Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature

Black Water #1

by Alberto Manguel (Editor)

This huge anthology offers a kaleidoscope of brilliant writing from the Magi of the imagination. Alberto Manguel has selected 72 fantastic tales from life on the edge of the twilight zone, with stories from Marguerite Yourcenar, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, and many, many more. This is a collection of irresistible masterpieces, many of which have never before appeared in the English language.

Fantastic literature Manguel writes in his introduction, makes use of our everyday world as a facade through which the undefinable appears, hinting at the half-forgotten dreams of our imagination. Unlike tales of fantasy, fantastic literature deals with what can be best defined as the impossible seeping into the possible, what Wallace Stevens calls black water breaking into reality. Fantastic literature never really explains everything, it thrives on surprise, on the unexpected logic that is born from its own rules.

Contents:

House taken over by Julio Cortázar
How love came to Professor Guildea by Robert S. Hichens
Climax for a ghost story by I.A. Ireland
The mysteries of the Joy Rio by Tennessee Williams
Pomegranate seed by Edith Wharton
Venetian masks by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The wish house by Rudyard Kipling
The playground by Ray Bradbury
Importance by Manuel Mujica Láinez
Enoch Soames by Max Beerbohm
A visitor from down under by L.P. Hartley
Laura by Saki
An injustice revealed
A little place off the Edgware Road by Graham Greene
From "A School Story" by M.R. James
The signalman by Charles Dickens
The tall woman by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
A scent of mimosa by Francis King
Death and the gardener by Jean Cocteau
Lord Mountdrago by W. Somerset Maugham
The sick gentleman's last visit by Giovanni Papini
Insomnia by Virgilio Piñera
The storm by Jules Verne
A dream (from The Arabian Nights Entertainments)
The facts in the case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe
Split second by Daphne du Maurier
August 25, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges
How Wang-Fo was saved by Marguerite Yourcenar
From "Peter and Rosa" by Isak Dinesen
Tattoo by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
John Duffy's brother by Flann O'Brien
Lady into fox by David Garnett
Father's last escape by Bruno Schulz
A man by the name of Ziegler by Hermann Hesse
The Argentine ant by Italo Calvino
The lady on the grey by John Collier
The queen of spades by Alexander Pushkin
Of a promise kept by Lafcadio Hearn
The wizard postponed by Juan Manuel
The monkey's paw by W.W. Jacobs
The bottle imp by Robert Louis Stevenson
The rocking-horse winner by D.H. Lawrence
Certain distant suns by Joanne Greenburg
The third bank of the river by João Guimarães Rosa
Home by Hilaire Belloc
The door in the wall by H.G. Wells
The friends by Silvina Ocampo
Et in sempiternum pereant by Charles Williams
The captives of Longjumeau by Léon Bloy
The visit to the museum by Vladimir Nabakov
Autumn Mountain by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
The sight by Brian Moore
Clorinda by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
The pagan rabbi by Cynthia Ozick
The fisherman and his soul by Oscar Wilde
The bureau d'echange de maux by Lord Dunsany
The ones who walk away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin
In the penal colony by Franz Kafka
A dog in Durer's etching "The Knight, Death and the Devil" by Marco Denevi
The large ant by Howard Fast
The lemmings by Alex Comfort
The grey ones by J.B. Priestley
The feather pillow by Horacio Quiroga
Seaton's aunt by Walter de la Mare
The friends of the friends by Henry James
The travelling companion by Hans Christian Andersen
The curfew tolls by Stephen Vincent Benet
The state of grace by Marcel Aymé
The story of a panic by E.M. Forster
An invitation to the hunt by George Hitchcock
From the "American Notebooks" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The dream by O. Henry

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Anthologies, Magical Realism, Speculative Fiction

955 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980) and A History of Reading (1996) The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008), and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991).

Manguel believes in the central importance of the book in societies of the written word where, in recent times, the intellectual act has lost most of its prestige. Libraries (the reservoirs of collective memory) should be our essential symbol, not banks. Humans can be defined as reading animals, come into the world to decipher it and themselves.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alberto Manguel - Argentine-Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor. Alberto is surely among the very greatest readers of books and lovers of world literature.

Black Water collects 72 tales of the fantastic by such authors as Jean Cocteau, Marguerite Yourcenar, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, H.G.Wells, Franz Kafka and Ursula K. LeGuin. There is one story I particularly enjoy from a less well known author from Argentina, Manuel Mujica Láinez, and it is this story I have made the focus of my review. Hope you enjoy and take the opportunity to explore this outstanding collection on your own.

IMPORTANCE by Manuel Mujica Láinez
Great Lady: Mrs. Hermosilla del Fresno, widow, lady of very great importance, lives in her huge mansion with her many servants and presides over all the city’s important charities and parties. Great writers such as de Maupassant and Balzac have always understood one of the perfect ingredients for a good short story is a character puffed up by all their wealth and social standing. Manuel Mujica Láinez was familiar with the precariousness of family wealth: born into a distinguished and wealthy lineage of Buenos Aries nobility, by the time the family line reached his parents and Manuel, the vast majority of wealth vanished. Manuel had to earn a living as a literary critic and art critic for the city’s leading newspaper.

Chink in the Armor: Unfortunately, there is one small fact diminishing the Señora’s splendid importance: her family background is somewhat less than splendid. That’s right, sad but true, she comes from a dubious bloodline. Also unfortunate for Señora, certain obscure relatives occasionally have the temerity to pop up at the wrong time forcing Señora to cloak their kinship with a wry smile and arched glance “while her vanity spits and snarls inside her like a crouching tiger.” Ah, a second valuable ingredient for a good short story featuring a puffed up character: a hidden flaw.

