Book Review: Fortnight of Fear by Graham Masterton

The stories in this particular collection are all prefaced by Masterton's descriptions of the locations in which they take place and of how those places inspired him. The locations are important to the stories, and in many of them, the location is almost a character itself. You often feel, reading these tales, that the stories are actually dependent on their settings. Masterton could not have set a single one of them anywhere else without drastically changing the tale.

Many of the stories in this volume share another common theme, however, and that is loneliness. Masterton's characters are frequently faced with isolation and despair. The protagonists in "Heart of Stone" and "Beijing Craps" are adrift in the world after the death of loved ones, while hard times have forced the heroes of "The Woman in the Wall" and "5a Bedford Row" into starting over in new towns where they don't know anyone, and they find themselves facing mounting horrors all alone. David, in "St. Joan" finds his wife missing while on vacation in a foreign country. A different David has no one to rescue him when he's attacked at his pig farm the night after his brother's demise, and in "The Sixth Man," James and Michael are stranded in the loneliest place of all, the South Pole in the middle of a blizzard.

The story that struck me the most, even if it was not my favorite, was "Changeling." The tale of an unusual curse, "Changeling" explores what might happen if a man found himself suddenly living in a woman's body. Our main character, Gil, finds himself in this predicament after having an affair with a beautiful woman, Anna, whom he meets while traveling. After several days of the affair, he wakes up to find he has become Anna, and she has taken on his appearance and in doing so, taken over his life. Gil/Anna eventually finds that he is not the first man this has happened too. The real, original Anna left her body years ago; the only way to rid oneself of the curse is to, as Anna, sleep with another man and pass it along to him.

Gil/Anna soon finds himself in an uncomfortable position when he goes to a restaurant alone and attracts the attentions of a boorish businessman. The businessman comes on to Gil/Anna, but becomes vile and abusive when he is turned down.

"It was a new insight - and to Gil it was hair-raising - that men used the threat of their greater physical strength against women not just in times of argument and stress - but all the time."

This is the nature of the curse, that men must now endure what women endure all the time. I'm sure  that no woman reading this doesn't know what I'm talking about.

One night, when I was in my early twenties, I was out with friends when I realized I had left something, I forget now what it was, at the chip shop we had just left. They waited for me while I went back alone to grab it. While walking by myself, I passed a group of young men. "Hey," one called out. "Want to come home with me tonight?" "Uh, no thanks," I said, hurrying along. "You fat bitch!" the man replied, before shouting several threats. Alarmed, I immediately ran back to my friends.

This is an unfortunately not an isolated incident in my life, nor is it unusual for other women to have experienced the same or similar incidents. And men, even the ones who don't practice this abuse, don't often seem to be able to wrap their heads around how frightening it can be. As women, we're trained to be nice, be polite, don't make men mad.

This is why "Changeling" stuck with me and why I believe it will resonate with many women. It is not the best story in the book, although it was certainly one of the strangest. However, it is the story that I recommend the most out of the whole collection. Any woman who reads it will understand, and hopefully any man who reads it will learn...without having to fall victim to Anna's curse.