Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman, Victoria Nelson (Introduction)

Cross Henry James with M.R. James and you might end up with a writer like Robert Aickman, though his self-described “strange stories” remain confoundingly and uniquely his own. Aickman’s superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange, of the “void behind the face of order,” is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames, or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress, and then another—and then another? Do a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover, this collection offers a generous introduction to a sophisticated, psychologically acute modernist whose achievements have too long been hidden under the cloak of genre.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Collections, British Literature, Fantasy

341 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2018

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

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compulsory Games collects all of the remaining Aickman stories not included in Faber's 4-volume set issued in 2014, including 3 previously uncollected stories. the majority are drawn from his outstanding collection Intrusions and the less successful Tales of Love and Death, and a couple from the excellent Night Voices. sadly, Compulsory Games does not include the strongest stories from each of those collections ("The Stains" & "The Fetch" & "Growing Boys"); it does include at least four stories that near greatness:
"No Time Is Passing", "The Strangers", "Just a Song at Twilight", and "Residents Only"

the originals in the collection are not really worth the price of admission; this is a book for Aickman completists only. although the introduction by Victoria Nelson is certainly well done. better to purchase the three collections noted above.

the uncollected:

"The Coffin House" - disappointingly minor tale of two young women meeting their doom in a strange house. the writing is perfectly fine and technically accomplished; it's the story itself that is skeletal in ideas. quite abrupt as well, in a cheap way. I can understand why this wasn't collected previously - it feels like Aickman gave up on it, with an eyeroll. perhaps the weakest story I've read by the author.

"The Fully-Conducted Tour" - a husband abroad with a sickly wife finds himself on a tour of a mysterious villa, where the geriatrics in the group with him meet their ambiguous fate. another well-written story that suffers from thinness. fortunately not as abrupt as the prior tale, and the idea does have flesh on it. it's just not a very interesting idea! rather obvious, which is rarely an Aickman trait.

"A Disciple of Plato" - a 'philosopher' in a malarial 18th-century Rome meets an entrancingly intellectual woman who is set for convent life. a deep connection between their two minds is established within their first conversation; our courtly cocksman tries and fails repeatedly to change the woman's decision to leave all worldly affairs behind. there is an annoyingly shallow and un-Aickmanesque gotcha ending in which the so-called philosopher's identity is revealed. still, this story was enjoyable and certainly worth reading, if only for the unusually florid quality of the prose - the author is not typically so extravagant in his style.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/2018...


With two exceptions, I loved the stories in this book, which were darkly bizarre, surreal, and in some cases just plain weird. Then again, those qualities are part of the reason I'm drawn to Aickman, who I personally believe was a genius writer, well ahead of his time.

Just recently I told someone who'd never read an Aickman story that while reading this author's work, don't go looking for the weird, the strange, or the horror in his work, because it will pop out at you when you're least expecting it. So imagine my surprise when my own thoughts were somewhat mirrored in one of the stories in this book, "The Fully-Conducted Tour,"in which Aickman says that

"... strange things happen all the time to many of us, if once we can get our minds off our own little concerns. One point is that the strangeness usually takes an unexpected form, it is no good looking looking for something strange. It only happens when you're not looking."

The stories in Compulsory Games, like most of Aickman's stories, have an uncanny ability to capture the nuances that make people human as well as some recognizable, realistic situation that slowly begins to morph into something beyond weird before all is said and done. His work is definitely not geared toward readers who need closure ... his stories are, borrowing from the introduction, like a "door left confoundingly ajar." One more thing -- I've seen several reviews by readers who say that this should not be your first experience with Aickman, but I have to disagree. Much of what comprises Compulsory Games is not nearly as complicated as most of his work in other collections, so in my humble opinion, this book offers a learning experience in how to read/approach Aickman. I also know that the Aickman-newbie friend with whom I read this book was so wowed by it that he immediately ordered another book of Aickman stories as soon as he'd finished this one.

Take your time with it, and be aware that you might feel lost or that you're groping around in the dark while reading, but trust me, the experience is well worth every second. Very highly recommended.

[Doug Bolden · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two broad methods for reading Aickman. The first, and most common that I have seen, is to read him as something akin to horror. The exact sub-genre or flavor of which is debated: ranging from ghost stories blended with surrealism to psychological horror bordering on magical realism [and most stops in-between]. The fact he is often assigned to distinctly genre fiction, and distinctly horror at that, is testified by numerous witnesses: see the bookcovers of the recent Faber paperbacks, the forthcoming Centipede Press Master of the Weird Tale collection, the filling of the pages of a Aickman tribute anthology with largely horror/weird authors, the shout-outs from those in the horror/weird field.

It is not a bad way to read most of Aickman. There are vampires - literal and figurative - and ghosts - ditto - and family curses and little scary damned doll houses. Aickman is a giant of the field whose writings are as unique as they are filled with ambiguity and lacunae of reason. He is the master of the implication who took the style of certain later M.R. James stories - see "The Story of a Disappearance and a Reappearance" for a forebearer of Aickman-esque - and made it wholly his own.

However, there is a second method that is sometimes more accurate, and that is to read him as something of an absurdist satirist, dealing more with wry humor and strange Beckett/Camus-intimations about the failings of modern life than with anything spookums. This collection ostensibly casts Aickman in this light, though it is perhaps best understood to be more a collection of stories *not* collected in recent anthologies than anything else [which means some of the stories, such as "The Coffin House," a middlin' version of "The Trains", are fairly weak]. In this method, Aickman is seen to attempt to reconcile the hustle-and-bustle tedium with the loss of [supposed] awe. Many of the stories are practically musings on Dickenson's iconic line, "The carriage held but just Ourselves, and immortality," a theme which shows up often: some various out-of-sorts middleclass English man or woman is confronted with the infinite, or at least the unbounded, and cannot generally reconcile these facets into rationality.

This is not to say that either method is the only way to read Aickman, or that they are exclusive. They are hand-in-hand, generally. Hence the slight chuckles at sexual hangups and books written on train-based ephemera in "The Trains", right in the midst of the terror of the events of that story. Or, to stick with stories in this collection, the glimpse of something undescribed but perhaps horrible in a church in "Hand in Glove", blended in with scenes of phallic mushrooms sprouting everywhere and time being out of grip and cows standing a bit too still in the edge of a field. The intimations of the hallway to the afterlife (or hell, or simply some ill-defined personal darkness) with strange visitors, in "No Time in Passing", is mixed with wry jabs at boaters [Aickman having a personal affinity for such] and failures of sexuality.

Sexual failures are quite frequent in these stories: a husband who refuses an affair with a neighbor is later plagued by said neighbor's plane (and said neighbor stealing his wife), a postman's fantasy woman turns out to be unattainable, a man ends up "dating" two roommates [who seem to represent air/intellectualism and earth/sexuality] while having an obsession with his own mother, another man is pipped at the post by less-effective coworker [though the pipping involves....well, something weird...who knows what]. The fact that Aickman had issues with fidelity that both cost him his marriage and ended up with him failing to keep his lovers adds a bit of self-deprecation, here.

As does the frequent jabs about office life, writing, living in suburbia, dealing with parents, marriage, friendships, and so forth. There are bits of humor, bits of sass, bits of bleak laughter. In one story, "Wood", one of the book's highlights, a man who makes little figures out of straw is said to have in common with the daughter of a coffin maker the fact that, at the end, what is man "but ravelled straw?" "Raising the Wind" is almost assuredly a old-women-farting-in-church joke. "Residents Only" has obvious horror imagery but is mostly a tongue-in-cheek look at local councils and how ineffective they are, bordering on malignity.

At least one story, "The Disciple of Plato," is nearly impossible to read in the first method, being entirely the latter. In it, "the philosopher," tries to talk a woman out of joining a convent (one dedicated to a Saint "of the Sour Stomach," nonetheless) so he can have a temporary tryst with her: and along the ways are jabs at society and pokes at Rome and tourism.

There are better collections of Aickman, but this one does seem to serve a purpose because it helps to revisit the edges of Aickman-esque, and to look at stories in a slightly different light. Like all Aickman's posthumous collections, though, it does suffer some by being a bit overlong and having stories sort of pressed together arbitrarily, which tends to numb the part of the brain that might enjoy his prose the most. Like watching a magician perform the same or similar card tricks a dozen times in a night, it shows cracks in the routine. There are only so many times a woman can represent a man's sense of fear (be it fear of sex, fear of intimacy, fear of loneliness, fear of death, or others) before you roll your eyes. Then you keep reading, because this man is a beautiful writer, through and through.

