baly4nce16

This is a compendium of late 19th and early 20th century ghost stories. They're stories you've read before, of course, these "classic" and "best" story collections usually feature the same sampling. It's apparently de rigueur in editing circles to throw a Poe in there, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" ...which is fine, they are horrifying, and they do deserve a spot. But will I ever escape Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows." I think, too that The Monkey's Paw finds a deserved place in every horror collection I've ever read, as does F. Marion Crawford's "The Screaming Skull." So here you'll find them again. But you'll also find lesser-known or (for me at least) previously unencountered stories, by E. Nesbit, Gertrude Atherton, Perseval Landon. I consider 3 stars a good mark for a collection, where there's necessarily going to be stuff that you like and stuff that you don't (I hated the Moonstone Mass). The editor did a really good job of winnowing his source material to allow for an equal showing of old favorites and lesser known works, and I think did mostly choose actually scary things rather than automatically throwing in classics like "A Very Strange Bed" or "The Signal-Man." If I never see that strange bed again, it'll be too soon. For more of the same sort of suspenseful story-telling, look out for the collected works of E.F. Benson (REAMS of stuff, some good some so-so), M.R. James, J.Sheridan Le Fanu, and Robert W. Chambers. Saki, of course. F. Marion Crawford only wrote, I think, three ghost stories, but they're all great.

2022-11-14 13:28