Dark Entries

by Robert Aickman, Glen Cavaliero (Introduction)

As Dr Glen Cavaliero states in his introduction to this new edition of Dark Entries, "It is Robert Aickman's peculiar achievement that he should invest the daylight world with all the terrors of the night".

Dark Entries was the first solo collection of "strange stories" by British short story writer, critic, lecturer and novelist, Robert Aickman. First published in 1964 it contains the classic "Ringing the Changes" and perhaps Aickman's best femme fatale in "Choice of Weapons." The version of "The View" is slightly re-written from its first appearance in We are for the Dark.
Contents:
"Introduction by Glen Cavaliero, "The School Friend", "Ringing the Changes", "Choice of Weapons", "The Waiting Room", "The View" and "Bind Your Hair".

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic, Supernatural

197 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1964

About the author

Author of: close to 50 "strange stories" in the weird-tale and ghost-story traditions, two novels (The Late Breakfasters and The Model), two volumes of memoir (The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill), and two books on the canals of England (Know Your Waterways and The Story of Our Inland Waterways).

Co-founder and longtime president of the Inland Waterways Association, an organization that in the middle of the 20th century restored a great part of England's deteriorating system of canals, now a major draw for recreation nationally and for tourism internationally.

Grandson of author Richard Marsh.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This first collection of Robert Aickman’s “strange stories”—the term the author preferred to “supernatural,” “horror,” or “terror”—contains pieces which are perhaps more conventional than many of the four dozen or so tales that comprise his body of work, but they are equally well-written and equally disturbing, and that is saying a lot. Aickman is one of the modern masters—perhaps the modern master—of the weird tale, and, for fans of the genre new to Aickman, this collection is a good place to start.

Aickman’s stories succeed because each is model of design, a model undermined and enriched by deliberate lacunae. His prose, mellifluous and precise, provides a frame within which he creates a palpable setting, the sort of world which—however fantastic—a reader feels he can navigate and depend upon. Then, without warning, chasms loom: rifts in space, gaps in time, shifts of tone—each without an explanation. Suddenly, this creepy-comfortable mansion of a story threatens us with great holes in the floor, and we have no choice but to negotiate around the holes or plunge into them. Either way, we immerse ourselves in the strange.

The six stories here are all good, yet each differs greatly from the others: “The School Friend” (grammar school girlfriends reunite after years, and the old house of the returning woman suggests disturbing revelations), “Ringing the Changes” (a May-December couple in a small seaside village encounter their own mortality ... and the risen dead), “Choice of Weapons” (an extraordinarily nightmarish account of love at first sight, involving a beautiful eccentric woman, a suburban London house of Ancient Egyptian design, and what may--or may not--be a duel), “The Waiting Room” (a lonely traveler communes with the dead who lie beneath the train station floor), “The View” (a convalescent middle-aged Foreign Service Officer accompanies a Circe-like woman to an isle off the English coast), and “Bind Your Hair” (an engaged young woman visits her husband’s family in the country and encounters a bizarre country ritual).

The volume also includes a helpful introduction by Richard T. Kelly, and an appreciative afterward about this prickly, often disagreeable man by fellow writer and friend Ramsey Campbell.

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

such curiously precise sentences, so exact, so perfectly constructed. they tell you everything and nothing. it's the meaning between those words, the implications of what is not being said that disturbs. those slippery places, those half-conscious spaces. admire Aickman for his perfect prose and his marvelous subtlety and his dry, dry wit. but love him for what he doesn't tell you, for taking you to a place where your mind must operate on a different level, someplace new and vague and troubling. he paints a picture of the night sky: the clouds and the treetops and the moon, all the stars in all of their strange remoteness. it is up to you to turn them into something, to make of them constellations - and other shapes.

I was surprised and a bit saddened to see two excellent reviews of this book insist that it is not horror. Dark Entries is horror at its most profound. horror doesn't simply scare; it inspires dread and a certain kind of chilliness, a creeping sort of understanding that the mind often resists. he provides a story that will read like a dream and he provides a meaning that he will only hint at; it is up to the reader to connect the two, to turn the oblique and the opaque into something that has its own logic. nightmare logic. Aickman is one of the absolute masters of the horror genre.

Dark Entries is Aickman's first solo collection. perhaps this early in his career he was more invested in creating horrors that were at least somewhat tangible and familiar. somewhat.

Ringing the Changes has a town that embraces the undead, and a couple that becomes trapped there. it has a suspenseful and eventually hair-raising narrative. but it is not about the undead; it is about the distance between two lovers, the distance that becomes apparent when contrasting the new and the old. a younger woman sees things her way, and rushes forward; she may quail in fear but she will dance with the dead. an older man sees his age, his ineffectuality; he will try to cross a gap and he will fail, impotent.

The Waiting Room has a traveler stranded in a train station, home to ghosts who were buried beneath. it is a ghost story and it is not a ghost story. it is about loneliness, a man as an island, a man alone and unconsciously yearning for a community, for support in his lonely world. he sleeps, and lives a brief dream of a happiness he has never had. he barely recognizes his own desperate need.

Bind Your Hair has a woman engaged to a man, and visiting his perfectly nice relatives in the country. a loving home that feels increasingly like a comfy trap, a soft and pillowy place where she may lose herself. it has a country village where people gather in the evenings, their clean strong limbs bared to the moon... for what purpose? it has two children, a peremptory guide and a savage biter. our heroine can barely resist them. bind your hair; bind away all that is you and become one of us.

Choose Your Weapons has a young man fall madly and inexplicably in love with an inexplicable, possibly mad young woman. it has hypnotism and a doctor who may know all. it has a crumbling house and a woman with two faces and a servant who grows younger. it has empty spaces at the heart of it, the gap between love and the reality of living, the excruciating smallness of minds that are obsessed by small things - things like money, class, a name, an appearance, poverty, wealth. can love ever be stronger than such small things when one part of the pair values the latter over the former? Choose Your Weapons has one of the most nightmarish narratives I've seen in an Aickman story, as well as one of the most startlingly, beautifully abrupt endings.

The School Friend has a writer returning to her hometown and finding her friend much changed, living in a perhaps haunted house that is notable for its drabness, its prosaic and dusty blandness. a school friend, once uniquely intelligent and idiosyncratic, turning drab, prosaic, dusty, and bland. the heroine slowly explores the house and the discomfort slowly increases. the horror seeps in from the frame until the whole picture is submerged. what's it all about? the meaning is hidden between the sentences, implicit never explicit, a teasing game for the author, a puzzle for the reader to work out. here are the clues: two independent women; sexuality and gendered roles; childbirth and parenthood; a descent into the horrible mundane and an ascent - maybe - into the terrible unknown. my favorite story in the collection.