Piety Counts: Señora believes in God as well as in heaven and hell. And equally notable, Señora also firmly believes, a belief bolstered by her assistants and employees, that she has unquestionably earned her rightful place in Paradise. Such a worldview as the Señora’s has always amused me, a worldview shared by fundamentalists of whatever stripe I’ve encountered: there’s a heaven and hell and I’m the one going to heaven. All the rest of you people who don’t believe exactly what I believe will go to hell – good riddance!

The Fantastic: As it turns out, there’s an excellent reason why this story is included in Alberto Manguel's anthology of fantastic literature: one morning Señora wakes up only to discover she is dead. That’s right, all her very, very important servants gather in her room, wailing and crying over the fact that their beloved Señora has died. Of course, Señora is frightened and a tad astonished at this event since deep down Señora really and truly believed she is immortal. Let’s face it, all of us are not that different from Señora – a characteristically human way of viewing life: suffering, old age and especially death are things that happen to other people, certainly not me since, well . . . life is all about me!

The Unexpected: After one hour, two hours, three hours, Señora thinks enough is enough, where are heavenly angels to carry me off to paradise? Instead, exactly the beings she does not want to appear, appear: her dubious cousins, nephews and, damn, her most dreaded half-sister show up in open view of those upper crust ladies Señora has always tried her hardest to impress. Oh, my, what a bummer for someone who has spent their life molding an identity around wealth, status and bloodline. Sidebar: In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with their Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), the biggest mistake we can make at the time of our death is to cling to our past life and relationships rather than letting go.

Bad News: Señora's upper crust lady friends actually exchange pleasantries with her lowly relatives rather than paying any attention to her. What is happening here? Señora grows impatient, life is not cooperating with her wishes and desires. On top of this, after six distasteful, highly unpleasant days, Señora’s lawyer shows up on the scene and, contrary to her interests in perpetuating her good name by leaving her wealth to her chosen charities as clearly expressed in her will, the nefarious rascal denies there is any such will and boldly states all her monies will be distributed to her relatives. Ahhh! Señora wants to raise her arms to heaven and shout out the truth, but, alas, inhabiting a ghostly, otherworldly space, she cannot move her limbs or open her mouth.

Even Worse: The bad news continues, her cousins, nephews and half-sister move into her house, rummage through her drawers and closets, put on her clothes and jewelry, have lewd sex on her bed right next to her ghostly body, speak of her as prudish, vain and haughty. Here is how Manuel Mujica Láinez ends his tale: “Until, gradually, Mrs Hermosilla del Fresno (who cannot even escape into the haven of madness) understands, with surprise and despair, the she will never be taken away, not even to be guided to an unexpected Hell. Because this, however strange, absurd, unconventional and antitheological it might seem, this is Hell.”


Manuel Mujica Láinez (1910-1984) - Argentine novelist, essayist, literary critic and art critic

[Cecily]

Short Story Club, round 2: I read and reviewed one story a week, along with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.
You can join the group for round 3 here.

About the collection

• The anthology was collated in 1983 and contains 72 stories.
• It is international, but with more Argentinian and south American stories than one would expect were the compiler not Argentinian.
• Each story has a short introduction by Manguel, and the best relate to authors he knew personally (including Jorge Luis Borges!).
• The stories are "fantastic" in a broad sense: psychological, supernatural, and ambiguous. Many of the early ones are ghost stories, but it moves on to strange things that aren't visible human(oid) presences, as with Borges, Kafka etc, both of whom are included.

Themes
In the foreword, Manguel identifies six main themes:
• Time warps
• Hauntings
• Dreams
• Unreal creatures and transformations
• Mimesis (seemingly unrelated things are actually connected)
• Dealings with god or the devil

Sequence
The arrangement is not chronological nor alphabetical. It's not quite thematic, either. Instead, the sequence often segues nicely: some connection between consecutive stories. For example, one has a character being reincarnated as an otter and the next has someone reincarnated as a pig. Another pair feature different apparitions that seem to presage, or maybe cause, disaster. A fable from Rumi is rendered by Cocteau, and the next story is by Somerset Maugham, who included a telling of the same fable in one of his plays. Three consecutive stories relate to sleep and dreams. Other sequences have people not realising they're dead, seeing their future or past, and two dramatic voyages. Another pair concern mysterious paintings the owners refuse to sell. Museums and portals/doors feature in many, and there’s a stream of very different stories against war and violence.

The penultimate choice is seven unused story ideas from Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the final one is a story by O Henry that was finished by someone else. The implied message is to get writing, even if one starts from someone else’s ideas!

