers everything you can excpect from the undoubted master of the macabre in the 20th century, suspense, chills & thrills and all-out horror, but in a subtler and more convincing way than in most of his earlier and some of his later works. A recommendable book for everybody interested in good, well-(love)crafted horror stories, and certainly not only of historical interest.