A FAMILY AFFAIR
A superlative and scarce Avon Satanic Gothic by the legendarily accomplished Banis as "Lynn Benedict".
Near fine.
Price: $250.00
A FAMILY AFFAIR
"...stairs that ended in landings and nothing but space beyond, rooms with no roofs, some with no walls and even one with no floor. No amount of cleaning or airing ever quite got rid of the scent of charred wood....a nest of bees buzzing under one of the derelict staircases..." (Banis, SPINE INTACT)<br /><br />"There, just in front of her, the platform on which she had been walking suddenly ended. The wood had rotted and fallen away long ago. Another step and she would have walked over its edge..." (Benedict, A FAMILY AFFAIR)
One of three titles by Victor Banis for Avon's "Satanic Gothic" line (two as Lynn Benedict, one as Jan Alexander). A consummate professional, Banis was never less than competent no matter the genre and sometimes, as in A FAMILY AFFAIR, outright inspired. When writing as Benedict, Banis consistently excluded happy endings, romantic endings and sometimes (as here) any romance whatsoever – not as unusual for a paperback gothic writer as popular perception might suggest, but nonetheless noteworthy. With a plot setup owing more than a little to Shirley Jackson's HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE but an atmosphere all his own, Banis dispatches his unattached and unmoored heroine to a burned-out shell of a wrecked mansion, seemingly intact and inhabited to her bewitched eyes. Particularly intriguing for Banis readers and collectors for its heavy incorporation of personal biographical detail: in his memoir, Banis describes his childhood home, a partially burned-down death trap called "the burnt place" by locals, full of collapsing floors and stairways to nowhere, in detailed terms nearly identical to his picture of A FAMILY AFFAIR'S "Kelsey House".
With typically good cover art offering the added bonus of two tiny, ghostly female figures performing a sort of hellish Isadora-Duncan-esque modern dance in the fires of hell. A lovely copy of a scarce and desirable book.
Read more: Banis, Spine Intact, Some Creases.
The Object
First edition. (New York): Avon, (1973). 7'' x 4''. Avon V2472. Original pictorial wrappers. All edges tinted red. 156 pages, followed by publisher's advertisements. Faint edgewear. Upper rear corner bumped and creased, else lovely.
The Fine Print
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