Stories and reviews

1. House Taken Over, Julio Cortázar, 4*. Review HERE.
2. How Love Came to Professor Guildea, Robert S Hichens, 4*. Review HERE.
3. Climax for a Ghost Story, IA Ireland, 3*. Review HERE.
4. The Mysteries of the Joy Rio, Tennessee Williams, 4*. Review HERE.
5. Pomegranate Seed, Edith Wharton, 3*. Review HERE.
6. Venetian Masks, Adolfo Bioy Casares, 3*. Review HERE.
7. The Wish House, Rudyard Kipling, 2*. Review HERE.
8. The Playground, Ray Bradbury, 4*. Review HERE
9. Importance, Manuel Mujica Lainez, 4*. Review HERE
10. Enoch Soames, Max Beerbohm, 4*. Review HERE
11. A Visitor from Down Under, LP Hartley, 3*. Review HERE
12. Laura, Saki, 3*. Review HERE
13. An Injustice Revealed, Anon (Chinese), 4*. Review HERE
14. A Little Place off the Edgware Road, Graham Greene, 4*. Review HERE
15. A School Story, MR James, 3*. Review HERE
16. The Signalman, Charles Dickens, 3*. Review HERE
17. The Tall Woman, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, 2*. Review HERE
18. A Scent of Mimosa, Francis King, 5*. Review HERE
19. Death and the Gardener, Jean Cocteau, 3*, Review HERE
20. Lord Mountdrago, W Somerset Maugham, 4*, Review HERE
21. The Sick Gentleman's Last Visit, Giovanni Papini, 4*, Review HERE
22. Insomnia, Virgilio Piñera, 2*, Review HERE
23. The Storm aka Frritt-Flacc, Jules Verne, 4*, Review HERE
24. Two Dreamers, Anon/Borges, 4*, Review HERE
25. The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar, EA Poe, 4*, Review HERE
26. Split Second, Daphne du Maurier, 4*, Review HERE
27. August 25, 1983, Jorge Luis Borges, 5*, Review HERE
28. How Wang-Fô was Saved, Marguerite Yourcenar, 3*, Review HERE
29. Peter and Rosa, Isak Dinesen, 5*, Review HERE
30. Tattoo, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 4*, Review HERE
31. John Duffy's Brother, Flann O'Brien, 5*, Review HERE
32. Lady Into Fox, David Garnett, 4*, Review HERE
33. Father's Last Escape, Bruno Schulz, 4*, Review HERE
34. A Man by the Name of Ziegler, Hermann Hesse, 4*, Review HERE
35. The Argentine Ant, Italo Calvino, 2*, Review HERE
36. The Lady on the Grey, John Collier, 4*, Review HERE
37. The Queen of Spades, Alexander Pushkin, 4*, Review HERE
38. Of a Promise Kept, Lafcadio Hearn, 4*, Review HERE
39. The Wizard Postponed, Juan Manuel, 4*, Review HERE
40. The Monkey's Paw, WW Jacobs, 3*, Review HERE
41. The Bottle Imp, Robert Louis Stevenson, 4*, Review HERE
42. The Rocking-Horse Winner, DH Lawrence, 4*, Review HERE
43. Certain Distant Suns, Joanne Greenberg, 4*, Review HERE
44. The Third Bank of the River, João Guimarães Rosa, 5*, Review HERE
45. Home, Hilaire Belloc, 2*, Review HERE
46. The Door in the Wall, HG Wells, 4*, Review HERE
47. The Friends, Silvina Ocampo, 4*, Review HERE
48. Et in Sempiternum Pereant, Charles Williams, 2*, Review HERE
49. The Captives of Longjumeau, Léon Bloy, 3*, Review HERE
50. The Visit to the Museum, Vladimir Nabakov, 4*, Review HERE
51. Autumn Mountain, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 4*, Review HERE
52. The Sight, Brian Moore, 2*, Review HERE
53. Clorinda (in Soleil des loups), André Pieyre de Mandiargues, 4*, Review HERE
54. The Pagan Rabbi, Cynthia Ozick, 2*, Review HERE
55. The Fisherman and his Soul, Oscar Wilde, 4*, Review HERE
56. The Bureau d'Echange de Maux, Lord Dunsany, 4*, Review HERE
57. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K LeGuin, 4*, Review HERE
58. In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka, 5*, Review HERE
59. A Dog in Dürer’s Etching "The Knight, Death and the Devil", Marco Denevi, 5*, Review HERE
60. The Large Ant, Howard Fast, 4*, Review HERE
61. The Lemmings, Alex Comfort, 2*, Review HERE
62. The Grey Ones, JB Priestley, 1*, Review HERE
63. The Feather Pillow, Horacio Quiroga, 4*, Review HERE
64. Seaton's Aunt, Walter de la Mare, 3*, Review HERE
65. The Friends of the Friends (aka The Way it Came), Henry James, 3*, Review HERE
66. The Travelling Companion, Hans Christian Andersen, 2*, Review HERE
67. The Curfew Tolls, Stephen Vincent Benét, 4*, Review HERE
68. The State of Grace, Marcel Aymé, 4*, Review HERE
69. The Story of a Panic, EM Forster, 4*, Review HERE
70. An Invitation to the Hunt, George Hitchcock, 2*, Review HERE
71. From 'The American Notebooks', Nathaniel Hawthorne, 4*, Review HERE
72. The Dream, O Henry, 3*, Review HERE


Short Story Club, round 1: we read Gioia's The Art of the Short Story, which I reviewed HERE.

Short Story Club, round 3: we will read Manguel's second volume, Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, which I will review week by week HERE.

[Fionnuala]

23 March 2025
I read the seventy stories in this fat volume over a period of eighteen months in the company of some very smart readers in the GR Short Story Club.

When I started reading the book in September 2023, I thought I'd post an update for each story as I read it, but after twenty-one stories, I gave up the ghost. The updates were a great idea and if I'd kept posting them, all I'd need to do now is copy them into the review box and a ready-made review would appear like magic!

It's a bit of a mystery as to why I gave up on posting them although now I've noticed there's also a mystery around the last update I posted. It was for the Giovanni Papini story, 'The Sick Gentleman's Last Visit'. I looked for that story just now in my edition of Manguel's book and here's the strange thing: the index says the story is on page 250 but there is no story by Papini on page 250. His story is on page 278! So the index and the stories themselves are not aligned—which might explain the strange biro marks on the index page of my second-hand edition. There are ticks after certain stories and arrows pointing downwards. But the arrows don't link with the correct page numbers for the ticked stories. So what do the arrows mean? If only I could ask Jérôme C.