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are surrounded by fog and veiled in ambiguity. Decaying mansions and enigmatically designed vacation homes are haunted by both the unknown and the obsessions of lonely visitors. Old friends reunite under uncanny circumstances. A honeymooning couple is caught in a town's preternatural ritual among the incessant tolling of church bells. A lovestruck man must duel with an image that appears from a mirror. The waiting room of a deserted train station comes alive in the darkness, trapping a traveller with wraiths. In my favorite story, The View, a bride-to-be visits her soon to be in-laws and becomes inadvertently involved in a pagan ritual. Each of these stories leaves much to the imagination, but the subjectivity adds to the uneasy yet intoxicating feeling of being lost in the maze of an alternate reality.

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange, but interesting collection!

I've been hearing from a number of other readers I trust that Robert Aickman's stories are fantastic. I was recently presented with the opportunity to pick up a few of his collections for free, and I jumped at the chance. Since Dark Entries won the September Monthly Read poll at the Literary Horror group on Goodreads, I started this one first.

These are NOT horror stories. Some of them hardly even seem to be stories at all...they're more like windows that look briefly on to some strange portion of someone's life and then they move on. There is no clear plot or point usually, but I found myself thinking deeply about every one of these tales, wondering if there were some hidden meaning that I wasn't getting. There was one seemingly clear ghost story here, "The Waiting Room." (I wonder if it was decided that there needed to be one clear, straightforward story included with this collection just to give the reader a break from all the thinking?)

I think my favorite story in this collection was the last one, "Bind Your Hair". I'm still thinking about it. I'm still thinking about "Ringing the Changes" as well. Don't ask me why, because I don't know...but it's still turning round in my noggin just the same.

I'm a horror loving gal...and I cut my teeth on the short stories of King, Straub, Etchison, Bradbury, Rasnic Tem, and other greats. I loved those tales with all my heart and I still do. I can't compare my Aickman experience to these other authors. That's not to say that I didn't like this collection, because I did. It's to say that these stories aren't even in the same league as those others. It's apples and oranges and both of them taste just fine to me.

Recommend for fans of weirdness.!

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Newlyweds arrive in a remote town for their honeymoon but the town’s church bells are mysteriously ringing constantly and a disturbed old man tells them the dead are being raised that night. A man falls in love with an eccentric wealthy woman – but nothing about her house is quite as it seems. An engaged woman visits her fiancée’s family in the country and encounters a bizarre lady who lives in a churchyard. These are the “strange stories” (he preferred this description of the horror genre) of Robert Aickman, and this collection, Dark Entries, is pretty good!

Aickman’s writing style is the most commendable aspect of this book. Some of the most famous horror writers – Poe, James, Lovecraft, King – are excellent at coming up with striking, original stories and/or visuals but severely falter in the execution; not so with Robert Aickman whose writing is very skilful, up there with the likes of Shirley Jackson. I was effortlessly drawn into nearly every story within a few sentences and held in thrall almost the entire time – wonderful! It’s very accessible and doesn’t feel like it’s over half a century old (this collection was originally published in 1964).

Where Aickman falls short for me is the stories’ content which are less than impressive. It’s not that they’re dull, and even the lack of things happening didn’t bother me, but those things do make for some fairly unmemorable stories. I can just about remember the stories for now but I’ve just finished the book – whether I’ll recall anything about them for much longer is probably unlikely! And the endings themselves, for each story, are very disappointing – anticlimactic even – particularly given how well he develops and sets up everything preceding them. They’re just too vague, abrupt and impressionistic for my taste.

Ringing the Changes was my favourite story - it’s basically everything I wanted The Shadow Over Innsmouth to be but wasn’t because Lovecraft’s such a bad writer! It’s easy to see why this is Aickman’s best known work.

Bind Your Hair, Choice of Weapons and The School Friend all had fine moments (the dreamlike atmosphere of Choice of Weapons, the creeping horror of both Bind Your Hair and The School Friend), and The Waiting Room, the shortest story here, was also the most traditional horror story, about a haunted train station waiting room. It’s funny because I complain about how open-ended Aickman leaves each story but the one time he gives a clear meaning I’m still not satisfied - dude just can’t do endings!

The View was the only story I didn’t enjoy at all, and unfortunately it’s also this collection’s longest. An artist sees a different building every time he looks out of the window of his lover’s coastal home and… bleh?

I felt that most of the stories are flawed as there’s not enough to them and were oddly insubstantial. They’re well-written though and almost hypnotically compelling and, while only one story really blew my hair back (Ringing the Changes), the book as a whole has definitely made me want to read more of Robert Aickman’s fiction.

If you’re after subtle, well-crafted horror along the lines of Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman is definitely worth a look, and Dark Entries seems to be a fine entry point.

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that Robert Aickman is a Master-Craftsman may be redundant. If you are unaware that I consider Aickman to be one of the best writers of the 20th-century, you haven't been reading my reviews. Or, perhaps, you think I'm engaging in hyperbole. Make no mistake about it: Go into Aickman's work with high literary expectations - they will be met and, many times, exceeded. I hate to rely on Neil Gaiman as any kind of authority, but even he states, about Aickman: "He really is the best". If that doesn't work for you, read the last section in here by Ramsey Campbell, who was a friend of Aickman's. Not only is it an intimate look at the author himself, it shows, quite clearly, the high standards of writing he set for himself (and expected of others).

This does not mean, however, that Aickman's greatness comes from an effusive use of descriptors or the perfectly placed "reveal". Quite the contrary. While Aickman's sentences are masterful works of art, they oftentimes only serve as a frame for what is missing. It is in what is not there, that which remains unsaid, that the horror of these stories festers and grows. Aickman creates voids that act as pocket dimensions of potentiality, as outlined in both David Peaks The Spectacle of the Void and Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie.

Take, for example, the first story in the collection Dark Entries, "The School Friend". Hear, about halfway through this story of old "friends" returning, one expects a jump scare as the protagonist, Mel, explores the strange home of her friend. The abandoned, then reclaimed house, the strange friend, Sally, who disappears and comes back changed in a twisted sort of way (and who currently owns the dilapidated house), the dismembered stuffed animals strewn on the floor - any reader can see these as signposts of some sort of abject horror about to reveal itself in full horror. Sally discovers Mel inside the house, and Mel hears ". . . and animal wailing above . . . [and] a noise resembling that of a pig scrabbling."

Sally, who is decidedly insane at this point says "Do you love children, Mel? Would you like to see my baby? . . . Let me tell you, Mel . . . that it's possible for a child to be born in a manner you'd never dream of . . .Will you be godmother? Come and see your god-child, Mel."

A scuffle ensues and then . . . no more mention of the baby. At all. Nothing. The potentiality that is left in the air, as it were, is positively haunting, a terrifying possibility out there, in the darkness, just around the corner, or upstairs . . . somewhere. The words in the final sentence, ". . . shall probably . . .," usually banal to the point that we don't even acknowledge that they have been read, have now become two of the most horrifying words in the English language.

And yet, in the next story, "Ringing the Changes," we get a sentence like:

Her expression indicated that she was one of those people whose friendliness has a precise and never-exceeded limit.

I cannot describe that expression to you, but I know it. I see it and, more importantly, feel it. That one sentence does more to explain the attitude of the character than paragraph after paragraph of blatant description could ever convey. It is exactly the right sentence to convey what Aickman wants us to know about this woman.

One must note here, also that "Ringing the Changes" must have had a profound effect on movie director David Lynch. Awkward, stilted conversation, the growing presence of a looming something, the unspoken, willfully-unacknowledged terrors felt by strangers in a community that seems to have "gone wrong," and the permanent, but unknown changes that come to those who have experienced true horror, are all Lynch's hallmarks. They are all present here.

Does all this mean that Aickman is absolutely comprehensible all of the time? No! I was left completely baffled by "Choice of Weapons". Is it a story of mesmerism? Vampirism? Hallucinatory madness? All of these? None? Lust and unrequited love, or a test of love, are at the heart of it, though there is an overtly political element to it, with its emphasis on caste and class. Despite my confusion, it is an engulfing story, especially at its twisted, unresolved ending. It left my brain churning. I loved this vortex. Or maybe it was lust?

At other times, his plots are pretty stock (though this is rare, I must admit). One of the more straightforward and predictable stories of Aickman's tales, "The Waiting Room" makes up in execution (pardon the pun, yes, it was intentional) what it lacks in originality. You know the plot (though I'm not going to reveal it), you've read it before, but you don't know with what exactitude and precision Aickman can write such a tried and true story until you read it yourself. His deft crafting adds a dimension lacking in other stories of its ilk, but it's not a mere embellishment of existing tropes. Aickman truly makes it his and his alone by the way he exercises his auctorial pen.

"The View" returns us to the labyrinth of imagination. There are few way-markers here, and the story roils in on itself, much as the house in which it takes place and the hostess of the house baffles the protagonist. We have here a house every bit as complex as the House of Leaves (though much less inimical). But, whereas Danielewski uses hypertextual methods to open the house to exploration and the reader's imagination, Aickman does so with a single sentence:

Apartments of the most various shapes and sizes led into one another in all directions without doors; and as no two apartments seemed to be decorated alike, the mirrors set up a chiaroscuro of reflections co-existent with but apparently independent of the rich and bewildering chiaroscuro of the apartments themselves.

Take a moment and digest that sentence. Who but Aickman could use the word "chiaroscuro" twice in the same sentence and make it feel like it's the most natural, sensible thing in the world? It enables the imagination without jilting the reader's thoughts. Yes, one may have to read it twice, carefully, in order to let the image fully bloom in one's mind, but it is worth a patient reading and meditation.

Even in describing the subtleties of the relationships between lovers, Aickman shows a deft hand:

. . . he . . . did not risk another of those so natural interrogatives she so lightly made to seem so heavy and unnecessary.

This sentence speaks volumes about the tension between the two characters of "The View," but also of the sensitivities of each character toward one another. One should not be surprised, then to find that "The View" is winsome and absolutely heart-rending. It has caused in me a genuine fear of growing old, something I have never really felt before. This is more from the sense of things past and lost than worry about future decrepitude. This is the empty hole at the center of nostalgia, a true existential dread. This story bit deep into my heart. It hurt, and I am better for it.

Finally, Aickman descends into decadence with "Bind Your Hair," a story about one innocent's introduction to what really goes on in a rural English village. This is folk horror with an Aickmanesque touch - the ending leaves us at a precarious point as to what to expect for the heroine; this unpredictability engendering a more lasting dread. Fear for her safety and innocence continue to rise after the last word is read. The potential is there for both good and bad in her future (short and long-term), and we agonize to know what she will choose, and which path she will go down, and what the consequences will be. We know the stakes are high, but the answers to all those questions are obfuscated from us.

Only the reader can supply the final narrative.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My, what a puzzling, yet wondrous experience reading Aickman is. Now it's finally become clear to me why I've seen him so often being talked about in such hushed, reverential tones. This Brit was an absolute master craftsman of the "strange tale", as he himself defined the nature of his work.

The one thing to be appreciated the most about these tales (this collection, astonishingly his debut, consists of 6), is undoubtedly the prose. It's rather gorgeous. Timeless, in fact. See, I have a sneaking suspicion that Aickman never cared about plotting at all. Not really. Naturally there must be a plot in order for there to be a story, but in almost every case it mostly consists of a rather basic premise, with some modest twists and turns thrown in. For a riveting, fast moving plot, Aickman ain't your man.

His primary obsessions are mood, nuance, the steady unfolding of an inner psychological drama. There are no satisfying pay offs to be found at the end. His world is an oblique, unreal and insecure one, populated by neurotics and lost souls. Threat is perceived, yet very often not actualised. That is the essence of Aickman.

Faber & Faber has thus far republished 4 - thankfully, inexpensive- collections of Aickman's work. Previously, the only way to obtain Aickman other than secondhand was through the lovingly produced hardcovers of Tartarus Press, which are admittedly pricey. Fantastic publisher, but perhaps not the best route to take by way of an introduction. For those interested, I'd suggest going for these first. My utmost and highest recommendation.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading experience with Aickman's first collection far eclipsed the one I had with Cold Hand in Mine. I found the stories on the whole to be much more engaging here, but I also think I've become more acclimated to Aickman's peculiar style. His mastery of the strange is superb—always knowing exactly how much to tell and what is crucial to hold back. And he could have delivered a fine workshop on how to write endings to strange stories, for nearly every one of his own endings is pitch perfect. I enjoyed all the stories in this collection, but 'The View' is easily one of the best short stories I've ever read. It is basically perfect. I'd give this collection 5 stars if it weren't for the smothering layers of unnecessary detail that Aickman applies in certain stories. In this collection at least he usually redeems himself later on in a story, though, so probably more of a 4.5.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few notes on each story in this pretty much perfect collection:

The School Friend: Aickman invests the theme of the ancestral home that holds dark secrets with a fresh menace and mystery. In contrast to this is the notion of friendship, surviving the vicissitudes of life and time and offering a measure of clemency.

