Marginal by Tom Carlisle

Book Review

8th October 2024

In many ways, it’s hard to imagine a world which hadn’t experienced John W. Campbell’s seminal horror novella ‘Who Goes There?’, published in 1938, and harder to still to imagine a world which had not seen the potential of killer vegetables expounded by the 1951 film adaptation THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. However, of all the influences Campbell’s novella has had, none are more influential than John Carpenter’s 1981 film THE THING, a work which itself has inspired and affected enough films and books to fill an archivist’s wet dream.

Intentionally or otherwise, Tom Carlisle’s ‘Marginal’ is next to follow in those grotesque footsteps – with the action transplanted to a Scientology-meets-Waco cult in the Scottish Highlands. Returning to the cult he escaped from as a child, Rob and his journalist friend Lucy go back up to their compound in order to lay the man’s brother to rest. Bjorn, the cult’s leader, has other ideas however, and his willingness to keep the cult alive clashes with Rob’s desire to expose their crimes – yet in the middle of this, something which has stayed hidden is ready to expose itself, blood, viscera, extra appendages, and all.

The novel starts extremely strong, a tidal wave of tension immediately bursting the dam and spilling everywhere. Of course, the cover also sets a tone which the novel matches from page 1. From the cult and its “Pit” to the sense of almost ‘Wuthering Heights’-like alienation and inhospitality their compound possesses, the cult’s character is potent and at the fore; especially despite that Carlisle seems far more embracing of faster-paced horror. It feels nicely exploitative you feel their weight of events before you see them, no matter how slowly or quickly they unfurl. Once events actually get to the compound itself, there’s an astute balance between isolation and agoraphobia too, which never quite leaves. Although the number of characters you meet in short succession does give the impression that the emotional core of this story has been somewhat meat-cleavered into existence, the emotions that strike home do so realistically and savagely. Rob’s inner turmoil is very compelling and, rather than foregrounding the gore, his emotions instead take their reins, peppered at gruesome intervals by creatures with multiple arms or exploding torsos.

What lets the novel down a little is the pacing. The overall effect is a nice trajectory, from sedate to adrenaline-fuelled to chaotic, but the route there tends to stop and start in a way that removes the jeopardy. The small chapters which give you an insight into the cult’s way of thinking, for all they creep you out by showing you the story’s inner workings, break up proceedings a little too often when you instead want a straight line from Okay… to Holy Crap!. The other difficulty is the action itself. Carlisle’s prose is tenacious and bold, that’s incontrovertible, and even those moments which pastiche and traverse its inspiration don’t feel ripped-off as they have their own sense of emotion and intrigue. However, things are prone to feeling unconnected, like the feeling of missing a page when you haven’t, and the first appearance of the monsters does come out of the blue in a manhandled rather than shocking way. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a concrete and savage thrust in the plot – in fact, in the moment, you’re intensely caught up in the wildness of it all. It’s just that it has a tendency to feel like it takes leaps in logic when it actually doesn’t, thereby detracting from its verbose prose with a slight sense that you as a reader are all at sea rather than merely intrigued.

Ultimately, although the pacing is a little scattered and some moments do feel forced, the overall effect is one of guile and savagery. There are far worse homages to ‘Who Goes There?’ and its spiderweb of adaptations, and if you’re one for body horror and subtly impinging sci-fi, there’s as much of that as there is tension. Just maybe a sequel is really what this novel needs – there’s potential enough for it, and any chance to return to Carlisle’s world of moral devilry and bitterness would be a welcome one.