[Blair]

I know a lot of people dislike star ratings, but I generally find them broadly useful in indicating my feelings about a book. But some writers render them useless, and Robert Aickman is definitely one of these. Many of his most memorable stories provoke such a powerful feeling of not just unease, but repulsion, that I would never want to reread them, yet they are also among the best horror stories I have ever read. How do you rate something like that?

Compulsory Games, published by New York Review Books, is made up of stories not included in any of the four collections in print with Faber (Cold Hand in Mine, The Unsettled Dust, The Wine-Dark Sea and Dark Entries). It’s hard not to see them as offcuts in one way or another (as most other reviews also note). Some seem like experiments with different styles, such as ‘Le Miroir’, an odd and not entirely successful stab at the gothic. Others feature familiar themes: Aickman often writes about a man pursuing a woman into ruin, but better-known stories do more interesting things with the concept than this collection’s ‘Laura’ and ‘A Disciple of Plato’. It’s easy to see why some of these stories might have been left out of the Faber collections: ‘Residents Only’ is overlong and dwells too much on local council bureaucracy; the supernatural threat in ‘Compulsory Games’ is too silly to be truly sinister; and I’m not quite sure what on earth to make of ‘Marriage’.

This is not to say they’re all mediocre: a few are excellent, though they might not be immediately recognisable as Aickman’s work. I liked ‘Wood’, a clear-cut horror story with a macabre conclusion, the best. It’s also one of the funniest Aickman stories I’ve read (black humour is often present in his writing, but I actually laughed out loud at some of the turns of phrase in this), reminiscent of Claude Houghton’s I Am Jonathan Scrivener in the narrator’s style. ‘The Coffin Room’ is delightfully nasty, with something of Daphne du Maurier’s short fiction about it. ‘Hand in Glove’ is perhaps the most ‘classic Aickman’ story here, reminiscent of ‘The Trains’ in its tale of two women on an ill-fated trip.

‘The Strangers’ has an incredibly effective central scene with some wonderfully disquieting imagery, though – as with ‘Residents Only’ – it’s too long and devotes too much time to a boring subplot. ‘No Time is Passing’ has a great antagonist, ‘Letters to the Postman’ a great hook, yet neither exploits the full potential of these elements. With ‘Just a Song at Twilight’, a middling haunted house story, the collection ends with a whimper.

I’m not the first to say it, but this isn’t an ideal book to start with if you’ve never read Aickman before. It just doesn’t give the reader any sense of how powerful his writing can be; there’s little to rival the intense unease and discomfort found in stories like ‘The Hospice’, ‘The Stains’ and ‘Growing Boys’. It’s perhaps true that it’s more ‘readable’ than much of the author’s output, but to the detriment of its overall effect.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would say that most of these stories are second and third-tier Aickman. Certainly these are not as good as those found in "The Wine-Dark Sea" or "Dark Entries" and not even close to what I'd consider the most essential collections "Cold Hand in Mine" and "The Unsettled Dust." That isn't to say there's not a few great Aickman stories here.

"Wood" is an incredible story, easily in company with his best work. "The Strangers" is also excellent and maintains a decent sense of unease despite its longer length. "Just a Song at Twilight" is quite good too, it's on the shorter side and quite creepy. "Hand in Glove" and "Compulsory Games" are also above the average and there's plenty of shining "Aickmanesque" moments throughout even the worst stories. Still, this is the last thing I would recommend for an Aickman newcomer, in fact several of these stories I believe even I could skip without deathbed regrets.

Reservations aside, this is an important collection because with these stories, along with those reprinted by Tartarus Press and Valancourt Books, almost all of Aickman's work is now cheaply available, at least in ebook form. The stories "The Insufficient Answer" and "The Breakthrough" are still a bit hard to find. The former story is available on archive.org in an anthology titled "Girls' Night Out: Twenty-Nine Female Vampire Stories" which can be borrowed for free. The latter is only available in rare or expensive collections.

Compulsory Games
I liked this one, I wouldn't put it among my top favorites, but it's a pretty good story and leaves us much to wonder about. Toward the end, this story is more overt and less subtle than many of Aickman's stories, but it works quite well. This one also feels a bit more emotionally involved than the average Aickman tale, with a deep sense of loneliness. A couple befriends a strange widow, and soon find themselves divided by her.

Hand in Glove
I liked this one, even though like so many others in this particular collection, I wouldn't put it among my top favorites. But it has a lot going for it, and is full of expertly-crafted strange touches. This story brought another Aickman story to mind, "The Next Glade" although I haven't read it in several years and it didn't make a huge impression upon me. For anyone that has blacked out before, this story might bring back an unsettling feeling of deja vu. The ending is rather devastating and comes suddenly. A woman trying to get over a breakup goes on a picnic with a friend, but a series of eerie events force her to confront her unconscious fears.

Marriage
This is another of Aickman's tales of queasy and disquieting sex, like "The Swords" or "Mark Ingestre, A Customer's Tale," and while it's not as good as either of the former perhaps, it's on the same level with the latter. Frankly this story has one of the most abrupt and shocking endings of all of Aickman's stories, but it felt a bit tacked on, without resolving anything. Besides that, we are left with a lot of haunting questions and uncertainties. A shy man meets a woman at a theater and begins an uneasy affair with her roommate, while dating the other woman socially -- all of which becomes increasingly bizarre.

Le Miroir
This is a very weird story, even for Aickman. I am at a loss to understand exactly what happened here. I love the strange, vague mood it creates but it didn't make much of an impression on me. At times this feels almost like a prose poem, or a dream -- I mean what else can you make of, "The other pupils at the art school were either complete babies, feeding from bottles containing cornflour; or, in certain cases, motionless skeletons, also fed with cornflour, though not from bottles, because they could not suck." An Englishwoman moves to Paris to study painting, but an old mirror she purchases causes time, or her perception of it to shift.

No Time is Passing
This may not be one of Aickman's best, but it is better than the lowest tier stories in this book. It has an unsettling mood that slowly creeps into the story, until the unreal is entirely accepted by the very conventional, practical-minded protagonist. The story seemingly has a lot to say about that ever-practical mind which has no patience for much else, and yet there's enough strange plot details to convince us we'll never fully untie this knot. A man discovers a stream behind his house which he was always too busy to notice existed. He crosses to the other side where he meets a very odd neighbor.

Raising the Wind
This is one of the most straight-forward Aickman stories I think I've ever read, and it's not entirely disappointing for that, although it's a minor story. A man agrees to accompany a friend who is tasked with moving a boat for its owner, desperate for a breeze, they decide to "buy wind" from an old woman.

Residents Only
This story has its moments, and displays Aickman's humor better than many of his stories do. There's plenty of eerie touches that continue to creep into the story, but I have to agree with many other readers, it's just too long, far too long. Aickman means to say something about the do-nothing bureaucracy which he participated in during his life, but it doesn't make for interesting reading. A man joins a committee for the upkeep of a local cemetery which becomes overgrown and dangerous.

Wood
This was a very impressive Aickman tale and I'd put it among his best. I couldn't tell where this one was headed, although it gives hints. It had one moment where I literally covered my mouth with my hand and said "Oh no..." -- in other words, it's impressively creepy. A man's acquaintance gets married to a strange girl and soon moves away, he later tries to look him up.

The Strangers
This story remained unpublished until 2015 by Tartarus Press and later again in "The Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3." One wonders why this excellent story remained unpublished. In this collection this story was my second-favorite beside "Wood." This wouldn't be among my top ten favorite Aickman stories, but I could certainly re-read it, even with its longer length. A man attends a strange charity event with a friend where he witnesses something so frightening and inexplicable it makes him flee from the place. Afterward his friend and several other people in his life are seemingly changed.

The Coffin House
This is one of the shortest Aickman stories, it's a very minor one but it still displays a lot of his themes and mood. Two girls stranded in a storm take refuge in a house with two weird old people.

Letters to the Postman
I enjoyed this story, it has a good sense of mystery and mounting suspense, but I found the end wanting, although it didn't distract from my enjoyment too much. The themes in this story reminded me a lot of Aickman's far superior "The Stains." A man takes a job as a postman in a small village, and starts a relationship with an unseen woman through mysterious exchanged letters.

Laura
This is a decent story, fairly short, but it just feels a bit too predictable for Aickman. I did like the eerily menacing conclusion. A man encounters a beautiful woman over and over in his life, which seems both enhanced and stunted by the encounter.

The Fully Conducted Tour
This is actually a pretty good story, but with some of these short stories I am starting to see why Aickman is better when the stories are longer and more leisurely-paced. A man vacationing in Italy with his ill wife goes on a tour of an old villa alone.