Ringing The Changes: The atmosphere of slowly building oppression and the growing sense of dread kept me on the edge of my seat. What really makes the story are the little, weird details about the characters the couple meet in the hotel, adding to a sense of reality out of joint.

Choice Of Weapons: A man falls in love with a strange, seductive girl who lives in an eerie old house. She is lost in a dream of love, and so is he. Dreamy and startling. I picture Eva Green as the girl.

The Waiting Room: Very much a traditional ghost story but masterfully framed for maximum disorientation.

The View: A beautiful, sad fable about a man who is pixilated by a magical woman in a magical house, and then lives on, literally older and sadder. There is such a powerful aura of romantic longing and desolation around this story.

Bind Your Hair: A woman visits her fiance's family. She discovers a strange, yet oddly magical cult centered around a remarkable misfit, but rejects it with a firmness that seems like a displacement of her reaction to her fiance's family. A beautiful balance between mundane and weird elements, both equally unsettling to the protagonist.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buddy Read with Mother Suspiria.

Prior to this book, my only experience reading Aickman's work was "The Hospice" in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. And although it's been a few years since I read that story, it's always stuck with me in its eerie atmosphere and the feeling that things are ever-so-slightly off. And while that particular tale does not appear in Dark Entries, I was pleased to discover a similar tone with the stories in this collection.

Stories in this book:

The School Friend
Ringing the Changes (my favorite by a wide margin)
A Choice of Weapons
The Waiting Room
The View
Bind Your Hair

Robert Aickman's writing style was a unique one, and I can see how his work might be an acquired taste for some. The prose is heavy, and at times beautiful, but I wouldn't describe it as purple or flowery. He frequently used allusion as a literary device; in some stories there are so many subtle references that you could drive yourself mad trying to figure out the meanings behind all of them ("The School Friend" and "The View" especially come to mind in this sense). The plots tend to move at a slower pace, perhaps because the focus is primarily on creating a sense of creeping dread. And although I hesitate to label him a surrealist author, he certainly wrote in a manner adjacent to surrealism. It's not always an easy read, but those who persevere might find these stories quite memorable.

Recommended if you like nuanced, slow burn horror (although the author preferred the term "strange stories"). It's also probably best if you spread the stories out over a few weeks to avoid them feeling repetitive.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally when I review one of Robert Aickman's collections, I ramble on about his masterful craftmanship of strange tales, his lush and supple prose, talking much about the author's style in general. But I'm not going to do that this time. Let's face it, if you're thinking of picking this book up you are already a hardened fan. Unless you're extraordinarily lucky to discover this tucked away out the back of some dusty old second-hand store, you're paying a lot of money for one of these fine but expensive Tartarus Press editions.

This collection contains only six stories, one of which I've read before ("Bind Your Hair") and an introduction by Dr Glen Cavaliero. One reason I picked this up, other than getting hold of several stories not included in the relatively cheaper and more readily available collections, was to get to read the legendary "Ringing the Changes". I noticed that many Aickman fans had cited this as their favourite and after reading it I can see why. One of his more outright terrifying stories. I loved it.

But Aickman rarely writes stories that are conventional horror. Usually they are more strange, only hinting at something more horrific under the surface. "The School Friend" is like this. We experience the story through the eyes of a female protagonist who sees her old friend change inexplicably as she moves back into her family home. "Choice of Weapons" is completely outré as we follow a man who falls in love with a woman at first sight whilst on a date with another and then the consequences of his obsession unfold. "The Waiting Room" is the least interesting, still worth reading but definitely one of his minor stories.

Included in this edition, although not in the original edition, is "The View", which actually originally appeared in his first collection that he contributed to jointly with Elizabeth Jane Howard, We Are For The Dark. This version is one that Aickman had apparently slightly re-written. A great story though exploring the tension between the forces for change and stasis in Aickman's own oblique way.

All in all, another fine collection but then I am increasingly of the opinion that it would be extremely difficult to put a collection of stories by this author together and for it not to be outstanding.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can say is oh my! This book contains a bunch of good creepers. Especially "Ringing The Changes".

No wonder Roald Dahl picked Aickman's stories to be in different anthologies.

Try and find a copy of this one.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Aickman is quite the writer. When he is good he is amazing. He has the ability to paint masterpieces with words. His characters can be extremely complex and humanly vulnerable.

The story I most enjoyed in "Dark Entries" (His second collection of stories following "We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories") is the story called "The View" (Which was originally printed in his first collection "Six Ghost Stories"). The story concerns the protagonist a gentleman named Carfax a vulnerable and exhausted man who needs to get away from the hectic life in the city. He meets a beautiful woman on a sea voyage who invites him to stay with her in her home. As the story evolves we glimpse Carfax's voyage from imagined self doubt into the fringes of madness, yet hopelessly madly in love with his Femme Fatal. This is one great story.

Another story I rather enjoyed is the final story in the book entitled "Bind Your Hair" a quite bizarre and strange story.

The book also contains a couple of non exceptional ghost stories which are none the less well written. And a psychological haunted house story which begins the book called the "School Friend" which is more full of implications and innuendo than actual fright.

The original appearance of the stories is:
The book "We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories", London: Jonathan Cape, 1951
"The Trains"
"The Insufficient Answer"
"The View"
The other three stories in the book are by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The book "Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories", London: Collins, 1964
"The School Friend"
"Ringing the Changes"
"Choice of Weapons"
"The Waiting Room"
"Bind Your Hair"

The copy I read is a Faber and Faber edition published in 2014 with an introduction by Richard T. Kelly and an afterword by Ramsey Campbell which I also really enjoyed.

[Arun Divakar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reviewer or a group of reviewers ( I don’t remember who specifically) called Robert Aickman a writer who has produced fantastic works in the horror genre. If ‘Dark Entries’ is any indicator, then Aickman is not a horror writer at all ! His prose is lush and the emotion that it switches on is unease, a very profound one at that too. The kind of unease that makes a clammy sweat break out, give you an itch behind your eyeballs and makes your head jerk up when the curtain by your window sways in the unseen wind. Ambling, slithering, slimy monstrosities do not crawl out of these pages, blood and gore are not splattered all over and yet you feel a sense of dread for no explicable reason whatsoever. Through five short stories, Aickman offers glimpses into the enigmatic labyrinth of the human mind. After two stories, I was totally in awe of Aickman’s writing prowess.

