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Darkscapes
The fifteen stories of Darkscapes, Anne-Sylvie Salzman’s new collection in English, superbly translated from the French by William Charlton, explore the horror in life, the beauty in strangeness. Despite the diverse settings of Salzman’s stories, their inhabitants share an affinity with the unusual, the dislocated and the other.
Hikers in the Scottish Highlands, a working-girl in Tokyo, boy scouts on a country adventure, drifting students, prowling beasts, makers of glass eyes, inhabit the farthest reaches of the imagination—be it the dying gleam of a lingering dusk, cannibalism in a Parisian park, or the tremor of a snipe’s feathers. Salzman/Charlton’s prose, precise and subtle, leads readers willingly into the heart of darkness.
Contains: Lost Girls: ‘Child of Evil Stars’, ‘Fox into Lady’, ‘The Old Towpath’, ‘The Opening’, ‘Meannanaich’. Crucifixions: ‘Passing Forms’, ‘Under the Lighthouse’, ‘Pan’s Children’, ‘Brunel’s Invention’, ‘Shioge’. The Story of Margaret: ‘What the Eye Remembers’, ‘The Hand that Sees’. Wildlife: ‘Hilda’, ‘Lamont’, ‘Feral’. Bibliography. Acknowledgements.
Anne-Sylvie Salzman (aka Anne-Sylvie Homassel) is a Paris-based writer and translator. She co-directs Le Visage vert, a literary magazine and small press devoted to supernatural fiction. She is the author of Sommeil (José Corti), Au bord d’un lent fleuve noir (Joëlle Losfeld) and Lamont (Le Visage vert). Amongst other novels and collections, she translated Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men, Lord Dunsany’s The Sword of Welleran, Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados and Arthur Machen’s Three Impostors—and some of W.S. Graham’s poetry, feats she is inanely proud of. She is currently working on a science-fiction novel.
Darkscapes is a sewn hardback book of 193 pages with decorated boards, silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, and d/w.
ISBN 978-1-905784-57-8
Limited to 300 copies.
Hikers in the Scottish Highlands, a working-girl in Tokyo, boy scouts on a country adventure, drifting students, prowling beasts, makers of glass eyes, inhabit the farthest reaches of the imagination—be it the dying gleam of a lingering dusk, cannibalism in a Parisian park, or the tremor of a snipe’s feathers. Salzman/Charlton’s prose, precise and subtle, leads readers willingly into the heart of darkness.
Contains: Lost Girls: ‘Child of Evil Stars’, ‘Fox into Lady’, ‘The Old Towpath’, ‘The Opening’, ‘Meannanaich’. Crucifixions: ‘Passing Forms’, ‘Under the Lighthouse’, ‘Pan’s Children’, ‘Brunel’s Invention’, ‘Shioge’. The Story of Margaret: ‘What the Eye Remembers’, ‘The Hand that Sees’. Wildlife: ‘Hilda’, ‘Lamont’, ‘Feral’. Bibliography. Acknowledgements.
Anne-Sylvie Salzman (aka Anne-Sylvie Homassel) is a Paris-based writer and translator. She co-directs Le Visage vert, a literary magazine and small press devoted to supernatural fiction. She is the author of Sommeil (José Corti), Au bord d’un lent fleuve noir (Joëlle Losfeld) and Lamont (Le Visage vert). Amongst other novels and collections, she translated Max Beerbohm’s Seven Men, Lord Dunsany’s The Sword of Welleran, Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados and Arthur Machen’s Three Impostors—and some of W.S. Graham’s poetry, feats she is inanely proud of. She is currently working on a science-fiction novel.
Darkscapes is a sewn hardback book of 193 pages with decorated boards, silk ribbon marker, head and tailbands, and d/w.
ISBN 978-1-905784-57-8
Limited to 300 copies.
193 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 18, 2017
I'm surprised this isn't getting more love. Perhaps the affordable kindle version will help?
Some of these pieces are short vignettes or almost fairy tales. My favorite stories here have odd surreal breaks in the narrative, and open endings that invite interpretation. "The Opening" captures so well a kind of creeping unease and social tension, that I also admire in Aickman and the early Ramsey Campbell.
Some of these pieces are short vignettes or almost fairy tales. My favorite stories here have odd surreal breaks in the narrative, and open endings that invite interpretation. "The Opening" captures so well a kind of creeping unease and social tension, that I also admire in Aickman and the early Ramsey Campbell.
July 30, 2022
An excess of creaturely horrors seems to be the main bane of this collection; for as soon as Salzman enters more nebulous territory--be it the numinously personal apocalypse of "Under the Lighthouse" or the lushly envisioned sexual awakening of "The Old Towpath--her prose opens up like a stunning night-blooming flower. "Fox into Lady" appears as the main exception, however, with its transformation of an inexplicable birth into scene upon scene of darkly fantastic body horror; of course, such grim renderings of pregnancy are not at all new in dark fiction but this vignette still pulses with a primal power.
Several stories, including the ghostly melancholy of "Meannanaich", " evoke earlier times and tend to be dully expository narratives; "Shioge" and "Pan's Children" read like generically cruel--and cruelly generic--folk tales. "The Story of Margaret", even with all its obsessive, ocular symbolism, won't do anything for French or English letters that Bataille had not done a century ago. "Child of Evil Stars", if largely for its very unconventional romance, offers a bit more interest among these tales of quainter times.
Overall, this book was a lot less than I expected it to be, and, though the translation definitely is less than the back cover's claim of "superb", I don't think that the translator alone should receive blame. This is far from being Tartarus' best, but it's still better than reading the reprinted works of R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker.
Several stories, including the ghostly melancholy of "Meannanaich", " evoke earlier times and tend to be dully expository narratives; "Shioge" and "Pan's Children" read like generically cruel--and cruelly generic--folk tales. "The Story of Margaret", even with all its obsessive, ocular symbolism, won't do anything for French or English letters that Bataille had not done a century ago. "Child of Evil Stars", if largely for its very unconventional romance, offers a bit more interest among these tales of quainter times.
Overall, this book was a lot less than I expected it to be, and, though the translation definitely is less than the back cover's claim of "superb", I don't think that the translator alone should receive blame. This is far from being Tartarus' best, but it's still better than reading the reprinted works of R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker.
July 23, 2020
Questi racconti non mi hanno convinta per nulla. A parte un paio, che mi sono piaciuti (seppur comunque non da morire), non ho trovato nulla che me li facesse davvero piacere. Oltre al fatto che diversi non li ho proprio capiti.
Penso siano troppo distanti dal weird che piace a me, mancano infatti dell'elemento fantastico e misterioso.
Non so, molti di questi racconti non li definirei nemmeno weird.
Un peccato
Penso siano troppo distanti dal weird che piace a me, mancano infatti dell'elemento fantastico e misterioso.
Non so, molti di questi racconti non li definirei nemmeno weird.
Un peccato
July 25, 2019
A style of melancholy only achieved through careful provisioning of words. Recommended!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews