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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 21, 2009 16:25:37 GMT
Oh, and I can scan that Fontana Dark Entries cover into your post if you want? That'd be great, thanks.
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 21, 2009 16:22:01 GMT
The School Friend - Sally and Mel, "the bright girls of the school", both return to their childhood home town around the same time as the death of Sally's father, the reclusive Dr. Tessler. Whilst Mel moves back in with her parents, Sally takes up residence in her father's old house, and quickly starts to deteriorate, until she is hospitalised after stepping out in front of a lorry. Tests reveal that she is pregnant...
A very unsettling story, which reaches a fine climax when Sally drags Mel towards Dr. Tessler's library, from which strange animal cries are heard: "Do you love children, Mel? Would you like to see my baby?"
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 21, 2009 0:57:12 GMT
Dark Entries by Robert Aickman (Fontana 1964) The School Friend Ringing the Changes A Choice of Weapons The Waiting Room The View Bind Your Hair "Six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the super-natural." Aickman's first full-length collection of horror stories was published a full 13 years after We Are for the Dark, his collaboration with Elizabeth Jane Howard and some of the press quotes would tend to suggest that its publication was not regarded as the seismic event which, to our keen eyes, it now appears. ("Mr. Aickman can certainly write," opines The Observer, before presumably going on to note that Mr. Aickman can also process solids and dress himself, just like a big boy.) Bar the dull "The Waiting Room", everything in here is first-rate, with a special mention going to the criminally under-rated "A Choice of Weapons", which as far as I know has only appeared in this volume and Tartarus's Collected Works. The Waiting Room - We'll get this 12-page filler out of the way first, before going on to discuss the important stuff. There's certainly nothing particularly bad about this tale of a man who misses his train and is forced to spend the night in the station waiting-room, built on the site of the burial ground of the old gaol, but it's rather genteel, and tends to remind the reader of some of the duller Victorian tales which occasionally found their way into the Fontana Great Ghost Stories series, which Aickman was editing at the time. The View - Carried over from the Howard collaboration. It was later revised by Aickman for Painted Devils, a "best-of" aimed at the American market, but I've just realised I've never actually read the original version, so I'd better do so before commenting any further. More to follow...
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 19, 2009 0:05:36 GMT
Three Miles Up and Other Strange Stories - Elizabeth Jane Howard (Tartarus Press 2003)
Introduction by Glen Cavaliero Three Miles Up Perfect Love Left Luggage Mr Wrong
Elizabeth Jane Howard is still most widely remembered as wife to Kingsley Amis (and stepmother to Martin) than for her own work, excellent though much of it is. Her second book, published in 1951, was We Are For the Dark, a collection of three ghost stories (in the broadest possible sense of the term) by herself, and three by Robert Aickman, with whom she was romantically involved at the time. In her autobiography, Slipstream, Howard is a bit dismissive about the book, suggesting that it was written in an attempt to kick-start Aickman's own literary career. (Given that it was to be over 10 years before Aickman's next collection was published, it's debatable how successful the book was in that respect.) Certainly, the fact that, in the half-century after We Are For the Dark's publication, Howard only wrote one other ghost story would indicate that she isn't the hugest fan of the genre.
Mr Wrong - The title story of Howard's 1975 short story collection tells the story of Meg, alone and lonely in London, who is thrilled to become the owner of a second-hand car, "barely three years old, and in such good condition" at a knockdown price.
This is surprisingly reminiscent of a lot of Ramsey Campbell's work from around this time, particularly in Meg's relationships (or lack of) with her parents, flat-mates and employer, but the uneasy switch from ghost story to a more horror closer to home (which Cavaliero compares with the shift in tone halfway through Hitchcock's Psycho in his introduction) seemed a bit unsatisfactory to me.
Left Luggage - The most traditional story from We Are For the Dark, about a man haunted by by a dressing case left to him by his uncle, isn't exactly surprising, but it's very well done. A very satisfying, reasonably straightforward ghost story.
Three Miles Up - John and Clifford, taking a canal boat holiday to help Clifford recover from his illness ("some sort of breakdown these clever people went in for," John reflects), impulsively take on board a girl, Sharon, who they find asleep on the river-bank.
The most acclaimed of Howard's ghost stories, and undoubtedly very good, but it didn't quite strike me as the masterpiece it's often regarded as (although this is probably my fault rather than Howard's). The ending appears to have been pinched by Aickman for his own "Never Visit Venice". It didn't do much for me there either I'm afraid.
Perfect Love - This novella, however, is an underrated gem, with a fascinating Citizen Kane style structure being deployed to relate the career of turn-of-the-century opera singer Maria Mielli, plucked from obscurity by a mysterious benefactor, and haunted afterwards by an unseen child which blights her career and romantic life. It really is superb, with a whole array of creepy effects (a handbag full of hair, a child's hand-print on the outside of a second-floor window) plus some good jokes (including a Russian College which is "attempting to crossbreed horses, asses, and dogs with a view to producing a new animal ideally suited for purposes of Russian transport"). A winner.