The tool that Aickman uses to terrific effect is the minor imbalances and hallucinations of the human mind. The neuroses that plague some of his characters are like tumours which grow slowly yet surely and become life threatening in the end. His short story ‘Ringing the changes’ is a fantastic piece of work. For a story that lasts approximately 40 pages, this is sheer dynamite. A strange place, even stranger people, noise that makes you want to tear your hair out looking for some peace and a realization that attempting to escape would be rather futile an endeavour are all captured grimly in this tale. This is a fine example of the craft involved when it comes to writing an unsettling tale for the horror is in watching on helplessly as things start spiralling out of control. The story is a tightrope walk between the real and the surreal and Aickman slips in and out of both these with consummate ease. Undoubtedly this is one of the tightest written short stories that I have read. Another such unsettling tale is ‘Bind your hair’. This is the last story in the book and I am still wondering what to make out of it. At first, it is a tongue-in-cheek look at the horrors of living a weekend with your in-law’s but all the while Aickman weaves a web of strangeness around the setting of the story. The Dinoysian experiences that Clarinda Hartley undergoes and bears witness to in the British countryside are enough to shake her out of the mental turgidity of living with her over loving yet tepid fiancé and family. The strangeness of this story is bested only by ‘Ringing the changes’. The other three tales are also no less stunning in execution. Aickman does not conform his stories to the three act structure but goes for taking an instance or occurrence in the lives of these characters and showing it to us in all its oddness and after stirring up our mind, he moves on to the next one. I am completely impressed, Mr. Aickman !

Ramsey Campbell writes in the afterword about Aickman’s disdain for all horror writers and their incapability in coming up with plot lines that do not step out of the ordinary. Considering the skill that he possessed in the field of weird fiction, I can completely understand Mr. Aickman’s POV on this too. Highly recommended !

[Béla Malina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eventually, one has to give up trying to comprehend the strange, ambiguous weirdness in these stories. Absolutely puzzled at the end, I went back through them, trying to find tidbits of meaning to give these stories clarity. It doesn’t help. Really, it just might make it worse. Frequently, I came upon passages that increased my confusion, and now my copy of this collection is riddled with question marks and unsure speculations.

The enjoyment of Aickman‘s work lies in that uncertainty. What exactly went wrong, and where? There is always crucial information missing, information that the protagonists of these tales are just as clueless about as the reader. The implications are always disconcerting, though so perpetually covered in mist that one can barely make out the unreal, yet real horror underpinning the world Aickman’s characters inhabit (and also, we may begin to sense, our own un-real world). It’s in the best way possible: DREADFUL.

[Yórgos St. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second favorite Aickman collection (so far at least) after Sub Rose which is the first Aickman collection that I read and my personal favorite.

- The school friend : A quintessential Aickman story that it will make you wonder days after you read it and eventually you will read it again. The second time you will find more clues in order to unlock the story's secrets and themes.

- Ringing the changes : One of Aickman's more celebrated stories. More straight forward than the first story of the collection but utterly effective. Atmospheric and disturbing. The story climaxes up to its subtle and terrifying ending.

- Choice of weapons : A weird love/obsession story with many twists and curves. A nightmarish narrative with an abrupt ending that it will make you start over.

- The waiting room : Another straight forward story considering Aickman's style. It's a ghost story alright but it's so much more. It's about loneliness and about a man's yearning for happiness and acceptance.

- The view : Probably my favorite story of the collection. A story that can be read in so many different ways. For me ,it was all about the artist's struggle in order to create and his daily fight with the mundane. Trying to approach the mystical and his muse. The ending was utterly sad.

- Bind your hair : Another quintessential Aickman. A story about a young woman who loses herself and maybe finding at the end who she actually is. Again, it can be read in many ways but that's Aickman's mastery. Aickman's themes may be universal but at the same time his stories open doors to darker, more private places and the most frightening thing is that he always leaves the doors ajar.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When you live entirely among madmen, it is difficult to know how sane you are.”

Dark Entries was my first encounter with the “strange” stories written by Robert Aickman, and it was an immediate bull’s eye experience with me, partly because of the moods and situations the author deftly conjures up, partly because of his remarkably unerring use of language. Last year, I tried reading Ligotti, and after a handful of stories decided to give up on him because the florid and overstrung style of that author sounded to me like an awkward imitation of Poe and more often than not was at variance with the situation described in the stories. I was also sadly underwhelmed by William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland last December, and that’s why I did not expect too much when I started this little book a few days ago. But even if I had entered the read with higher expectations, I would hardly have been disappointed because Aickman is incredible when it comes to using language in surprising and effective ways, combining precision and imagination – e.g. when he coins a phrase like “the boundless sequacity of love” –, and leaving you at a loss as to what has precedence for him, the exploration of the language or the mood he thereby creates. His horrors are often indirectly hinted at but still very forceful for all that, and in Dark Entries, I found a collection of short stories that would unsettle me in a very lasting way even when I read them in broad daylight, something that often impairs the effect of weird or horror stories. Not so in Aickman’s case because this author could probably also show you the terrors that lie hidden beneath a thin surface of sunlight and birds’ songs.

Here is a short overview of the individual stories:

1) The School Friend *****
The tale of “an ever-open mouth of a house”, which gets hold of a middle-aged woman, plunging her into madness and tapping her vitality, told by her former school friend who learns that it may not be too wise an idea to pry too closely into other people’s life. It may be that the narrator’s friend is a victim of domestic abuse but it may also be that the house is possessed by an evil force that tries to feed on her.

2) Ringing the Changes ****
This was my personal favourite in this collection, an unusual zombie story in which a dance with the dead allows a young wife a glimpse into something that is more alive than anything her husband might offer her will ever be.

3) Choice of Weapons **
An extremely grotesque story, seeming more like a feverish nightmare than anything else. There is a mysterious young woman in love with a strange man appearing to her in a mirror, and a rather high-strung, fickle protagonist who falls for her at first sight. The ending of the story remains a riddle to me, as much as the strange workings of the seemingly benevolent Dr. Bermuda, who pretends to help our protagonist in his love affair.