A Disciple of Plato
A very unengaging story about a historical romance.

Just a Song at Twilight
This is a great story, after several middling entries, this one impressed me a lot. It is fairly succinct and yet it feels just right in terms of length and is also one of the most eerie in this collection. This one displays Aickman's "foreign locale unease" quite well. A young couple purchase a house on a small island on a whim, entranced by the quiet atmosphere and hoping to live a simple life there.

[Ian Laird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Aickman has many virtues, not least of which is uniqueness: he tells tales of mystery, puzzlement, discomfort and transformation, replete with unknown forces boding no good for the protagonist.

The label most often applied to Aickman is teller of horror cum ghost stories. But this is to pigeon-hole him, because he is a master at creating ordinary men and women, although the women are usually more capable than the men, if frustrated. Or they may be more adventurous, as Grace and Eileen are in the title story Compulsory Games. The men more stolid (Delbert discovers a river at the bottom of his garden when he opens the gate – how long has that been there? Is it really a river?) Oswald Crickmay in my favourite tale Residents Only, limited in perception and understanding, let alone imagination is invited to join the Cemetery Committee, by the leader of the Council, who has a bold plan for redeveloping the Cemetery, which has reached capacity. This story, although the burden of the plot (no pun intended) while reasonably clear is a masterly pastiche of local government administration married with upheavals of gothic intensity.

Crickmay observes ‘The Council was very much like school; and the committee like one of the forms, or, rather, like a specialist group’ (p137) in this case with a surprising number of very elderly members constantly changing. The cemetery becomes more forbidding: ‘as the years passed, the vegetation tangled, the rats proliferated amazingly, the dogs howled, the headstones cracked, flaked and disappeared’. (p142) After abortive attempts to redevelop the cemetery: ‘The terrain was not merely treacherous to walk on, bursting with evil vegetation (especially at midsummer), pullulating with decomposition and infection…’ (p173) Clearly there are those who wish to rest in peace.

There are other good stories: Wood where a fatalistic man bows to the inevitable and is transformed into a really useful object, and Fully Conducted Tour, where an Englishman in Tuscany with a sickly Jane Austen reading wife (it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a man with an Austen reading wife must be in need of an Italian holiday) goes on a conducted tour of a villa where he encounters: ‘just about the most lovely woman I had at that time ever seen’ (p309) who catches his eye before a line of tourists is about to go through a pair of fine old doors. He feels she is warning him "Come no further” (p310). Wisely, he heeds the warning.

Overall, many stories of intriguing strangeness mixed in with others which are more obtuse and puzzling in a furrowed brow sort of way.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

To call those short stories strange is to undersell them. They are beyond strange, yet they are about the human condition.
There are also murdering cows.
How cool is that?
They might not be really cows.
The cows are in the short story “Hand and Glove”.
There are mushrooms.
In many of the stories, a theme is love and/or marriage. The relationships are never quite what they at first appear to be. But the language and writing are beautiful.

[Steve Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book endeavours to collect together the Robert Aickman stories not included in the currently available 4 volume Faber set – which includes two greatest hits collections. Though this is a great initiative, it does inevitably mean that some of the inclusions here are far from top drawer.

There are fifteen stories, six of which I would consider to be amongst Aickman’s best, and so make this volume a worthy purchase. These are sadly balanced by a further six (usually shorter ones) which frankly I wish I hadn’t read. I’ll explain later.

The six I recommend:-

'Compulsory Games.' A man who thinks he is doing an older lady a favour by visiting her while his wife is away soon discovers – upon her return – who is the lonely one. A well told story that constantly has you asking questions as to the meaning of things. A barely stated layer of sex is just beneath the surface.

‘Marriage.’ A sexually inexperienced man meets, and goes out with a woman, but prefers her more vivacious friend. There are mountains of Aickman ambiguity here. Apart from the somewhat sudden end, this is hugely enjoyable and perhaps my favourite in the collection. Aickman is often mentioned in the same sentence as M.R. James, but the inclusion of sex – be it open, or simmering beneath the surface is a key difference. For James’s fusty characters, sex is something to be avoided, or even feared. But for Aickman, the ambiguity of sexual liaisons and the main character’s confusions and excitement are what often fascinate, and make the story.

‘Wood.’ A man is surprised on hearing that a friend is to marry, and even more surprised to see the short, odd, and stiff family that he has chosen to marry into. It’s a typically odd Aickman tale in which he creates a typically warped and dreamy world. It’s the sheer oddness and originality that are a chief reason for making Aickman very readable.

‘The Strangers.’ A man attends a piano recital with a friend and describes its curious events. It’s a very dreamy story in which the strange elements are integrated with touches of humour. I like the touch whereby the narrator constantly says, ‘and more about that later,’ but I’m quite sure that he fails on each occasion to enlighten further. A very likeable story, with the humour adda another dimension.

‘Letters to the Postman.’ A temporary postman becomes obsessed by the female occupant of a house in which letters pop out at him from the letterbox. Relatively straightforward for Aickman. It’s a fascinating scenario which has you wondering at the premise and conclusion.

‘The Fully-Conducted Tour.’ A man tells of a strange incident in which he goes on a bus tour to visit an old Italian building, but on arrival, he receives a warning (via eye signals) not to enter. Short and straightforward, it fascinates even though little actually happens.

There are three other stories that are not without interest – ‘Hand in Glove,’ 'Raising the Wind,’ and ‘Residents Only.’

And the six I didn’t much care for? For a Robert Aickman story to work, I think the beginning has to be clear to allow you in to the story in the first place – the trademark ambiguity and strangeness can follow. I could not get into a few of these stories because the opening was unclear, or unengagingly written. It’s almost sacrilege for me to be harsh on this writer, but the clunkily over-written opening to ‘Just a Song at Twilight’ is an example, but fortunately very rare in his writing [I can’t bring myself to include a quote]. However, the biggest negative, and the thing I wish I hadn’t read are examples whereby Robert Aickman’s key attribute – that of creating a seamless aura of strangeness, fails him. An example is the story, ‘No Time is Passing.’ There is nothing seamless here, the whole point of the story seems to be mechanically seeking for something strange to say. He seems to be laying bare his inner workings, and for me, the story falls flat – seeming at times in its banter to be a faux Samuel Beckett.

Despite my previous paragraph, I would recommend this book for the six very good stories. What I would urge is that anyone wanting to try Robert Aickman, after hearing good things about him, is to read ‘The Wine-Dark Sea,’ or ‘The Unsettled Dust’ first.

Despite the filling in the gaps nature of this book, frustratingly for the completest, two of his stories are still hard to get hold of – ‘The View,’ and ‘The Insufficient Answer.’ These appeared in his very first collection, ‘We Are for the Dark.’ This was a book in which he contributed three stories, and his close friend Elizabeth Jane Howard also contributed three stories. Aickman’s third story from this book – ‘The Trains' - is included in ‘The Wine-Dark Sea.’

I'd recommend 'Compulsory Games,' to Robert Aickman fans, but I'd steer newcomers to ‘The Wine-Dark Sea’ and ‘The Unsettled Dust’ first.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

About halfway through, these stories really read like lesser Aickman to me. I don't expect every Aickman piece to be near the level of Ravissante, but most of these have been quite a slog. The exception is "Wood", but one has to suffer through the rambling opening section to get to the rather lovely and ambiguous end.

Update: "The Strangers" certainly has many charming moments, but is again too long. "Letters to the Postman" and "Laura" both have ordinary English dudes chasing femme fatales, a common Aickman theme. The narrator's voice in "Laura" is perfectly rendered, and the ending is sly and elegant; this is by far the highlight of the collection for me.

While things are looking up, I'm still surprised how inferior this collection is, compared with Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories or Painted Devils: Strange Stories. They might as well have subtitled this "The Dregs", or "The Barrel's Bottom", or something. From "A Disciple of Plato":

The philosopher was not always an early riser, though his subconscious mind had the happy capacity of varying the depth of his slumber according to the period his conscious mind could allow for that overrated form of refreshment.

Sigh.

[Sakib · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently this book is "intended" to work as an introduction to Aickman's "strange world" of his "strange stories". Most of the readers would say (have said) that this is subpar compared to the other four collections made accessible by Faber & Faber. This being my step into his works, I'm quite sure enough now to say that I could've picked one from those four, for a better "introduction".

I liked the stories, except two, one of which I didn't even finish, but will sometime later perhaps, one being Residents Only and the other A Disciple of Pluto.

The first honestly didn't feel like much of a story, rather a newspaper column or report covering a string of local incidents, or a memoir of sort. The other is the one I didn't finish, didn't feel the slightest push for doing so...