Another strange thing about my edition is the sprinkle of dark marks on the top of the book, the 'head' part as it is called in publishing terminology. It would be comforting to think of the marks as tea or coffee stains but I can't help thinking of them as old blood stains. The fore-edge and the bottom of the book, the 'tail' in book terminology, have no stains and are just a yellowy brown, as are the borders of each page as if the yellowy brown colour of the edges has been slowly seeping across the no-longer white pages—which don't smell great either unfortunately. To say I'm glad to be done with this malodorous volume is an understatement. I don't think I've ever had such an unpleasant physical reaction to a book before. Books have always been something sacred to me no matter how old or time-worn so I'm a bit destabilized by my negative feelings about this one. I've been tempted to do the impossible more than once: to put it out for the recycling collection! And now maybe I will really do that. What sort of monster have I become?

But what about the contents of the book, I hear someone ask in a small voice.

I think it might be better if I let Alberto Manguel answer that:
"Fantastic literature pulls down the barriers we set up to feel at ease in our place in the universe. It makes us insecure about the laws of time and space, it blocks out the distinctions between man and the other creatures of this and other worlds, it denies death as an end, it demands that we reconsider who we really are."

That definition kind of fits with my experience with the physical book—it definitely created a sense of unease—but it also describes perfectly my experience with the stories it contains. I found myself willing to believe many impossible things about time and space, man and animals, life and death. And my willingness astonished me because I'm rational by nature and would be the person in any group who would try to find a scientific explanation for a strange phenomenon rather than looking for an answer in miracle or magic.
So my untypical reaction is a tribute to the talents of the authors Alberto Manguel has chosen, and a tribute to himself too. One of the most successful things about this anthology is the ordering of the stories. Manguel didn't choose a chronological order for this group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors. He didn't choose an alphabetical order either or group them according to the countries the authors hail from (many of the stories are in translation and Manguel translated a few of them himself).
No, what Manguel has done here is much more creative. He found little elements that some of the stories have in common and grouped them accordingly. The links aren't always clear on first glance. Instead it's as if there's an internal mystery to the ordering which we have to figure out as we read.
But in other places, the links are clearer. One of my favourite stories in the anthology is 'John Duffy's Brother' by Flann O'Brien, about a man who thought he was a train. That story comes after 'Tatoo' by Junichiro Tanizaki, about a woman who seems to transform into a spider, and before a story by David Garnett about a woman who becomes a fox. The Garnett story is followed by a Bruno Schulz story, 'Father's Last Escape', about the narrator's father turning into a crab. The story which follows the Schulz is Herman Hesse's 'A Man by the name of Ziegler'. Zeigler doesn't change into a crab or a fox but after visiting a natural history museum, he finds he can understand the language of animals, and realises that to them, he is "no better than an absurd and repulsive bug".

Absurdity is a big theme in the anthology and that side of it appealed to me particularly. Take the beginning of the Flann O'Brien story I mentioned earlier:

"Strictly speaking, this story should not be written or told at all. To write it or to tell it is to spoil it. This is because the man who had the strange experience we are going to talk about never mentioned it to anybody, and the fact that he kept his secret and sealed it up completely in his memory is the whole point of the story. Thus we must admit that handicap at the beginning—that it is absurd for us to tell the story, absurd for anybody to listen to it and unthinkable that anybody should believe it.
We will, however, do this man one favor. We will refrain from mentioning him by his complete name. This will enable us to tell his secret and permit him to continue looking his friends in the eye, but we can say that his surname is Duffy. There are thousands of these Duffys in the world; even at this moment, there's probably a new Duffy making his appearance in some corner of it. We can even go so far as to say that he is John Duffy's brother. We do not break faith in saying so, because if there are only one hundred John Duffys in existence, and even if each one of them could be met and questioned, no embarrassing enlightenment would be forthcoming. That is because the John Duffy in question never left his house, never left his bed, never talked to anybody in his life and was never seen by more than one man. That man's name was Gumley. Gumley was a doctor. He was present when John Duffy was born and also when he died, one hour later.

One of the many absurd things about the beginning of this very absurd story (which may be a satire directed at James Joyce since Joyce often referred to his own brother as 'Mr Duffy'), is that it left me with tears in my eyes, and few stories in the anthology did that.

The others that moved me were Marguerite Yourcenar's 'How Wang Fu was Saved', and Argentinian author Marco Denevi's 'A Dog in Dürer's Etching 'The Knight, Death and The Devil' which broke my heart completely. In spite of that, Denevi's story may be my favourite story of all and that's because of the mastery shown by the author in composing his narrative in one long sentence full of detail and imagery that fills in the backstory of a weary knight returning from battle and makes as many sad and salient points about war and death as did Dürer's detailed etching.




By the way, In case you wondered who the person called Jérôme C, mentioned in the third paragraph of this review, is, here's all I know about him:



That's the bookplate on the flyleaf of this book. The motto on his bookplate reads "Cave ne clamen" which I think is Latin for "Be careful not to cry". Although I was warned, I cried anyway.
The motto reminds me of another Latin phrase I came across in another book: "cave cor obduratum"(beware the hardened heart). At least I do not have a hardened heart.
But still, I'll put this book out for the recycling collection.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite probably the best selection of short stories I have ever read. Not a dud among them, and plenty of the obscure and unusual as well. Plus, in terms of the big names, I had never read The Signal-Man by Dickens, but thought it was bloody brilliant.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Includes the stories:

House Taken Over by Julio Cortázar - 4/5 - an allegorical piece from an Argentinean author published not long after Peron's rise to power
How Love Came to Professor Guildea by Robert Smythe Hichens - 4/5 - a Professor who experiences a ghostly haunting and the Priest friend who is uncertain whether or not to believe him
Climax for a Ghost Story by I.A. Ireland - 3/5 - apparently a practical joke by Jorge Luis Borges and friends
The Mysteries of the Joy Rio by Tennessee Williams - 3/5 - a homosexual man's experience in the darkness of an old movie theater
Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton - 3/5 - a wife's insatiable curiosity about mysterious letters received by her husband
Venetian Masks ("Máscaras Venecianas") by Adolfo Bioy Casares -4/5 - two men want the same woman but neither can have her
The Wish House by Rudyard Kipling - 3/5 - told mostly through dialogue in a strong Sussex accent as one woman tells the other of her trip to a "Wish-House" to help the man she loves
The Playground by Ray Bradbury - 4/5 - helicopter dad tries to protect his son from childhood
Importance by Manuel Mujica Lainez - 4/5 - parable about heaven and hell
Enoch Soames by Max Beerbohm - 4/5 - playful look at the fickleness of fame for artists
A Visitor from Down Under by L.P. Hartley - 3/5 - ghost on the bus
Laura by Saki - 4/5 - not like the otters
An injustice revealed - 3/5 - administrative error in Hell
A Little Place off the Edgware Road by Graham Greene - 4/5 - be careful who you sit next to at the movies
From "A School Story" by M.R. James - 4/5 - although only an excerpt from the story is included in this collection (why? couldn't say...) the full story is creepy fun
The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens - 4/5 - non-Christmas ghost story from Dickens
La Mujer Alta / The Tall Woman by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón - 3/5 - 19th century Spanish horror story with good tension and atmosphere
A Scent of Mimosa by Francis King - 3/5 - atmospheric story of a contest winner who meets a mysterious New Zealander
Death and the Gardener by Jean Cocteau - 4/5 - STORY ABOUT DEATH
Lord Mountdrago by W. Somerset Maugham - 4/5 - well written (as always by Maugham) story of a man's haunted dreams
The Sick Gentleman's Last Visit by Giovanni Papini - 4/5 - how would you know if you were just living in someone else's dream?
Insomnia by Virgilio Piñera - 3/5 - very short story about the desperation of one who cannot sleep
The Storm by Jules Verne - 4/5 - story about a greedy doctor is entertaining despite translation issues
A Dream (from The Arabian Nights Entertainments) - 3/5 - a man seeks wealth...
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe - 2/5 - one of Poe's mesmerism stories
Split Second by Daphne du Maurier - 4/5 - a senior moment...or is it?
August 25, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges - 3/5 - can't wait until I'm smart enough to understand Borges
How Wang-Fo Was Saved by Marguerite Yourcenar - 3/5 - folklore tale of a painter whose paintings provide him a means of escape
From "Peter and Rosa" by Isak Dinesen - 3/5 - short folklore story taken from the longer story "Peter and Rosa"
The Tattoo by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - 4/5 - the girl with the spider tattoo
John Duffy's Brother by Flann O'Brien - 4/5 - all aboard! Choo-chooooooo
Lady into Fox by David Garnett - 3/5 - an allegorical fantasy short novel that challenges the conventions of early 20th century marriage
Father's Last Escape by Bruno Schulz - 4/5 - crabby dad
A Man by the Name of Ziegler by Hermann Hesse - 4/5 - a day at the zoo
The Argentine Ant by Italo Calvino - 4/5 - this story made me itchy
The Lady on the Grey by John Collier - 5/5 - men are dogs
The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin - 4/5 - Beware of the Queen of Spades!
Of a Promise Kept by Lafcadio Hearn - 4/5 - some people will do anything to keep a promise
The Wizard Postponed by Juan Manuel - 4/5 - ...and some people won't
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs - 4/5 - be careful what you wish for
The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson - 4/5 - this genii-meets-Faust story was originally published in Samoan
The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence - 4/5 - I wanna rock
Certain Distant Suns by Joanne Greenburg
The Third Bank of the River by João Guimarães Rosa
Home by Hilaire Belloc
The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells
The friends by Silvina Ocampo
Et In Sempiternum Pereant by Charles Williams
The Captives of Longjumeau by Léon Bloy
The Visit to the Museum by Vladimir Nabakov
Autumn Mountain by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
The Sight by Brian Moore
Clorinda by André Pieyre de Mandiargues
The Pagan Rabbi by Cynthia Ozick
The Fisherman and his Soul by Oscar Wilde
The Bureau d'Echange de Maux by Lord Dunsany
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
A dog in Durer's etching "The Knight, Death and the Devil" by Marco Denevi
The Large Ant by Howard Fast
The Lemmings by Alex Comfort
The Grey Ones by J.B. Priestley
The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga
Seaton's Aunt by Walter de la Mare
The Friends of the Friends by Henry James
The Traveling Companion by Hans Christian Andersen
The Curfew Tolls by Stephen Vincent Benét
The State of Grace by Marcel Aymé
The Story Of A Panic by E.M. Forster
An Invitation to the Hunt by George Hitchcock
From the "American Notebooks" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Dream by O. Henry

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Black Water" is an anthology of 72 short stories of fantastic literature. In a short introduction to the book, the editor, Alberto Manguel, wrote that the stories contain six main themes: Time warps, hauntings, dreams, unreal creatures/transformation, mimesis (a connection between things that look unrelated), and dealings with God and the Devil. Manguel also introduced each individual short story with some brief background notes. Stories with similar themes are grouped together so the reader can see how different authors handle similar ideas. Most of the authors are from Europe, the United States, and South America with a sprinkling of stories from other parts of the world.

The Short Story Club read this 967 page tome over 1 1/2 years, sampling one story weekly. The list of the stories is in the Goodreads description. I enjoyed my reading about unexplainable and ambiguous happenings. Reading with a group added to the experience since we could look at the stories from many points of view. It was also a good opportunity to get acquainted with writers who were new to me. I reviewed and rated the individual stories after most of our weekly reads.