4) The Waiting Room ***
A train passenger who has to spend the night in a waiting room connects with the dead and finds that there seems to be an unspoken assumption of understanding between him and them.

5) The View *****
My second favourite story, dealing with Carfax, a convalescent young man, who accepts a young woman’s invitation to her house which is situated on an island. They pass the days indulging in conversations about arts, or playing the piano and the protagonist finally falls in love with the woman, who embodies a philosophy of egotistical aestheticism, mirrored in a statement like this:

”You live surrounded by the claims of other people: to your labour when they call it peace, your life when they call it war; to your celibacy when they call you a bachelor, your body when they call you a husband. They tell you where you shall live, what you shall do, and what thoughts are dangerous.”

Carfax soon embraces her point of view as well as the fact that the island constantly seems to change, and they spend the time in dual solipsism, but one day he awakes to make a terrible observation – one that seems to betoken a rarely-told truth on a life spent on and in itself.

6) Bind Your Hair *****
A young fiancée spends her first weekend in the country with the family of her betrothed. Although she finds them all basically nice, she also senses that their life is a tad too commonplace and passive for her. There is, however, an alternative of how to spend one’s time in the country offered to her.

All these stories venture as much into the fog of unacknowledged wishes and fears in the human psyche as into haunted houses or forlorn graveyards, and this is what makes their perusal a spine-chilling experience even before dusk because they deal in terrors and dangers that lurk within every single one of us and that we cannot avoid by simply not going into the cellar.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read these Faber reissues of Aickman’s books out of order, so this – his first solo collection, dating from 1964 – is, for me, the last, and two of the stories (‘Ringing the Changes’ and ‘Bind Your Hair’) were not new to me. It always seems that Aickman’s fiction shows the limitations of rating books out of five stars: I enjoyed this more than some of the other collections; here, he has not yet honed his ability to make the reader profoundly uncomfortable. But I don’t feel it is necessarily as significant as, say, Cold Hand in Mine.

Dark Entries contains just six stories. They tend towards the strange and disquieting rather than the more explicitly disturbing themes that appear in some of Aickman’s later work. My favourites were ‘The School Friend’ and ‘Ringing the Changes’, with ‘The View’ in close contention.

I liked ‘The School Friend’ straight away, and it proved to be my favourite story from the book. A writer, Mel, returns to her home town, and discovers her old friend Sally – once a precocious and brilliant student – has done the same. It quickly becomes clear that something is very wrong with Sally, or at least something is very wrong with her house. This is a gripping tale, replete with the sense of foreboding I associate with Aickman.

I have retained an impression of ‘Ringing the Changes’ as a real classic, and it was a pleasure to revisit it. A recently married couple, Gerald and Phrynne, take their honeymoon in a small town on the Norfolk coast. From the beginning, they find Holyhaven an odd and unwelcoming place. When a cacophony of bell-ringing – apparently an annual custom – strikes up, Gerald becomes increasingly convinced they must leave. The strange local ritual builds to a horrifying climax which seems to leave the couple divided in unspoken ways.

The story is both intensely unsettling and one of Aickman’s funniest. Rereading it also gave me an excuse to reread ‘A Change of Scene’, the even-better sequel Nina Allan wrote for the anthology Aickman’s Heirs (and then I ended up reading the rest of the anthology too).

For me, ‘Choice of Weapons’ was a dud: messy and overlong, seeming to veer all over the place without ever reaching any sort of... point. It is, as a number of Aickman stories are, about a man suddenly falling in love with a beautiful woman and becoming embroiled in dubious situations in his pursuit of her. Some of it is quite entertaining; Fenville’s encounters with Dr Bermuda are pleasingly absurd. The climax and ending are unsatisfying, failing to justify the length.

‘The Waiting Room’ is a fairly typical ghost story, more traditional than anything else I have read by Aickman. A man named Pendlebury falls asleep on a train and ends up at the last stop, where he has no option but to spend the night in the waiting room. You can probably guess how that goes. The atmosphere of the setting is the story’s biggest asset; the room really does feel charged with terror.

‘The View’ is similar, at first glance, to ‘Choice of Weapons’, and is presumably the original of its type; it was first published in the 1951 collection We Are For the Dark, which Aickman co-authored with Elizabeth Jane Howard. A man, Carfax, is on a ferry to ‘the Island’ when he meets an enigmatic woman named Ariel; she invites him to stay at her home, Fleet. Although he falls in love with Ariel and finds the house idyllic, he notices some strange things about the place, in particular a number of inexplicable alterations to the landscape. While it is more wistful than unnerving, ‘The View’ is evocative, intriguing and memorable.

‘Bind Your Hair’ follows a young woman, Clarinda, as visits her fiancé’s family home and develops a fascination with Mrs Pagani, a charismatic woman she meets at a party. Again it is the atmosphere of the setting – the wet, foggy lanes lined with dripping trees – that make the greatest impression.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a good deal shorter than the other Aickman collections out there. It's about half the length of "The Unsettled Dust," "Cold Hand in Mine" or "The Wine-Dark Sea" -- especially when you take out the Introduction and "Robert Aickman Remembered" (interesting as those may be.)

Two of the stories ("The Waiting Room" and "The View") are of lesser quality than Aickman's average. But I think both this, and the shorter length are made up for by the other four stories, all of which are excellent, three of which are among my personal favorites.


The School Friend - I thought this was a masterpiece, a truly frightening haunted house story with Aickman's vague, somewhat open-ended implications at their creepy best. This belongs in the top 5 of 30~ Aickman stories I've read thus far. After a woman's old school friend has an accident, she is asked to look after the house she recently inherited from her strange father. There she uncovers some very odd things.

Ringing the Changes - Very weird story, less subtle than Aickman’s other’s I would say, but no less interesting, atmospheric or fascinating. The first half builds a good mood, the second half is very strange. A couple on honeymoon stays in a small town that tolls it’s church bells all night, a local reveals they are trying to wake the dead.

Choice of Weapons - I really liked this one, the end left me a bit at sea, the last paragraph in particular REALLY throws one for a loop. But overall I thought this was an excellent story with a very shadowy, almost "haunted house" atmosphere to it. A man becomes suddenly obsessed with a woman he sees in a restaurant, he goes after her, contending for her love with a quite sinister figure.

The Waiting Room - Probably the most "conventional" Aickman story I've ever read, brief and without as much vague, open-endedness one is used to. Not a bad ghost story. A man stranded at the end of the line stays in an old waiting room, and witnesses more than a few apparitions.

