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Mortal Echoes: Encounters With the End
A strange figure foretells tragedy on the railway tracks. A plague threatens to encroach upon an isolated castle. The daughter of an eccentric scientist falls victim to a poisonous curse. The stories in this anthology depict the haunting moment when characters come face-to-face with their own mortality. Spanning two centuries, Mortal Echoes features some of the finest writers in the English language, including Edgar Allan Poe, Graham Greene, May Sinclair, and H. G. Wells.
288 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 31, 2020
I don't know how to rate this. Some of the stories are 5 stars and some are two or even one, so. . . There are only 15 stories in this little collection which all deal with death. My Halloween 🎃 read, but four of them while excellent I had read before: The Masque of the Red Death, Rappacini's Daughter, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and the superb, Death by Scrabble. Four new stories I relished were: Laura by the magnificent Saki, Kecksies by Marjorie Bowen, Kiss Me Again Stranger by Daphne do Maurier and the School by Donald Barthelme. The School is particularly dour and funny at the same time. So, if you are going to read this, I would say don't buy it, but check it out from the library, because there is not enough meat on its bones for a purchase.
September 10, 2023
” ‘You’re not really dying, are you?’ asked Amanda. “I have the doctor’s permission to live till Tuesday,” said Laura. ”
Another short story collection from the British library Tales of the Weird series. These stories are about encounters with death and the end: about being alive and the transitory nature of existence. There is, as the series suggests the weird as well as the supernatural. The series does pick out some of the more obscure writers: but this one includes some very well-known writers indeed. There is Dickens (The Signal Man), Le Fanu, Poe (The Masque of the Red Death), H G Wells, Graham Greene, Daphne Du Maurier (very good twist at the end), Saki, Nathanial Hawthorne, May Sinclair, Marjorie Bowen, Ambrose Bierce amongst others.
There are some interesting ones. The H G Wells looks at the changes in anaesthesia: chloroform and ether and near death experiences. The Dickens is a traditional ghost story. Bierce writes a civil war story about an execution. The May Sinclair story is the one which is probably the most chilling. It imagines what hell might be like and it is linked to ex friends/lovers.
The last tale by Charlie Fish (the one writer still alive) is called Death by Scrabble and it is very funny. There is also a story by Donald Barthelme, which might seem surprising. It is also rather short, very funny and decidedly macabre. Aikman’s Your Tiny Hand is Frozen uses the telephone as the central prop.
This is a good collection of tales.
Another short story collection from the British library Tales of the Weird series. These stories are about encounters with death and the end: about being alive and the transitory nature of existence. There is, as the series suggests the weird as well as the supernatural. The series does pick out some of the more obscure writers: but this one includes some very well-known writers indeed. There is Dickens (The Signal Man), Le Fanu, Poe (The Masque of the Red Death), H G Wells, Graham Greene, Daphne Du Maurier (very good twist at the end), Saki, Nathanial Hawthorne, May Sinclair, Marjorie Bowen, Ambrose Bierce amongst others.
There are some interesting ones. The H G Wells looks at the changes in anaesthesia: chloroform and ether and near death experiences. The Dickens is a traditional ghost story. Bierce writes a civil war story about an execution. The May Sinclair story is the one which is probably the most chilling. It imagines what hell might be like and it is linked to ex friends/lovers.
The last tale by Charlie Fish (the one writer still alive) is called Death by Scrabble and it is very funny. There is also a story by Donald Barthelme, which might seem surprising. It is also rather short, very funny and decidedly macabre. Aikman’s Your Tiny Hand is Frozen uses the telephone as the central prop.
This is a good collection of tales.
April 24, 2020
full post here:
https://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/202...
The stories in Mortal Echoes: Encounters With the Dead all feature someone who has had a brush with death -- perhaps but not necessarily his or her own -- as well as (quoting editor Greg Buzwell from his excellent introduction), "a particular fear associated with mortality." Buzwell categorizes these tales as follows: the "inevitability" of death, stories from the afterlife, the "reluctant" dead who are unwilling to stay in their graves, tales of death with a humorous edge, and those which are "plain macabre." The table of contents reads like a who's who of ghost story/strange/weird fiction writers, but there are also a few surprises.
My personal favorites are May Sinclair's "Where Their Fire is Not Quenched," which disturbed me to no end while reading the first time through and left me beyond unsettled after a second read. I will say nothing about this one except that I completely agree with editor Greg Buzwell who says that "it offers one of the most disturbing depictions of eternal hell imaginable." In second place is Marjorie Bowen's "Kecksies," also unsettling and more than likely for its time (1923), completely shocking.
As always, another fine volume from the British Library Tales of the Weird series; as always, a mixed bag with some stories stronger than others depending on personal tastes. And as usual, it brings with it more authors to explore, which is the main reason I read anthologies. Certainly recommended.
https://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/202...
The stories in Mortal Echoes: Encounters With the Dead all feature someone who has had a brush with death -- perhaps but not necessarily his or her own -- as well as (quoting editor Greg Buzwell from his excellent introduction), "a particular fear associated with mortality." Buzwell categorizes these tales as follows: the "inevitability" of death, stories from the afterlife, the "reluctant" dead who are unwilling to stay in their graves, tales of death with a humorous edge, and those which are "plain macabre." The table of contents reads like a who's who of ghost story/strange/weird fiction writers, but there are also a few surprises.