But seriously, Robert Aickman is a terrific writer.

Aickman's stories are best labeled "strange stories" because that's precisely what they are. There's subtle horror, weirdness and the quite sinister progression of something gnawing behind your brain and under the totality of consciousness and it's other two closely-related buddies. After finishing a good story, even the one that I didn't like, will continue to haunt you in a completely unique way. None of the stories are conclusive. "Ambiguity" of almost every aspect, or/and "omission" of things is/are the sole, or one/two of sole reasons, that make/s him an unique artist.

His skill in storytelling, and his approach, are quite assuring of the fact that if he were to write literary fiction, he would do it ever so easily and have wide readership; and that what makes him an unique writer in the genre that he chose to employ his talents.

I'm saying this in bold remarks because the story Letters to the Postman to me is somewhat lost on me because I don't understand on what grounds is it a strange tale? The prose and storytelling is as always enigmatic and full of ambiguity and implicit wonders, depicting the fool that is youth in all its secretiveness and desperation mixed with disappointment of impulses. Maybe that's it? Even so, it's one of my favorites here.

It's impossible for me now to properly talk about each story; maybe after rereading them I might be able to construct something that might truly be worth putting here...

My most favorite story is Just a Song at Twilight. The title itself is just awesome, and gets really disturbing really quick at the end.

Then comes Wood, with its more definitive horror of the events that follow, but unclear nonetheless. A Fully-Conducted Tour and Laura are also of the same type, and quite short in length.

The title story was a terrifying start for me, specially what happened at the end. And what's up with the title? What games are "compulsory"? What games were even played?

It seems Aickman's rude and artistic application of "unsatisfying finality of things" (I can't use the world "closure") is horrifying than the story elements themselves, coupled with his slyness, ambiguity and prose style.

The Strangers reminded me at first of vampires, then ghosts, then a succubus, and then I completely lost it. The hammer that Aickman employed here: slowly building up the weird energy everywhere and within the occupants in that room, and then something truly disturbing in the performance that was spotted by the main character that made him want to get away from that place, but never giving the tiniest hint of what it was...

Hand in Glove is another one that imprints itself on the mind. Like No Time is Passing there's a river which is not what it seems, those cows on the pasture aren't really cows...

Marriage felt voyeuristic at the obvious places, but that's not a definitive thing to say about the story... it's disturbing is all I can say...

I'm sure I need to read these again, slowly, because that's how I'm given to understand Robert Aickman's works will get to me and finally make me go nuts. But first I need read the other collections.

[Clay C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One reviewer on here called Compulsory Games a “best of the rest” collection of stories that didn’t make it into the Faber reissues. The book itself seems to be aware of this, as Victoria Nelson’s introduction acknowledges the Faber reissues and considers this as a sort of response to those editions. If that’s the case, its a shame that are still quite a few Aickman stories floating in space out there that haven’t been collected in a reissue.

As fans of him know, Aickman’s writing embodies the “journey is more important than the destination” idea of horror fiction. There is rarely a pay-off or even much clarity. Even when Aickman does appear to explain some of the strangeness, we have a strong feeling that there is still a lot he is holding back. Aickman’s mysterious stories nearly always feature his protagonist being confronted by some supernatural “visitation” for lack of a better term (although almost never in a traditional or expected form). It’s clear that something happens. But what? This is the beauty of Aickman’s writing and those who want to try out Aickman should come to terms with this before getting started.

Although I do agree that Compulsory games is in essence a “best of the rest” collection, some of the stories features here and snubbed for inclusion in the Faber volume are incredible. Certainly there are some stories in Compulsory Games that are not (at least to me) Aickman at his best. “Residents Only” has moments of brilliance but is much too long and the supernatural activity oddly obvious in a non-satisfying way. “A Disciple of Plato” is a fun example of Aickman’s non-supernatural fiction but most readers aren’t exactly looking for that. The title story starts very strong but the way that the supernatural visitation appears a ghostly red biplane? didn’t really work for me. There are however three stories in the collection which are absolutely wonderful and I believe are great depictions of Aickman at his very best.

Hand in Glove: This story is incredible and deeply, deeply unsettling. A young woman, recently separated from her possibly abusive finance, goes on a trip to the country side, led by a well-meaning friend attempted to cheer her up. They stop near a church for an idyllic picnic and things quickly fall apart. In this story, the characters acknowledgement of the supernatural is both surprisingly frank and satisfyingly vague at times. The last several sequences in this story are hair-raising, and Aickman gives just enough information to allow his readers to form any number of theories.

Strangers: This story went under my radar during my first reading but it is incredible. The protagonists forms an odd friendship with a lonely, love-sick coworker. Following an odd and sinister performance at a mansion on the outskirts of town, both characters’ personal lives are derailed. This is one of the few Aickman stories that feature several forms of supernatural visitations, including possession, a creepy family, and a hauntingly intimate ghost. This story is a bit over-long (it could’ve done without a framing story) and a bit-over written at times, but it has some truly weird and wonderful details only Aickman could give (“This was like a face fashioned by a medieval craftsman who had dreamt of a demon; or sketched by a Japanese recluse that had actually seen one.”) This story is everything a classic Aickman story should be: profoundly icky while reading and profoundly haunting when finished. Granted the reading conditions were just right when I read it (alone in the house during a night storm), but Strangers scared me more than maybe any Aickman story besides The Inner Room. Please give it a shot.

Wood: This story truly represents Aickman at his best and may even be one of his best stories ever. I have no idea why this wasn’t included in the Faber editions while some less-powerful tales snuck their way in. This story features a typical Aickman male protagonist: cold, glib, with plenty of emotional baggage, although Wood’s narrator is more outwardly charming and self-possessed than usual. In an East Anglian village, our hero befriends Leonard Munn, a strange but sympathetic recluse. The narrator is both touched and horrified when Munn asks him to be his best man at his wedding with a village girl whose father plies an unusual trade. I don’t want to say too much and risk spoiling anything or not giving it the justice it deserves. Needless to say, Munn’s transition to married life is striking and bizarre, and Wood’s conclusion is truly horrific.

These three stories are the clear highlights of the collection and I’d recommend them to just about anyone. There are some other stories which I loved but make more sense to be left off the Faber reissues. These include:

The Coffin House: This tale is very short for Aickman’s standards and unlike anything he’d written before. It seemingly has strong pulp horror influences. Think Aickman meets Tales from the Crypt. Very satisfying and fun.

Laura: Our narrator’s life is guided by inexplicable but short meetings with the same enchanting woman, who doesn’t seem to age over the years. Haunting with a horrifying ending, the metaphor here is relatively clear but no less powerful because of it.

Just a Song at Twilight: Dreamy and sad, a great final story for the collection.

The Fully-Conducted Tour: This story is startlingly personal. For the first time Aickman himself is the narrator and tells us of a strange encounter he experienced during a wistful Venice vacation with his ailing wife. Fans of M. R. James will see certain similarities with this and “A Vignette.” Was Aickman trying to tell us a real story as it actually happened to him? Aickman certainly believed in the supernatural, but the details of the story seem a bit too fuzzy and far-fetched. Did his wife truly die in this way? I doubt we’ll ever unlock the truth behind this story but its blur of sincerity and intimacy with the author is amazing all the same. Sad, unique, and indispensable for Aickman fans.

I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to any readers hooked on Aickman who need more after finishing the Faber reissues. I believe all of the stories are fun, but some are truly spectacular and better than many of those that made the cut. On reflection, I would even recommend it is a good introduction for new fans wanting to get into Aickman, especially due to the variety of style and content. There is something for just about everyone here. Just remember, it’s all about the puzzle, rarely the solution.

[Terence]

6.5 or so out of 10.

When I was a teen-ager, I got a SFBC edition of Aickman’s Cold Hand in Mine. Unfortunately, I was too young and not an experienced enough reader to appreciate the author. I’ve always wanted to revisit Aickman, and when I saw that the NYRB Bookstore offered a collection, I ordered it.

Aickman’s horror is of the psychological kind. Few of his stories are explicitly horror, though most are terrifying at some level and are worth taking a look at.

In this collection, my favorites were:

“Compulsory Games” – A story about a failing marriage.
“Hand in Glove” – This story about a woman and her stalker is a prime example of a tale that’s terrifying whether or not there’s a supernatural element to it or not.
“The Strangers” – One of the explicit horror stories as the Z-------- family is clearly not wholly human.
“The Coffin House” – This story reminded me of Lovecraft’s “The Picture in the House.”
“The Fully-Conducted Tour” – A blackly humorous tale about a man going on a house tour while vacationing in Italy.

Now I have to pick up a copy of Cold Hand in Mine.

[Akira Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's become increasingly rare for me to encounter an entirely unknown (to me, at least) author who manages to impress me to the degree that Aickman has with these stories. They're beautifully written, of course, but what gets to me is the sustained mood, one that I can only describe as deeply unsettling.

It's ostensibly horror, or perhaps fantasy, but it's not much like other works in that genre. There is the hallucinatory feel of Kafka or Ishiguro. But what I find remarkable is how subtly the unnatural elements are placed in the stories. Many times they seem to pass by, unremarked, having little impact on the story. Other times they are, yes, necessary to the plot, but they still maintain a sense of just barely being present.

It's hard to describe, exactly, but the overall impact is, as I said already, deeply unsettling. These stories won't give you nightmares, but they will give you highly unpleasant daydreams.

[Jed Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

After eagerly awaiting this collection for months, it was inevitably going to fall short of exaggerated expectations, but many stories here, including the title story, "Hand in Glove," "Marriage," and "Wood," are among Aickman's best, and several others, like "No Time is Passing," "The Coffin House," and "Just a Song at Twilight" are very good, indeed; unfortunately, a few, including "Residents Only" and "The Strangers" are not only somewhat dull, but are also rather unbearably long, so that whatever chills they may have in store are gradually dissipated. Far from the best introduction to Aickman's genius currently in print, it is nevertheless a welcome addition to the slowly growing shelf of recovered Aickman tales.

[Addison Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably a 3.5 in all honesty, but "Wood" is one of his best tales and not one I'd seen anywhere else. The title story and "Marriage" are also fine showings, if not quite on the same level. "The Strangers" has a lot to offer as well, even if by the end it feels a bit desultory. Overall, it's not the volume I'd recommend for beginners (that's probably Cold Hand in Mine), or even the runner-up, but it's well-worth buying if you enjoy Aickman and are used to those aspects of his work that can genuinely irritate, such as his taste for knowing, yet abstract non sequiturs and his occasional misjudged attempts at whimsicality. "Wood", again, is top shelf Aickman and guaranteed to bring a sickly smile to even the most warped, optimistic sort of face.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious marvels these strange tales. Aickman’s is a meticulous, wonderful talent that weaves story from the quotidian, the unexplained, and from often the unnerving. Several in this collection reveal themselves delightful microworlds in which, for a spell, living, breathing their dust and traipsing with never more than a hair’s breadth distance that muddle of anxious but anticipatory tension their shadowy corridors, to become lost.

[Daniel Polansky]

Aickman is a fabulous, inventive, peculiar writer, and this collection of his short fiction is so good I’m going to write a paragraph talking about what I don’t like about it. Aickman’s pattern in most of these are, basically –> individual in a highly charged emotional situation + uncanny or surreal situation = mysterious denouement which deliberately fails to clarify things. Sometimes this works marvelously, with the peculiar subtleties of each story’s theme submerged in rhyming narrative madness. Other times I felt like the climax was too vague to live up to the full potential of the set-up, and some vary good set-ups are kind of ruined for want of a clearer, sharper focus. None of which should detract from the first part (and most relevant) part of this capsule review, which is to say that Aickman is excellent, and these are a good way to frighten yourself to sleep one stormy evening.

[Jesús Murillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pude haber acabado este libro en menos días de no ser por la salida de Hollow Knight: Silksong y mi respectiva viciada por una semana entera...

Yendo al grano, estamos ante una decente antología de cuentos de Aickman extraídos de sus cuatro últimas colecciones: "Tales of love and death", "Intrusions", "Night Voices" y "The Strangers", esta última, publicada en exclusiva por Tartarus Press, dedicada a recoger cuentos y otros textos no incluidos en libros propios del autor.

Debo admitir que temí que Aickman cambiase de registro en estos volúmenes; esto es, que dejase de lado las historias extrañas para escribir narraciones más realistas. Sin embargo, me alegra confirmar que no fue así. Es más, me parece que estos cuentos son más perturbadores y maduros que los primeros, pero no necesariamente mejores. El Aickman de estos cuentos me recuerda a la última etapa de Julio Cortázar y a Mariana Enríquez, salvo que más inquietante y con un estilo narrativo más preciso. Los principales temas son el horror que existe en la monótona vida diaria, los matrimonios y las relaciones amorosas equívocas, el absurdo mundo laboral, los rituales ancestrales, las casas embrujadas y los viajes por Europa.

Para una buena parte de los fanáticos anglosajones, estos cuentos son flojos y poco destacables. Les comprendo, pero a mí muchos me parecieron maravillosos o destacables, cuanto menos. No tengo duda de que mi Aickman favorito sigue siendo el de "Las campanadas", "Che gelida manina", "Los trenes", "Ravissante " y "Los cicerones", pero esta faceta suya también merece ser apreciada y leída. Y les invito muchísimo a atreverse a conocer su fascinante y perturbador mundo, editado en esta preciosa edición de la New York Review of Books.

Dicho esto, aquí les dejo mi impresión sobre los cuentos:

- Compulsory Games [Juegos obligatorios] (****): la monótona vida de un matrimonio de mediana edad sufre un cambio radical cuando Grace, la esposa, viaja a la India para el funeral de su madre y Colin, el esposo, asiste a una cena en casa de su vecina Eileen, una trabajadora del Servicio Civil a quien recomienda cultivar algún hobby que le suba los ánimos. Cuando Grace regresa, la vecina desaparece, y al buscarla esta acaba sumándose a la nueva pasión de Eileen: la aeronáutica. Poco a poco, el matrimonio irá degradándose hasta el día en que ambas mujeres desaparecen y Colin, afectado por la soledad, empieza a sentirse perseguido por un avión imperceptible. // No entendí mucho el suceso extraño, pero, en líneas generales, me encantó el cuento, sobre todo por la trágica corrupción del matrimonio y las apariciones del avión.

- Hand In Glove [Mano en guante] (*****): después de romper con su novio, una mujer se va de picnic con una amiga a una zona rural de Essex. Lo que empieza como una escapada encantadora muy pronto se convierte en un infierno para la protagonista debido al encuentro con unas vacas de curiosas costumbres, una iglesia en apariencia deshabitada y una vieja rectoría donde habita una mujer que le revelará la poco ortodoxa "cura" para un corazón roto. // Puede que algunos lleguen a considerarle un cuento bastante convencional, ¡Pero yo lo adoré! Es como una mezcla magistral entre "Los trenes", "Che gelida manina", "Las manchas" y cuentos de M. R. James como "Ratas" e "Historia de una aparición y una desaparición". Toda una joya que triunfa por ser un "cuento extraño" y también una historia de fantasmas. ¡Y ese final, por Dios! ¡Y qué clímax tan excelente!

- Marriage [Matrimonio] (****): en una función de teatro un hombre se hace amigo de Hellen Black, una trabajadora del Servicio Civil, y pronto cuadran un encuentro en su casa. Allí conoce a su compañera de piso, Ellen Brown, una joven de edad indeterminada de la que se enamora al instante. Pasan las semanas y una tarde se encuentran en un parque, donde ella le pide que le haga el amor. En vista de que no hay nadie cerca, lo hacen. Al tiempo que inician su apasionado idilio, el curioso parecido entre los dos nombres de las chicas empieza a cobrar un sentido siniestro. // Un muy buen cuento de fuerte sensualidad, teatro y doppelgängers con ecos de "La aparición de la estrella", otro cuento de Aickman que leí en "Solsticio siniestro". El final es... Bizarro. Lo más que puedo hacer es recomendarles mucho su lectura.

- Le Miroir [El espejo] (***): al cumplir 16 años, una joven británica viaja a París a estudiar pintura, pero su vida cambia cuando compra un espejo que no la refleja a ella, sino a distintas personas. // La ambientación en París y la idea general son muy buenas, pero el desenlace se sintió insuficiente y apresurado. Eso, o yo no entendí muy bien las descripciones.

- No Time Is Passing [No pasa el tiempo] (****): una tarde, un hombre casado recién mudado a una mansión decimonónica descubre un amplio río tras la cerca de su patio trasero. Al acercarse, monta en una barca nombrada "Mira por ti mismo" y desembarca en un pequeño islote donde vive un hombre cuanto más extraño que, sin embargo, le demostrará que su vida no es tan perfecta como pensaba. // Este cuento es Aickman en su estado puro: situaciones inquietantes y símbolos por doquier.