The View - This was surprisingly straight forward for Aickman. It's a sad story with a good ending to it, but I felt this one dragged a bit in the middle. I would put this in the bottom five stories I've read by him. An artist in need of a rest stays in a woman's estate on an island where time seems to pass strangely.

Bind Your Hair - Another weird one I liked a lot, this one's creepy, even a little scary with several memorable moments and images. Definitely one of the better Aickman stories, it's subtle, but goes beyond his more subtle stories, with a more direct, horror story ending like "Ringing the Changes." A girl goes with her fiance to the country to meet her family. While there she meets a strange local woman who lives near a maze where queasy Pagan rituals are held.

[Carmine R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dilemmi interiori con venature surreali

Apro il commento con un sincero elogio alla casa editrice: non è da tutti rilanciare i nomi di autori classici vinti dal tempo.
E, forse questo è un caso più unico che raro, per la prima volta non mi sento affatto di sconsigliare un autore come Robert Aickman, invero piuttosto atipico nella gestione del weird e capace di tessere atmosfere dall’indubbio fascino grazie a un prosa puntuale e sobria.
La peculiarità che ha pesantemente influito sull’esperienza di lettura è la costante e volontaria necessità di mascherare tasselli del contesto potenzialmente capaci di dare un minimo di chiarezza; e, per estensione, non hanno aiutato le circonvoluzioni panegiriche sull’amore o il senso di colpa - rispettivamente “Il panorama” e “Il richiamo delle campane” -, colpevoli di quella indagine del subconscio piuttosto fastidiosa nella sua incompletezza.
L'ermetismo esasperato danneggia non poco quelle che sarebbero belle ambientazioni impreziosite da una gestione dell’attesa che poco avrebbe da invidiare ai grandi del genere.
In tal senso, un racconto come “La scelta delle armi”, piuttosto raffinato nell’evidenziare con minacciose allusioni la scarsa consapevolezza di sé nel momento dell’esercizio sentimentale, avrebbe guadagnato nella portata drammatica con un’atmosfera surreale meno pervasiva e, al contrario, più attenta ai dettagli del contesto reale.
Unico racconto davvero convincente - per la mia sensibilità verso il genere horror in senso lato - è “La sala d’attesa”, caleidoscopio di vivi e morti che sfuma i ruoli dei partecipanti in scena con una perizia apprezzabilissima.
L’Aickman che ho trovato meritevole è quello capace di ereditare i cliché classici dell’horror e ribaltarli con chiarezza espositiva; il resto della lettura è affascinante solo per chi si accontenta di atmosfere sospese e finali non risolutori.

La ferrovia ★★
Una risposta inadeguata ★★
Il panorama ★★
La compagna di scuola ★★★
Il richiamo delle campane ★★★1/2
La scelta delle armi ★★★
La sala d’attesa ★★★★
Lègati i capelli ★
Solo una canzone al tramonto ★★

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of stories mostly did not creep me out, despite the accolades of being a great horror writer. But they were certainly strange stories, as Aickman himself preferred to call them. There’s a great atmosphere in some of them, and his writing is careful and precise. Somebody else described the atmosphere in some of the stories as “reality out of joint”, and that’s definitely true — for these characters, ostensibly belonging to our normal world, something jolts out of place and everything is made strange by it. Even some quite mundane details can become more threatening in that atmosphere.

I’m not in a wild hurry to read more of Aickman’s work, but I wouldn’t say no, either — maybe I’ll pick up more of it from the library, and give his novels a try.

Originally posted here.

[Florina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I certainly have new material for my nightmares.
Perhaps the best aspect of these short stories are not the plots in themselves, but the writing. Truly, Aickman strikes fear through his prose, not his events. His sentences are so elegant, so chilling, so clear yet so confusing, that you will find yourself thinking it must be some shortcoming of yours that you did not read between the lines. In actuality, that's the warranted effect.
Any action seems to exist solely to complement the writing and in this case, it works. You are afraid but have no idea why you are afraid and that is true marksmanship. Of course there are some twists and turns and you'll find ghosts and corpses and madmen and beasts strewn across the stories, but they are not the essence of your fear. Robert Aickman seems to have discovered that good horror comes from no horror at all, merely the allusion of it.

[Geraldine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this because I heard a radio documentary about Aickman describing him as "the best author you've never heard of", and that his stories were a truly chilling example of the horror genre.

I'm afraid to say that this collection of short stories didn't really convince me of any of that. Aickman died in the 1980s, and I found all of these stories difficult to date from the descriptions of dress, technology and general attitude of the characters. The stories are very much like those of M R James, in that they describe spooky goings on, and then come to a fairly abrupt halt.

If you like M R James you might want to give them a go, but I won't be trying any more of his works.

[Bregje · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short story collection took me quite some time to read. As with a lot of short story collections I did like some of the stories, but others weren't really for me. The stories were not as scary as I expected them to be, but they definitely had a mysterious atmosphere. Eventhough I was not always sure what exactly was going on, the stories somehow still intrigued me. They are not the best short stories I've ever read but I am compelled to pick up another of Aickman's short story collections.

[Brucifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first of what I already know will be several excursions into the world of Robert Aickman, who--along with Ramsey Campbell--is almost universally acknowledged amongst critics as the finest writer of horror fiction of the latter half of the 20th century. Well, finally I took the plunge thanks to these nice new Faber & Faber paperback editions of his previously difficult-to-locate work, and I decided to start with his earliest solo collection. I have to agree that I'm mightily impressed with Aickman's subtle terrors and gorgeous prose style. He was a true original. The only writers of ghost/horror stories I could think of comparing him to as I read this collection were Edith Wharton and Henry James, who also approached the genre with subtlety and ambiguity, often not quite confirming that anything supernatural has actually occurred. The exception in this collection is "Ringing the Changes," which is overtly supernatural and is the most terrifying story here. But the more ambiguous stories are also well worth the time, even if they don't have you climbing the walls in terror. I was especially impressed with "The School Friend," "Bind Your Hair," and "The View," all of which are tales of psychological ambiguity melded with supernaturalism that end with what I can only guess is an Aickman trademark: the subtle twist, usually just a sentence or two, that leaves the reader simultaneously perplexed, surprised, intrigued, and most importantly, unnerved. Some readers might be unsatisfied with the lack of clear endings in Aickman's stories (even "Ringing the Changes" leaves you with a lot of questions), but I felt this made the stories all the more effective. I had to take my star rating of this collection down a notch due to "Choice of Arms," a story with its moments but ultimately mediocre, and "The Waiting Room," which could have been more effective if Aickman had sustained the suspense longer (it's the shortest story in the collection; the rest are almost novella-length, which might explain why this story seems a bit slight). But in any case, highly recommended, and not just for genre fans. These stories should be read by anyone who appreciates good literature, whether "horror" (an arguable term here: Aickman used the terms "strange stories" to describe his work) or not.

