The Pram by Betty Woodcock







How would you feel if you had been seduced by an aristocrat when you were sixteen and sent away to have an abortion, reminded of your shame and disgrace by a working class father? It happened, didn't it?
Second scenario. Many years later you are haunted by the baby you aborted as a foetus. Now how would you feel if this "baby" merges with an actual baby such as your grandchild and taunts you with " YOU MURDERED ME!" Intriguing or just freaky?
Carrie had to live with the shame and guilt all of her life but fortunately she married and had a legitimate daughter who is about to give birth at the beginning of the story. The pram, a simple purchase of an old-fashioned, over-sized, bulky but regal looking Victorian pram was meant as a special gift for a long-awaited grandchild. It doesn't take the reader long before we realise there is something sinister about the pram and the appearance of a baby sleeping soundly in it before the arrival of the grandchild.
Carrie's "strange experience" is the beginning of a long nightmare and a disturbing journey where the mind degenerates into insanity just like the female in The Yellow Wallpaper.
Almost from the beginning we are given glimpses of the occult that Woodcock wanted to explore in the novel. There are times when the novel is moving closely into the genre of horror but then Woodcock pulls us back into an illusion of domesticity. A dysfunctional family.
"The baby had been an old-fashioned baby, like the pram. From the past. A ghost baby."
When the grandchild arrives Carrie sees two babies, one real the other an illusion perhaps? Then the impossible happens-they "merge" into one and for Carrie it has a destabilising effect and her mind becomes obsessed with psychiatrists, neurologists and such like. Her "rampant imagination" goes into "overdrive" and she concludes that getting rid of the pram will mean the demise of the ghost baby. Think again.
A reincarnation. A baby who is telepathic. These are the delights of the author. "That weird changeling."
"I had never known such a single word could hold such menace." Not the three words a parent wants to hear: I LOVE YOU. " You murdered me."
This dallying into the supernatural allows Carrie to see dead people which un-nerves her even more. She is obsessed with the thought that the "changeling" is going to harm her by seeking revenge for its cruel and untimely death.
Salvation is at hand in the form of a knight in shining armour, Gervaise, ironically the man who caused the trouble in the first place. Add a touch of romance and lots of black humour and hey presto you have an extremely interesting foray into the world of the occult.


www.bettywoodcock.com
ISBN: 978-147-009-1668 Available from Amazon.co.uk/es or Kindle.

Copyright 2012. Permission to use this review must be obtained from the author.

Comments

  1. Carol Naylor20 January 2013 at 08:16

    What a wonderful review. You seem to have completely empathised with Carrie. It's so helpful to get an unbiased opinion.
    Thank you for your time.

    Writer Betty Woodcock. January 2013.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carol Naylor20 January 2013 at 08:17

    Thank very much, Betty.

    ReplyDelete

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