[Falkor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This superb collection of fantasy stories includes a few famous, widely anthologized classics such as “The Monkey’s Paw,” but mostly offers up choice specimens of unjustly neglected works from both major and lesser known authors. The stories tend toward dark fantasy, with some that could be considered outright horror—Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over” is five pages of super concentrated terror that will leave readers jumping at every noise. A common theme unifying this diverse group of stories is a lack of explanation for why unearthly things happen—no tortured scientific theory, no assumption of divine power, no logical reasoning or metaphysical speculation can explain the strange events recorded in these pages.

Authors include those famous for their fantastic creations—Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Louis Borges, H.G. Wells—and others better known for other genres—Oscar Wilde, Graham Greene, Edith Wharton, Tennessee Williams, W. Somerset Maugham, Vladimir Nabokov, E.M. Forster.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every so often, I read something that ends up feeling like a sign post in my overarching reading journey, a mile marker that acknowledges where I've come from and gives me some insight into where I'd like to go. This bulky anthology includes 72 stories of various degrees of phantasmagoria, and while there were inklings of the horror that I had thrilled in during my youth, I cared far more about the bevy of lauded names that I was visiting, revisiting, and otherwise crash coursing in classic short stories my way through. Of the seventy-one authors named (not counting the two anonymous stories and counting the editor Manguel himself), I have read thirty-two, have another ten on the TBR, and have yet another ten on an amorphous future reading list whose ratios of peer pressure to genuine interest will forever be undecided. You have your mainstream reps like Dickens and Poe, a smattering of the more unexpected non-Anglo inclusions such as Ocampo and Yourcenar and Piñera, a few out of the blues in both chronology and canon such as Juan Manuel, and all in all a substantial showing of some of the best writing to come out since the beginning of the 19th c., admittedly prejudiced but not as much as it could have been to mid 19th c. to mid 20th c. WASP dudes. In terms of standouts, Francis King's "A Scent of Mimosa", Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades", LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", but with the latter two being rereads, you can see how this anthology did end up weighing me down with its nearly 1000 pages of literature. All in all, a rather epic collection to finish just before the end of the reading year, and while I don't know what's going on with that Mandiargues, I can say that this was a great way of getting a bird's eye view of a bunch of authors I've already experienced and a bunch more I've been contemplating. As for the 'fantastic' aspect, none of these tales gave me any nightmares, but your mileage may vary.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this collection for fans of fantastic literature or of short stories in general. You will love most, hate some and if you are like me, there will be a few you just don't even understand (what was that bus scene about in "Visitor From Down Under"??). Whether you take your time working your way through this massive collection as I did (read over 20 years) or read all 967 pages in one sitting - it is worth the time.

I was a little sad to finish this book after all the years we have spent together but luckily I recently found a copy of Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic in a used bookstore. I plan to finish this collection faster than than the first volume, shooting for five years this time.

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thick anthology of stories about horror, suspense, the supernatural and the psychological, and also some science fiction. The authors are from all over the world, including both classic and contemporary. The book is almost a thousand pages long so I will not try to list all of the authors, but here are a few:

Tennessee Williams
Edith Wharton
Rudyard Kipling
Ray Bradbury
Saki
Graham Greene
M.R. James
W. Somerset Maugham
Jean Cocteau
Jules Verne
Edgar Allen Poe
Daphne de Maurier
Herman Hesse
Ursula K. LeGuin

What I especially liked is that the editor, Alberto Manguel, a writer from Argentina, included a great many Latin writers, from Spain, Central and South America and also Italy. I was not familiar with most of these since not many anthologies include them. They were different and had a definite style of their own, different from the Northern European and Anglo-American writers and added spice and flavor to this collection.

This collection was a wonderful discovery and I am glad to have it as a part of my library.

[Gary Parish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A massive collection of short stories dealing with the supernatural and the fantastic, Manguel does a superb job of editing and selecting the pieces in this anthology. Some are humorous, some are darkly sinister, some confuse you and some appeal to your sense of justice or right & wrong. I read this cover-to-cover on and off over the course of a year and it always entertained me to no end, highly recommended!

[blushenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is FANTASTIC. Heh. It's a great collection of tales, kudos to the editor for picking them so well. Some of them I knew from before, but not many. I have not found a single story in this collection that I did not enjoy and some of them were quite outstanding.
Among the ones I found outstanding: Poe's The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, Max Beerbohm's Enoch Soames, Dickens' The Signalman, Saki's Laura, David Garnett's Lady Into Fox, Marguerite Yourcenar's How Wang-Fo was Saved, Isak Dinesen's From 'Peter and Rosa', Junichiro Tanizaki's Tattoo, Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, Silvina Ocampo's The Friends, Ryonosuke Akutagawa's The Mountain, Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and his Soul, Ursuka K LeGuin's The Ones who walk away from Omelas... But really, they are all gems.

Highly recommended book 10/10 (5/5)

[Deborah Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous collection. In all honesty... read it.

[flannery · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, SO incredible! Alberto Manguel wrote one of my favorite reference books, "A Dictionary of Imaginary Places," and this is as imaginative, as literate, as carefully considered a collection as any I have ever, ever read, each piece lovingly introduced by the editor with all the necessary biography to put each piece in context and also bridge time & place seamlessly... from Jean Cocteau to Jules Verne to Borges and O. Henry with not a page out of place... highly recommended, one of the best anthologies I've ever encountered.

[Sudarshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally managed to listen to this 39 hrs long anthology of superb fantastic stories. The feeling of completing this has been one of the most satisfying literary experiences of my life. This anthology is rich in imagination. Some of the stories have flown past my head completely. Those that have stayed have made a lasting impact on me. I have been recommending this anthology ever since I began listening to it. Despite my effort I have not been able to find this book in text format. If you can, this book is one to be read and re-read.

[Martin Cosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this anthology many years ago, and it made a big impression upon me. Many of the stories are deep, literary examples of fiction, whereas I had been more used to "horror" collections. A thoroughly engrossing read through different kinds of writing, never less than excellent, I have re-read it many times ... and am about to once more. Highly recommended.