[Spiderorchid · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star seems very harsh, but in the end, I really "did not like it".

Or perhaps the problem was that the stories didn't live up to the hype. Robert Aickman is being lauded as this brilliant writer of strange stories and while the writing itself is certainly good and very aesthetic, the stories are mediocre at best. They simply don't deliver. Aickman starts of with great, atmospheric descriptions and set ups that then kind of dwindle away, leaving the reader often with open endings and always without any kind of explanation or even a sense of why this story had to be told. Totally pointless. It's like reading an elaborate menu in beautiful caligraphic script on heavy paper presented in an embossed leather binder and when your order arrives it's a piece of dry toast on a paper plate.

The stories are nice and easy to read and the language is beautiful. Just don't expect to get anything out of it in terms of suspense or plot-development, they're not even particularly weird or creepy. There are a few shocking scenes but they have no real impact because in the end everything is left hanging.

I think it's a marketing problem: Aickman's work is being described as "horror" or "strange" when the stories are really psychological studies or even surreal impressions. It's not about the plot or any kind of development, it's about what's going on in the protagonist's mind.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Восхитительная проза — такие «книжки о призраках» нам бы в детстве читать, а не «гнев отца», прости господи, какой-нибудь. Сдержанная, стильная, без морали — за что, понятно, автора не раз упрекали, мол, концы у него многосмысленные… Конечно, это в первую очередь несколько осовремененная готика — ну, для середины ХХ века осовременненная, конечно: там не «ужас», и не только призраки, само собой. Особенно чудесен рассказ «Вид» (из окна который) — он примерно про Ирландию.
В общем, интересно, конечно, что получится, если и когда его переведут (хотелось бы надеяться, что не испортят) — это гораздо, гораздо лучше графомана Лавкрафта и его русских эпигонов. Буду читать его и дальше — для отдохновения и освежения читательского восприятия.

[Shelby · Rating 2 out of 5]

a collection of short spooky stories published in 1964. this has ultimately become my bus book, which means it’s a book I don’t want to read but do want to finish, so I read it on all my long bus rides to work because I don’t have anything better to do. suffice to say I did not really enjoy this. see my ratings for individual stories below:

-The School Friend: 1.5/5. boring, lame ending, female pov was sooo not believable
-Ringing the Changes: 3.25/5. certainly more interesting, but “she looked at the fire femininely” was laughable
-Choice of Weapons: 2/5. also boring. my fave premise so for but it dragged and didn’t stick the landing
-The Waiting Room: 3.5/5. this one was quite nice. perfect length and an interesting story with an open ending that still leaves you feeling a bit eerie
-The View: 0/5. the author really wants you to know this character🚨hates women🚨. sucks ass even without considering that. so boring
-Bind Your Hair: 3/5. this one was interesting and not so boring. I think i’m just happy to be done with the book

averaged together to get an overall 2.25⭐️

[Richard S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aickman writes music; almost Mozartian at times, you feel as if a word were added or removed, the effect would be spoiled. His particular style of subtle, creepy horror is literate too, Shakespeare creeps in, and others. What I like most is the realism of the reactions, nothing is taken for granted, everyone is doomed, but nothing seems forced. The quality of the writing is exquisite, here's a sample:

"Slowly but unmistakably the tension of community and sodality waxed among them, as if a loose mesh of threads weaving about between the different individuals was being drawn tighter and closer, further isolating them from the rest of the world, and from Pendlebury: the party was advancing into a communal phantasmagoria, as parties should, but in Pendlebury's experience seldom did; a sombre chinoise of affectionate ease and intensified inner life."

(One wishes H.P. Lovecraft could write so well.) The stories themselves are a bit uneven (the book is not quite as good as his later Sub Rosa). My favorite was the completely subtle and creepy "The School Friend," with its weird sexual ambiguities. The stories almost always have a mysterious female character, most beautifully portrayed in the character of Ariel in "The View." Aickman sometimes has trouble with his endings, but his creation of mood is quite unequalled. Really, he's best when he's describing the most mundane things, the opening half of "Choice of Weapons" has a restaurant scene and a following scene which are full of his little unsettling asides (a boy falling off his bike) that act as a pacing tool as well as way just to convey mood.

I say music - the musical elements of the writing seem at times as important as the words, and the effect of the stories is similar. Recounting the plot - there's no such thing as a "spoiler" in these stories, and the stories are about their style. I could tell you how they end, and it would change nothing of the effect. He's not writing to tell a gripping yarn, he's providing an "impression" which can be beautiful (exceptionally so), or unsettling, or terrifying. Mystery pervades, if you're looking for answers to the questions, you are missing the point of the story.

Aickman's stories would be wonderful for a writing course in short fiction. I'm not sure where to bucket them in horror, weird, or imaginative writing. I think they belong to a sort of "mood horror" like in the story "The Willows" by Blackwood. But Aickman doesn't ever revert to traditional horror tropes - there are no vampires here (or perhaps there are - but he would never go out and actually tell you). Regardless, highly recommended to all, especially to literary types who would never touch the genre, -- so many "classic" short stories depend so much on exactly the same kind of mystery and ambiguity that Aickman thrills in, you will find yourself on familiar, but highly intensified, ground.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been on a real Aickman kick recently having just finished The Wine-Dark Sea I heard about a group read for this title and decided to join the discussion. This collection definitely had a "darker"(no pun intended) feel than Wine-Dark but I still wouldn't really call this horror. Weird, yes. Bizarre, absolutely. Loaded with subtext, without a doubt. I did enjoy this collection a bit more than Wine-Dark but that is directly related to all the discussion during the group read. I truly believe Aickman stories need to be kicked around amongst a group of readers.

I really loved Ringing the Changes, The View and Bind Your Hair with The Waiting Room being the weakest.


You live surrounded by the claims of other people: to your labour when they call it peace, your life when they call it war; to your celibacy when they call you a bachelor, your body when they call you a husband. They tell you where you shall live, what you shall do, and what thoughts are dangerous. Does not some modern Frenchman, exhausted by it all and very naturally, say, "Hell is other people?"