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Post by jonathan122 on Feb 1, 2009 1:02:52 GMT
A fairly dull selection, made incomparably odder by Dahl's introduction, in which he implicitly declares that MR James is crap, tells us that there were no decent ghost stories written between 1958 (when the list was compiled) and 1983 (when the book was first published), ponders why it is that women are so good at writing ghost stories and children's books, but so bad at other branches of the arts, reveals his list of the top ten greatest female Russian artists, and expresses disbelief that a film implicitly criticising aspects of Catholic faith should be banned from 1950s American TV.
LP Hartley - WS: An odd choice to kick off a book so heavily indebted to "traditional" ghost story practices, but Hartley's tale of a writer haunted by his own creations is a forerunner of Beckett and Potter, and blackly comic fun in its own right.
Rosemary Timperley - Harry As good an example of the classic ghost story as has been written in the 20th century, you can tell why Dahl was so enthusiastic about this story. A definite classic.
Cynthia Asquith - The Corner Shop: Really boring. You've read it before, even if you don't think you have.
EF Benson - In the Tube: If you can get past the rambling intro, in which Benson tries to lay some sort of scientific background for his spooks, this is pretty great, and certainly easier to swallow than "The Hanging of Alfred Wadham", which informs us that it's perfectly ok to let an innocent man be hanged for murder, because God will sort it out in the after-life.
Rosemary Timperley - Christmas Meeting: A chilly, very short time-lapse story - excellent, and it would probably have adapted very well to TV, but I'm not convinced it's one of the 24 best ghost stories ever written...
Jonas Lie - Elias and the Draug: Dahl acknowledges that this Norwegian tale loses something in the translation, and I honestly don't see anything that great about it.
Robert Aickman - Ringing the Changes: I could spend all day on this. Aickman's zombie classic is probably one of his most accessible stories, and it holds the attention throughout. A small cast of characters is wielded expertly, and, in true Aickman style, the ending sends you back to the beginning to try and pick up on what you missed first time around.
Mary Treadgold - The Telephone: Don't know much about Ms Treadgold, but this is a fairly straight-forward, decently-done ghost story.
Edith Wharton - Afterward: I really hate this story, and indeed all of Wharton's work, whether supernatural or not. Obviously this should be enough to alert you to the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about, but any dissenters can send their messages to ihateedithwharton.com.
Richard Middleton - On the Brighton Road: A great little story, but I can't really see how it could have been extended to a full half-hour tv programme. Still, excellent stuff, from the criminally underrated Middleton, who probably deserves a Wordsworth collected edition.
F. Marion Crawford - The Upper Berth: Well, it's ok. Maybe I'm missing something...
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 28, 2009 22:12:53 GMT
Incidentally, the painting on the cover on the Wordsworth edition is rather wonderful. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head, but there's an animated film by Norman McLaren which uses it as a basis.
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 28, 2009 18:40:17 GMT
"Consolatrix Afflictorum" (by RH) is well worth checking out. I actually found it to be the best story I've yet read by someone with the surname Benson, although I think it's effectiveness as a horror story was probably unintentional - as RH was on the verge of becoming a Catholic priest at the time, he probably didn't think that the ghost of the Virgin Mary appearing in children's rooms at night was such a bad thing, but I still find it incredibly creepy.
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 23, 2009 15:17:30 GMT
It looks as though they're strongly considering an edition of Robert Aickman's Cold Hand In Mine if the illustrations are anything to go by. It's actually already been released, along with The Wine-Dark Sea and The Unsettled Dust.
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 23, 2009 12:35:49 GMT
Without wanting to tread on the toes of the excellent Wordsworth Press books, I thought I should just mention Faber Finds, who are also on the look out for recommendations for out-of-print books (in any genre) to re-publish. They're more expensive than the Wordsworth books, as they tend to focus more on books which aren't yet in the public domain. www.faber.co.uk/article/2008/8/faber-finds-lost-and-found
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 18, 2009 1:15:51 GMT
Just reading this at the moment - I'm currently on "The Case of Mr Lucraft", and so far I must say I think it seems pretty good - a nice contrast with Aickman's own theatrical tale.
Elsewhere, the shorter pieces (Maugham, Alan, Gerhardi, MacDiarmid) don't do all that much for me, but they add a bit of variety and help the anthology flow quite nicely.
I find Benson a little bland - even when he's writing about bloodsucking slugs! Having said that, it seems churlish to criticise someone who managed to keep to a pretty consistent standard over 50+ horror stories, and this piece is as good an example as any.
"The Beckoning Fair One" is so utterly perfect in so many ways that I feel slightly guilty for not liking it more. Again, I think it suffers a bit from a slightly bland prose style, and I'm not so sure that Onions quite kept on top of all the different supernatural manifestations.
Aickman's own piece is superb - as is his introduction, which very much makes me want to track down Arthur Quiller-Couch's novel Dead Man's Rock. Anyone else read it?
I'm very much looking forward to finishing the Besant/Rice tale, and reading "The Seventh Man" and "No Ships Pass".
PS This is a great site!! Keep up the good work.
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