- Raising The Wind [Levantando el viento] (****): dos marineros se disponen a llevar una barcaza a través del Támesis, pero el día de su salida el viento no aparece. En medio de su preocupación por recibir una demanda del dueño, una anciana aparece y les promete regresar al viento si la acompañan a una iglesia. Sólo el protagonista lo hace, y verá que la solución es todo menos corriente. // Otro cuento extraño más directo que lo que suele darnos Aickman. Muchos fanáticos anglosajones lo consideran de los más flojos, pero a mí me encantó su ambientación fluvial y la forma en que se sugiere el elemento sobrenatural.

- Residents Only [Sólo residentes] (****): un comité funerario cierra al público un viejo cementerio con miras de convertirlo en un parque o un conjunto residencial. Sin embargo, los opositores serán muchos, y de procedencia más que inusual. // Un buen cuento sobre las represalias de los muertos ante la indiferencia de los vivos que recuerda un poco a algunas narraciones de M. R. James, si bien la mayor parte del tiempo parece una sátira sobre la decadencia de un cementerio debido a los malos manejos de los comités encargados de ellos.

- Wood [Madera] (****): un arquitecto y veterano de la Primera Guerra Mundial se hace amigo de un antiguo trabajo de impuestos internos que ahora se ganaba la vida vendiendo muñecos de madera. Un día, este último le aborda y le cuenta que se casará. El problema, o al menos así lo ven sus amigos, es que la familia de la novia maneja una funeraria. Aún así, el protagonista acepta, y el día de la ceremonia descubre que la familia y la novia misma son individuos más que particulares, y que su amigo artesano parece haber sido presa de una extraña transformación. // Un excelente cuento que ya había leído en la inolvidable antología "La aparición". Me encanta su atmósfera de "cuento de hadas siniestro" y el carácter irónico del protagonista. Uno de los mejores cuentos de este libro y de toda la carrera de Aickman.

- The Strangers [Los extraños] (***): un hombre acompaña a su amigo poco afortunado con las mujeres a un espectáculo de caridad realizado por dos hermanos. Recién llegados, la anfitriona se interesa por el amigo y se lo lleva consigo para que la ayude, mientras el protagonista presencia el acto principal: un concierto de piano. Nota que los únicos asistentes son hombres mayores. Al final del evento, da un paseo por el inmueble y entra a un cuarto en donde ve una escena horripilante (que no describiré para que ustedes la descubran por su cuenta). Desde entonces, una serie de sucesos desafortunados, a medio camino entre la vigilia y el sueño, alterarán el curso de su vida, yendo desde la transformación del carácter de su amigo, el abandono de su novia para meterse con él y las nefastas consecuencias que esto le produce. // Un muy singular y muy atractivo cuento de fantasmas/vampiros (?) que empieza con fuerza, pero se torna un tanto aburrido llegando al final. Sin embargo, vale mucho la pena su lectura. Este es el primer cuento tomado de la colección "The Strangers".

- The Coffin House [La casa del ataúd] (****): dos campesinas se refugian de la lluvia bajo el techo de una casa. De pronto, una anciana emerge de esta y les invita a pasar a tomar un té. Aceptan, pero deciden marcharse cuando notan el extraño aspecto de la bebida. Pero la anciana no les dejará marcharse tan fácil. // Un breve, pero muy buen cuento extraño, al parecer sobre un ritual de brujería antiguo del que no se nos dice mucho. Este es el segundo cuento tomado de la colección "The Strangers".

- Letters To The Postman [Cartas al cartero] (****): mientras define qué hacer con su vida, un joven se mete a trabajar como cartero. El día que un viejo cartero le enseña los fundamentos del empleo descubre una casa sin identificación que se cuenta es habitada por una mujer que nunca se ha dejado ver y nunca recibe envíos. Esto atrae de inmediato al joven, quien una tarde se acerca al lugar y halla en la puerta una carta dirigida a él en donde la mujer le cuenta que está casada con un hombre al que no conoce. El joven saca una hoja de su bolsillo y le escribe una respuesta. Desde entonces, ambos mantendrán una ambigua relación epistolar que el protagonista cree le permitirá conocer por el fin el amor. Pero claro, el asunto es más complejo de lo que parece. // El único elemento "extraño" aparece al final de la historia, y es tan bizarro que no entiendo si tiene un significado más profundo. De resto, lo considero un cuento realista a lo Guy de Maupassant y Walter de la Mare con un suspenso digno de una película de época filmada en los años 80. No me encantó tanto como esperaba, pero estuvo bueno. Puede que lo relea en un futuro.

- Laura (****): un joven trabajador bancario conoce en una fiesta de cumpleaños a una chica 10 años mayor que él. Con varias copas encima, entran a la habitación de los padres del cumplimentado y esta le declara su amor, pero enseguida se marcha alegando que tenía una llamada pendiente por hacer. Pasan 8 años y el joven vuelve a verla en París, pero de nuevo se escapa. Habrá un tercer encuentro, pero será aún más extraño que lo usual. // Un excelente cuento corto que perfectamente podría ser de fantasmas, aunque una línea cerca del final nos hace dudar de qué es lo que realmente sucede. Asimismo, sus reflexiones sobre el amor y el matrimonio son muy acertadas.

- The Fully-Conducted Tour [El tour completamente guiado] (****): un escritor de cuentos sobre sucesos extraños relata un suceso extraño que vivió una vez que asistió a un tour en un castillo italiano. El terror y la genialidad de este breve cuento radica en cierta frase al final. Mejor leerlo que relatárselos. Este es el tercer cuento tomado de la colección "The Strangers"

- A Disciple of Plato [Un discípulo de Platón] (***): un célebre filósofo veneciano pasea por las calles de Roma con una joven británica aspirante a monja de la que se enamora al comprender que es la única mujer en su vida que le ha respetado. // Un simpático cuento realista cuyo argumento también me parece perfecto para una película de época. Con todo, no es de las piezas más sobresalientes de Aickman. Este es el cuarto y último cuento tomado de la colección "The Strangers".

- Just a Song at Twilight [Sólo una canción al anochecer] (***): un matrimonio queda tan encantado con el ambiente de una isla (cuyo nombre nunca se nos dice, pero se sugiere que no es británica) que toman la decisión de mudarse enseguida a una casa en un risco con una gran vista al atardecer sobre el mar. Sin embargo, la casa no es lo que esperaban, y la misma noche de su llegada aparece una mujer de extraña vestimenta que, desesperada, les pide dinero para largarse de una casa embrujada. Pero el marido parece saber algo más. // Buen cuento de casas embrujadas que, a pesar de su excelente elemento sugestivo, no me pareció especialmente memorable.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Aickman calls his stories strange. The short and longer pieces collected in COMPULSORY GAMES were often categorized as horror. I think one story ends with a chill, but most of them just peter out. They’re certainly weird but no more so than when you’re at the DMV and the guy behind the counter has a mole so big and hairy you think it looks like your uncle, then you hear your uncle's voice in your head and you remember what a bore he is, but before you can say anything your license has been renewed and you’re driving to get a coffee at a shop when the waitstaff is decidedly younger and weird only in their rudeness. Aickman writes like an English gentlemen who’s always about to place a handkerchief over his agape mouth. It lulls you into an eerie sense of normalcy that’s just slightly askew, like a dream. The stories are dreamlike, kind of out of focus and dull, then something happens but you can’t quite say what it is, so you start paying more attention but there’s nothing there. It’s an odd talent. I didn’t love reading these, but I didn’t hate it either. Instead, I was excited at the anticipation of a paradigm shift that turned so subtly that I missed it. Yet, I began to feel the pull of the macabre off the page and into my real life. Little ticks of a person’s feature or caught phrases from conversations that drifted just out of my range of hearing began to imply a rupture in the staid world revealing a glimpse at what could be. I read slower and now I live slower, in wait.

[Tom]

Although this is somewhat of a ‘best of the rest’ anthology of Aickman's strange stories—i.e. those that haven’t been collected in the Faber paperbacks—this is still an excellent collection, highly recommended to existing and new Aickman readers alike.

Some stories here are quite accessible by Aickman's standards, such as the straightforward horror of ‘Le Miroir’ and ‘The Coffin House’. Others such as ‘Hand in Glove’ and ‘No Time is Passing’ are Aickman at his enigmatic best.