[Sarah]

This generous anthology is jam-packed with fascinating, instructive work and was my introduction to many magical writers beyond the traditional English-speaking fare. Delighted to discover that a second volume was published back in 1990 - heading to pick up a copy now...

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is essential to anyone who loves The Twilight Zone in terms of fiction. I read this many years ago and am planning to go through it again. Chilling, intriguing, mystifying, unsettling and totally engrossing. The art of short story writing in one volume. Perfection.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy has the same ISBN, but the cover is a detail from George Tooker's awesome The Subway. This would be a perfect bedtime reader if not for its bulk.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Just keep dipping in and out and you will continually find yourself covered in a viscous substance, the nature of which you can neither fully discern, nor fully wash off.....

[Neven · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection—uneven as they usually are, but the high notes are unforgettable. Hunt it down if you like hard-to-classify, weird fiction.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manguel has put together a brilliantly curated collection ,each story connected in some way to the next, allowing a gradual shape shift of fantastic themes over the whole book.

I wouldn't have picked this up but for the GR Short Story Club, with whom I have read a story a week for the past eighteen months . I'm so glad I did as I discovered authors new to me and stories that have stayed with me , and in genres such as SF and horror that I would have previously avoided.

As well as being an enjoyable weekly reading habit the discussions within the group have been stimulating and challenging , especially when I have missed the depth of a story of learned more about the context or writer .

The art of the short story is alive but not so thriving these days, seeming to be the form favoured by creative writing studies and a collection being the first publication of a new writer . Here I learnt how in the past periodicals were hugely popular , before television stepped in , and many of the stories we read had a very wide appeal . I often imagined these stories being read aloud of an evening in much the same way we watch TV .

[Milen Kindekov · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must say, this was an amazing anthology. As with all compilations, there are always hits and misses. Stories which piqued my interest, others that were a bit drab that caused me to doze off. I've found a large amount of new authors which I will be reading more of, I've increased my respect for others as well. I was really impressed with a few of the oriental stories. Definitely will be looking for more of these. The excerpts before each story were interesting and a lot of the times I'd find myself browsing for more information on the author/story.

Average Rating across all stories an even 4*/5. Albeit this average, I admire that Alberto Manguel has layed out his most loved stories in a great format, for us to share in the experience. I will definitely be picking up the second volume of stories!

I've highlighted some of my personal favorites. The story that struck me most however was 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'. This has now been with me for the past week, while I was finishing up the rest of the anthology. The question I have been pondering is: At what price is happiness morally acceptable?

Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over - *****
Robert S. Hitchens - How Love Came to Professor Guildea - ****
I.A. Ireland - Climax for a Ghost Story - ***
Tennessee Williams - The Mysteries of the Joy Rio - *****
Edith Wharton - Pomegranate Seed - ***
Adolfo Bioy Casares - Venetian Masks - *****
Rudyard Kipling - The Wish House - *
Ray Bradbury - The Playground - *****
Manuel Mujica Lainez - Importance - *****
Max Beerbohm - Enoch Soames - *****
L. P. Hartley - A Visitor from Down Under - **
Saki - Laura - **
Anonymous - An Injustice Revealed - ****
Graham Greene - A Little Place off the Edgware Road - **
M.R. James - From ‘A School Story’ - **
Charles Dickens - The Signalman - *****
Pedro Antonio de Alarcon - The Tall Woman - ****
Francis King - A Scent of Mimosa - *****
Jean Cocteau - Death and the Gardener - ****
William Somerset Maugham - Lord Mountdrago - ****
Giovanni Papini - The Sick Gentleman’s Last Visit - ****
Virgilio Pinera - Insomnia - ****
Jules Verne - The Storm - ***
Anonymous - A Dream - ***
Edgar Allan Poe - The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - ****
Dauphe du Maurier - Split Second - ****
Jorge Luis Borges - August 25, 1983 - *****
Margueritte Yourcenar - How Wang-Fo Was Saved - *****
Isak Dinesen - From ‘Peter and Rosa’ - ****
Junichiro Tanizaki - Tattoo - *****
Flann O’Brien - John Duffy’s Brother - **
David Garnett - Lady Into Fox - ***
Bruno Schultz - Father’s Last Escape - ***
Hermann Hesse - A Man by the Name of Ziegler - ***
Italo Calvino - The Argentine Ant - *****
John Collier - The Lady on the Grey - ****
Alexander Pushkin - The Queen of Spades - *****
Lafcadio Hearn - Of a Promise Kept - *****
Juan Manuel - The Wizard Postponed - *****
W. W. Jacobs - The Monkey’s Paw - *****
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Bottle Imp - *****
D.H. Lawrence - The Rocking-horse Winner - ****
Joanne Greenburg - Certain Distant Suns - ***
Joao Guimaraes Rosa - The Third Bank of the River - ****
Hilaire Belloc - Home - ****
H.G. Wells - The Door in the Wall - ****
Silvina Ocampo - The Friends - *****
Charles Williams - Et in Sempiternum Pereant - ***
Leon Bloy - The Captives of Longjumeau - ****
Vladimir Nabokov - The Visit to the Museum - ****
Ryunosuke Akutagawa - ‘Autumn Mountain’ - *****
Brian Moore - The Sight - ***
Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues - Clorinda - ***
Cynthia Ozick - The Pagan Rabi - **
Oscar Wilde - The Fisherman and his Soul - *****
Lord Dunsany - The Bureau d’Echange de Maux - *****
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - *****
Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony - *****
Marco Denevi - A Dog in Durer’s Etching ‘The Knight, Death and The Devil’ - *****
Howard Fast - The Large Ant - *****
Alex Comfort - The Lemmings - ****
J.B. Priestly - The Grey Ones - ***
Horacio Quiroga - The Feather Pillow - *****
Walter de la Mare - Seaton’s Aunt - ****
Henry James - The Friends of the Friends - *
Hans Christian Anderson - The Travelling Companion - *****
Stephen Vincent Benet - The Curfew Tolls - ***
Marcel Ayme - The State of Grace - *****
E.M. Forster - The Story of a Panic - ****
George Hitchcock - An Invitation to the Hunt - *****
Nathaniel Hawthorne - From the ‘American Notebooks’ - ***
O. Henry - The Dream - ****