All things considered, not the strongest collection of Aickman’s work (for me, either Cold Hand in Mine or The Unsettled Dust) but NYRB and Victoria Nelson must be commended for putting together these stories that were previously only available in the wonderful, but expensive Tartarus editions.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

this guy seems to have had mommy issues

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Robert Aickman's gimmick as a horror writer was to flood you with mundane details and bury something deeply off and spooky in the middle of it, like blink-and-you'll-miss-it horror that eventually adds up to a more explicitly eerie but equally vague finale. I think that sounds great in theory, but in practice there is nothing I want to do less than read 25-to-50-page short stories where 90% of it is dry filler material that's only peppered with the genuinely unique and interesting stuff I came for. And I am no dummy, I would have absolutely no problem setting aside my preconceptions of him as a horror author and just reading it as literary fiction if the non-creepy stuff wasn't boring, seemingly never-ending word vomit! Some of these stories have some really scary images buried in them and I wanted more of it, but to get to that you have to wade through so much tedious description and narration that it doesn't feel worth it, I'd rather read a more compelling fiction writer or a more lively horror writer. I've heard that these are sort of the leftover stories that other collections didn't publish already and that the previous story collections are much better, but if I do read Robert again I am gonna need a break first!! Fool me once shame on you etc

[Richard S]

Read the first of these and skimmed through a couple later. There was something clearly wrong as the quality of the pieces was miles worse than Sub Rosa. I confirmed through other GR reviews that this is Robert Aickman at his worst, apparently. It's amazing though to read the reviews of this especially in the New Yorker, by people unfamiliar with the writer. It shows how little you can trust media reviews of books. Goodreads has become a sort of Rotten Tomatoes for me.

[Mat Joiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collects some of the Aickman tales that have previously just been available from Tartarus Press, but also sadly a lot of his weakest fiction. A better title might have been "Aickman's Spares". "Hand In Glove"", "Marriage", and "Wood" are all excellent; there's possibly a good story somewhere in "Residents Only" if you can ignore the endless scenes of cemetery bureaucracy. One for the completists.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was prompted to buy this book after reading a review of it in the New Statesman.  It highlighted an author I’d never heard of whose short fiction was likened to MR James, Arthur Machen and HP Lovecraft – except that he displayed characteristics that set him in a category of his own. After reading this collection, I would add another author that his style reminds me of: Philip K. Dick. If you’d like a quote that probably sums up his style, you need look no further than Neil Gaiman: ‘Reading Robert Aickman it’s like watching a magician work, and very often I’m not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.’

Many of these stories take a bit of ‘getting into’ as they start with the mundane, and their titles don’t reveal their relevance until you’ve finished them. This is a good thing as it heightens the sense of mystery. They also seem to feature women a lot. Not surprising as Aickman appears to have had few male friends and many female lovers. When he fell ill in the latter months of his life, a number of women friends who had never known each other before, came together and looked cared for him until he died in 1981.

I also learned many new words – not so many as to overpower the work, but I always like an author that stretches my word limits. For example, mulcting – did you know that it means to extract money by fine or taxation or by fraudulent means. Exactly the right word for the context it was used in while reading one of Aickman’s tales.

Aickman encapsulates the ethos of the time he lived in (not that long ago in the 20th century), yet also accurately predicts the future. He states in one story: ‘all the remaining days of our lives seemed to drop upon us like dried out snowflakes or like daily leaves from the dead calendar of a past and forgotten year...  Life has become more rigourous than it was then; though it is likely to become more rigourous still.’ Again, this is a style that attracts me – where metaphor and prose-poetry are able to convey a particular feeling so aptly.

Anyway, on to the stories themselves. I’ll leave the longest reviews for the stories that have not been covered as much by other reviews I have read.

Compulsory games
A story about a married man living next door to a peculiar spinster who works for the civil service. This sets the tone for the whole collection. Aickman emotes a sense of dread as he recounts the gradual estrangement of a man from his wife and her concurrent relationship with a woman civil servant who lives next year. There is a bizarre but unsettling description of this couple’s obsession with light aircraft and the continual buzzing of this man with their plane leads him to a place of unhingement. The ending also sets the tone for the whole book i.e. that of ambiguity. I’m beginning to see what Neil Gaiman meant!

Hand in glove
On the surface of it, a story about a picnic next to a river, a dislocating journey past a church, a visit to a strange old woman and a horrific encounter with a herd of cows! There are, of course, deep underlying themes about control in relationships, but I’ll leave you to draw them out yourselves. I don’t want to spoil too much of the story.

Marriage
A sense of tragedy pervades a man’s relationship with two women - two facets of the same person perhaps? One appeals to his intellect and the other to his carnal nature. The ending is, again, suitably ambiguous.

Le miroir
One of only two stories with a more historical aspect. All I can say is that there are parallels with Oscar Wilde’s ‘Dorian Gray.’

No time is passing
A dream - like quality pervades this tale. It is captured exquisitely in the mc’s sense of being able only to take limited decisions; that things are beyond his control in the surreal landscape he finds himself in. There is also that sense of wanting to escape something deeply dreadful that is not a monster but is nonetheless terrifying in its ordinariness. Is it not the very day things that cause us the greatest fear?

Residents only
This is probably the longest story in the collection (just) and one has to persevere to reap the story’s rewards. It is the closest we come to a traditional ‘ghost’ story. There is a sense of something sinister occurring beneath everyone’s noses, yet all and sundry seem unable to halt the progress of something that pervades a whole community with death and corruption. I was left with a disturbing question: can a whole community be haunted?

Wood
I was gripped straight away by this story. This goes to show that Aickman can make a story accessible if he wants to – he just chooses to avoid this in most examples – a sign of a great writer.

Another sign of a master scripter: Aickman is able to encapsulate the character of someone using a poetic style: ‘Munn struck me in those days as one who, instead of embracing a woman, embraced a grievance.’

‘Wood’ is the most accessible and disturbing story yet. Aickman can draw horror from the most mundane of situations. This time a man, with the ability to create straw ‘daffies’ or effigies marries the daughter of an undertaker and eventually takes up the family business. Aickman leaves you completely guessing as to where the story is leading right up to the end. I was left with the same prickles up my spine I used to receive when watching old ‘House of Hammer’ horror movies.

The Strangers
There is a strangeness lurking in the midst of what is known during this story. This is enhanced by Aickman hiding the identity of  people and place names - as if it’s a true story. For example, who  could Z — be? And why does the mc want to protect the identities of A —— and L ——?

When the mc is invited to a social event, the recounting of words on a mimeographed program written in reverse adds to sense of disturbance, of things being not quite right.

As its theme, the story homes in on the life of a man who is looking for a woman companion but, because of his reticent character, is prone to attracting the predatory or domineering kind, (a theme visited in ‘Wood’ also.)

It’s a weird event the man finds himself at as he is invited to listen firstly to a man playing piano: ‘sitting on his nerves, holding in the shrieks.’

Tension mounts as the strangers in the audience are described and the nature of the ‘charity acts’ outlined. There are many more men than women. After the pianist a female magician is set to perform. It is only once the performances are underway that the mc notices the strange nature of ‘fishy-eyed’ audience members, their speech patterns and scornfulness. The fact that three of them stand on the protagonist’s toes without uttering an apology seems mundane, yet Aickman uses it to heighten the dread. Somehow this is more disturbing than a full-on, gore-filled torture scene.

Aickman captures that every day experience during a particular juncture in the story when the magician reveals something hideous in the gloom-filled room. ‘It was the moment one yells, and, with luck, wakes up, during a long nightmare; a moment that, of its nature, can never be quite examined, quite elucidated, or quite extinguished.’

There is a reference to Charles and Mary Lamb. If you did not look up who this couple were, you might not receive the full impact of the allusion. They contemporaries of Wordsworth and Coleridge and famously wrote a book together in a very closeted environment. They also suffered from mental health issues, and Mary Lamb committed matricides with a kitchen knife. The fact that one has to look this up may seem to some, a way of making the story more inaccessible, but, to me, it added to the absorption.

Towards the end of the story there is horror as the protagonist, Richard, talks to the dead Clarinda (spoiler) and she insists it is snowing in October. The notion that Richard and Clarinda exist in different realities becomes dreadfully clear - yet only one of them understands this; much like talking to one with Alzheimer’s but unable to convince or soothe them because their perceptions of reality are askance.

‘Strangers’ ends speculatively and with ambiguity too. Does this not approximate to real life? ‘The horror that we never find answers to the sources of our dread, and therefore never escape them.’

The Coffin House
First story that has a sinister title and the shortest in the collection. Two young women are caught on the fells in a rainstorm on Xmas day. They are invited into a ramshackle shelter, then confronted firstly by a Mrs Hagan and then a Mr Honeyman who beckons them into a room with two coffins. Questions for the reader: are the coffins for the two girls? What occurred during the blinding flash that occurs after one girl strives to overpower Mrs Hagan? Where is it that Jessica awakes after the incident? What is the nature of the nurse with the empty hypodermic?

This is a story that really doesn’t work for me. As flash fiction, why introduce one of the protagonists as a poet? It has no bearing on the story. There is too little in the narrative to hang any sort of investment in. It doesn’t even serve to create a flashpoint in time as the description of the scenes are so sparse. Move on.

Letters to the postman
 Yet another story where a central male character is possessed of a shy, unambitious and unassuming nature. Living with his parents and sister, a young man called Robin takes up the job of postman because there seems to be nothing else to fall into. On his first day he is told of a house on his route where lives a mysterious Mrs Fearon. She is never seen, no one knows what she does and she hardly ever has any post sent to her. The postman’s imagination wanders regarding this woman until he receives a letter to deliver. Upon posting it through an external mailbox, he lifts the lid and a note falls out with a simple message. It is signed Rosetta Fearon and tells him she is living with a man who, though not unkind, she feels trapped by. On subsequent visits, he receives similar notes that he replies to (against the postman’s code) although he never sees her. He does, however notice a pretty woman about the village who he gradually comes to realise must be this enigmatic woman.

The story progresses as the postman realises he must deliver this woman from her quiet torment, imagining that he is her saving Prince. We are left wondering, although never entirely sure, if Robin the postman is not a little simple. He’s certainly very dependent on his mother and over-bearing sister, and one questions the inappropriately over- affectionate relationship he has with his mother. Aickman drops these notions in by inference and his storytelling allows the reader to surmise these things without being actually told.

The ultimate strangeness reveals itself in the last scene with this Rosetta Fearon. It is the only ending the story could have, true to the nature of each character.

Laura
Once again we have a shy, relatively poor mc working a mundane job (in this case, a bank). We also have a mysterious woman who holds the man’s attention and, in fact, becomes his obsession. He meets her at a party but only fleetingly. Yet this meeting determines the course of his tragic life. He liaises with her again in two other locations, both abroad and the third being the last. This last meeting is ominous and ambiguous. The meaning and consequences of the story are left to the reader but you find yourself pondering the final sentence, thinking what this mysterious woman symbolises.

The fully-conducted tour
The precise locations and names in this story are obscured or unremembered. The tale also features a character altogether unwell. This story is set in Tuscany and involves a man who takes an excursion one day to a ramshackle old house for a conducted tour by a mysterious and beautiful woman who constantly ‘catches his eye.’ (Another common theme in Aickman’s stories.) It occurred to me at this point in the collection that Aickman’s tales reveal what Kurt Vonnegut knew to be true - you can write about anything because in the end you will be writing about yourself.

This time, there is no amorous liaison involved in the story, just a sinister conclusion. The story ends abruptly but with great satisfaction - and a great sense of disquiet.

A disciple of Plato
The grey indistinct man who introduces a woman to the philosopher in this tale elicits a dreamlike quality. In the philosopher’s words: ‘She had never realised that the response to her beauty might seem to be, might even intentionally disguise itself as, the response to her utterances.’

There is a weird, dislocated form of writing (even by Aickman’s standards) such that the reader imagines they are following a current narrative but in the next instant wonders if the story reflects the experiences of a whole lifetime. There is much ambiguity about the convent and religious establishments the mysterious woman has connections with: Santa Tomasina of the Sour stomach, Santa Monica Long-in-the-Tooth. Are these real places or metaphorical constructs?

Then there is the timing of the Roman day and activities. The streets are more or less deserted in the morning when the philosopher conducts his liaisons with this intelligent, beautiful woman.

The woman is intent on giving her life to a convent while the philosopher is determined to take her as his own. Was the convent to be the woman’s captive – or the philosopher? He could free her from the confines of the Roman Catholic order only to enslave her himself. When she resists his entreaties, we are left with the notion that should they have shared a future together, then it would be he who would become enslaved. The narrator reveals: ‘The two of them were so alike that they would hardly be safe together. He could never have escaped her, and variety is essential to a sophisticated man.’

Towards the end of story, it becomes clear the man is none other than Giacomo Casanova and the woman precedes his most captivating French lover, Henriette. Or is this woman, Signorina Boreham synonymous with her? We are left guessing. This is as far as the historical accuracy seems to go. Casanova was never a philosopher – although he passed through many forms and guises in his colourful life. The end of the story has a footnote by Aickman to the effect that this account is purposely left absent from Casanova’s memoirs.

Just a song at twilight
The settingis  an island off the coast of where? Spain, Greece? The main characters are Timo – an Estonian of mysterious origins and his soon to be wife, Lydia - a Londoner. They purchase a ramshackle peasant’s house on the island and, with great difficulty, transport their belongings from England to the place. She is going to support him financially. When they arrive at the house, hot and bothered, a strange woman arrives. She asks them for money to escape the haunted house she is living in. For some undecipherable reason, Lydia gives her the money. But Timo has started to hear strange music. The woman reveals that this is the source of her disquiet and why she must leave. She says that only some can hear it. After a few moments, Timo investigates whether the woman has left and the story ends with Lydia hearing him leave in their camper van. She is left alone with the night closing in.

A final story to make you ponder into the night or is it more about the incompatability of two people? Of how commonly held dreams so often end in disappointment? What is the significance of the cup of tea they share and the reason for Timo overturning his?

As always, we are left with more questions than answers - the nature of Aickman’s stories.



In conclusion; if you like suggestive, ambiguous, weird horror, delivered with eloquent language; then this is the book for you.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

aickman’s approach is understated, yet effective - unsettling and strange developments creep up on you when you least expect it. the settings of his stories are uniquely ordinary and events initially appear to unfold in an extremely mundane way. i mostly enjoyed the stories which stayed close to this premise- a couple befriends their mostly unsociable neighbour and a rude encounter between the husband and neighbour inexplicably sparks a close friendship between wife and neighbour, leaving the husband isolated.. a woman trying to shake off the nasty lingering effects of a recent breakup finds herself in a field that seems to morph and change with no logical explanation.. a man finds himself romantically entangled with two women who stay in the same flat .. the appeal wore off after a while though and the stories began to feel pretty similar and repetitive.. I guess it’s because (as A GoodReads Reviewer Pointed Out):most of the stories explored - Man vs Fear of Intimacy, Man vs Abandonment Issues, Man Vs Loneliness, Man vs Romance) . But I Am, After All, Just A Man. So 4 Stars.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unsure whether to give this three or four stars. On the one hand the stories are rather dull and all are anticlimactic. On the other the writing itself and the combined effect of the stories is too slyly intelligent and evocative to be just another good book. What really won me over was the framing for the stories that Victoria Nelson (author of Neighbour George, which I read last year) provided in the Introduction. Reading this before the stories and again after them helped me to appreciate Aickman’s sensibility and larger style or project. So, a four-star book but not one I’ll hurry to read again. The stories are almost an incidental medium for getting at the real quality of the work, which is in Aickman’s writing of them and the subtle, often wry, flavours of attitude slipped in between his protagonist’s narrations.

[Tyson Mueller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of eerie short stories. Most of them are dream-like in how they juxtapose the quotidian with the unexpected and sometimes unnatural. The last story in the book, "Just a Song at Twilight", encapsulates this well. It's set on some unnamed, indeterminately foreign island, but paints a very precise picture of a young married couple feuding over an uncomfortable drive. They move into their new house only to find that the beach access has been closed off by barbed wire. As they sit down for tea a stranger pulls up in a taxi and asks for a large sum of money to go flee back to England from the haunted house her husband has set her up in. Then both the stranger and the husband hear singing that the wife can't hear. The former seems to disappear and the latter drives off without explanation.

On one hand, the stories are refreshing since they don't follow any usual horror conventions and it's always unknown what may happen next. On the other, they're a little frustrating since not only is there rarely any closure, but also little seemingly logic holding them together.

[Χρυσόστομος Τσαπραΐλης · Rating 2 out of 5]

As seems to be the consensus in a lot of reviews here, this is by far the worst Aickman collection I've read. Most of the stories seem aimless or really wordy or are far too absorbed by wayward plots. The two that really stood out for me were Hand in glove (in which two women visit a graveyard which is riddled with strange phenomena) and Raising the wind (where two friends that need to move a boat are helped by a mysterious old woman who performs an obscure ceremony). Wood and The Strangers had also some really memorable moments and a lot of uncanny weirdness but were weighted down by unnecessary detail.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars may seem a little harsh, but I'm comparing it to the other four Aickman collections I've read. This one was more inconsistent, with several stories not quite working for me at all. It was enjoyable enough overall, I guess, but not much of a standout. Highlights for me were No Time is Passing, Raising the Wind, and Residents Only. The last almost had some Ligottian flavor, albeit with maybe an English twist. Though, it preceded him for sure.