[Shawn]

PLACEHOLDER REVIEW:

"The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence - A boy verging on manhood becomes aware that his Upper-middle-class family is haunted by financial need and contrives to utilize his skill at picking winning race horses to help them. This was a perennial school-read when I was a lad, but it's been awhile. It's still a glittering little piece of masterful writing, just enough detail, just enough dialogue. I had a friend at school (who later went on to opening a successful playhouse in Los Angeles) who was convinced that the story and specifically the climax should be read with a Freudian interpretation and while I scoffed at the time, I can see it now.

I had reason to reread "The Wish House" by Rudyard Kipling and so thought I should stick the review here for my inevitable reread of this amazing collection. Two old Sussex women (both of the "cook/maid/servant" lower classes) start reflecting on their romantic pasts, and one explains how her persistent medical problem with her leg is related to her tempestuous desire for a certain man, and a deal she made with supernatural forces so as to channel all harm that would come to him instead into her own body. This is simply an incredibly well-told, eerie and moving story. The "taking on of harm" is seen as a decision born out of desire, for a rakish man who can never commit (alas!), and is much the sadder for that. The Sussex dialect is nicely handled. Truly a masterful tale, and that's not even going into the Gypsy belief, set down here, in a "Wish House", an abandoned house which harbors a weird spirit, called a Token, which agrees to transact the spiritual/physical martyrdom between those who love. Great.

In Edith Wharton's "Pomegranate Seed", newlywed Charlotte Ashby is bothered and puzzled by the occasional letters her husband Kenneth receives from an unknown source, addressed in a feminine hand. Could it be an old entanglement? Or is he seeing another woman? Finally succumbing to the desire to ask her husband, the discussion reveals nothing and goes nowhere, as he is deliberately obfuscatory... I read this years ago - it's an anthology perennial, just the kind of story to baffle a child looking for something scary, as it deals with adult relationships and expectations. Having said that, it may be a tad overwritten, or at least "extended" a bit more than it needs. Interesting.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A MESSSAGE FROM THE GOODREADS FOLK:

"Because you shelved SHOE LUST a few recommendations in Fantasy."

I must say this was The Last Thing I expected when my fascination with Things Historical had me pouncing on the Current Development of the Humble Shoe in "Shoe Lust" at our Local Bookstore in Dulwich Hill about 12 months ago. It is Fascinating and often pretty Wild.
As are the stories in the Black Water Anthology.

This Very Kindly Attendance of Goodreads had me rummaging among their group of Suggested Books;some old favourites of the strange, weird and wonderful were there: Japanese Tales,some Chilren's stories, the Arthurian Legends and LO!! good old Alberto Manguel's Black Water Anthology - being 72 stories from a huge range of talented writers, Known and Un-, and of various Nationalities.
The very first one I can still recall vividly - "House Taken Over" by Julio Cortazar. But I hadn't remembered this until I interrupted this review to fetch "Black Water" from one of my bedroom bookcases.

It wasn't there on the top shelf !!!!
It came as a shock...but another awaited me.
There was another white binding much thicker than the Black Water book and it read:

WHITE FIRE: Further Fantastic Literature Alberto Manguel PICADOR

This book had been sitting there for 25 years as its dusty top pages showed as also its publishing date of 1990.
I located "Black Water" in my bookshelf lined hallway very quickly.
I had read it sometime in the 1980's,not 1990 as I'd thought, and obviously bought the second volume on the strength of the enjoyment given by the first which I recall enjoying.
MORE stories in this second volume though...941 pages.
I check "Black Water...mmm!!.....967 pages !!!!
So the fat book has less content than the slimmer book.
OK,I am already dipping my Big Toe into what promises to be...fantasia!

I am quite happy to embrace this delusion,illusion,fact or fantasy...
"Shoe Lust" and its extremes has led me into more weird literature
and who am I to complain !!!!

So I will not be immediately settling down to a RE-READ of "Black Water" but taking on the Thicker although Shorter Sequel which only seems proper...go where the Fantastical takes You, eh !!!

[Mira]

My advice, never ever attempt listening to the audiobook. If you're going to read this anthology, actually do that and read it.
The voice talent is absolutely horrible, and despite that some of the stories in here are actually okay, I just can't handle listening to the reader anymore. So, until I get my hands on either a physical or e-copy of this book I won't be finishing it, I'm honestly not that masochistic to continue torturing myself with the audiobook!

[Larrry G · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is fantastic and then there is fantastic, there it is:
this may actually rate four or so stars, but who's counting, yet after reading with the Short Story Group and all the wonderful insights, I'm bumping it up a bit more.
And with further ado, lifted from the dedication:
"A knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, even as they are little things, not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest pleasures." (RLS)

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection! There are some big names and a lot of South American authors I have never heard of. The cover art rules. Some of the themes can get old if you read them all at once, so it is good to space things out. My favorite story was actually the first one, by Julio Cortazar, but the rest of the book wasn't disappointing. Just not as great.

[Freder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manguel stays well away from the sensational, and goes for mood and depth.

[Bill Shears · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read through it ever decade-and-a-half or so. A fantastic collection of fantastic short stories from around the world.