My personal favorites are May Sinclair's "Where Their Fire is Not Quenched," which disturbed me to no end while reading the first time through and left me beyond unsettled after a second read. I will say nothing about this one except that I completely agree with editor Greg Buzwell who says that "it offers one of the most disturbing depictions of eternal hell imaginable." In second place is Marjorie Bowen's "Kecksies," also unsettling and more than likely for its time (1923), completely shocking.
As always, another fine volume from the British Library Tales of the Weird series; as always, a mixed bag with some stories stronger than others depending on personal tastes. And as usual, it brings with it more authors to explore, which is the main reason I read anthologies. Certainly recommended.
April 10, 2023
Having more and more steadily crept through the British Library’s ‘Tales of the Weird’ series, I was a bit puzzled by this collection. Nothing to do with its choice of focus, mind you; it follows the rules of each entry, taking either a particular author or niche theme (or variation upon the theme) of the weird. Here, we have encounters with ‘the end’: premature encounter with death, wherein death - or its prospect - initially hides under some guise.
What puzzled me was the choice of tales. I had come to understand the BL’s series as presenting a pointed mission to shine a light (a candle in a trembling hand, etc.) on lesser known or lost writers of the weird. A mission of rediscovery.
This collection? Two tales in and it slams down Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’. Quite a statement.
The fourth tale? Dicken’s ill-fated ‘Signalman’. This feels a bit better of a fit, however: the quintessential ‘haunted by inevitable doom’ tale, with the central entity seeming all the more malevolent as events throw a curious light on the supposed ghost - in fact something more ambiguous and mocking. Dicken’s took the already dusty ghost story formula of his day and rendered it ‘weird’. A long-time favourite.
Compared to the niche and specialist selection of previous collections, the choices here become more and more comical in their star-quality. Poe and Dickens, followed by Le Fanu, du Maurier, Greene, Hawthorne, H.G. fucking Wells and even, in a rather snug fit, Saki.
The risk of this entry being rendered something of a Penguin edition of ______ tales is thankfully off-shot, however, by the inclusion of some more neglected names. May Sinclair - whose bewitching ‘The Flaw in the Crystal serves as the title piece of BL’s newest weird entry, a long-owed edition of Sinclair’s works - provides the highlight of the collection: the ghastly, nihilistic ‘Where Their Fire is not Quenched’. I’m not sure the contribution by Marjorie Bowen, a master of the weird, is entirely suited to the theme, but I’m glad that Bowen is more and more startling me with her regular inclusion in similar collections.
Likewise, Hawthorne’s ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ is an awkward fit, but nonetheless a masterpiece. I hadn’t read it before and feel somehow ashamed for it. Coleridge’s ‘The King is Dead, Long Live the King’ is a cute moral fable that, in its political sensibilities, is a little Thomas More.
A couple of names this collection has made me take note of: Robert Aickman and Donald Barthelme. Aickman’s tale - placed towards the end of the collection - pulls a modernist surprise, with an ending that plunges an unexpecting reader into a truly visceral yet surreal Ligottian climax. Barthelme is used to provide a sort of emotional yet postmodern conclusion to the collection, following on from a rather odd du Maurier tale - THE du Maurier- that, with its graveyard romance and murder, has the master of 20th century uncanny producing something that in tone and sentimentality ascends to the B-side of an early My Chemical Romance album. The thirteen year old in me found it cute.
Has Greg Burwell played it a little safe with this collection? Eh - the big names mostly justify their inclusion in relation to the central theme. I found his introductions to each tale a bit inconsistent: some are insightful reflection on the life of the author in questions, whilst others substitute meaningful context for the stale formula of listing how an artist is also famous for x y and z. His shortest introduction, the one for Barthelme, is ironically Burwell’s most substantial.
What puzzled me was the choice of tales. I had come to understand the BL’s series as presenting a pointed mission to shine a light (a candle in a trembling hand, etc.) on lesser known or lost writers of the weird. A mission of rediscovery.
This collection? Two tales in and it slams down Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’. Quite a statement.
The fourth tale? Dicken’s ill-fated ‘Signalman’. This feels a bit better of a fit, however: the quintessential ‘haunted by inevitable doom’ tale, with the central entity seeming all the more malevolent as events throw a curious light on the supposed ghost - in fact something more ambiguous and mocking. Dicken’s took the already dusty ghost story formula of his day and rendered it ‘weird’. A long-time favourite.
Compared to the niche and specialist selection of previous collections, the choices here become more and more comical in their star-quality. Poe and Dickens, followed by Le Fanu, du Maurier, Greene, Hawthorne, H.G. fucking Wells and even, in a rather snug fit, Saki.
The risk of this entry being rendered something of a Penguin edition of ______ tales is thankfully off-shot, however, by the inclusion of some more neglected names. May Sinclair - whose bewitching ‘The Flaw in the Crystal serves as the title piece of BL’s newest weird entry, a long-owed edition of Sinclair’s works - provides the highlight of the collection: the ghastly, nihilistic ‘Where Their Fire is not Quenched’. I’m not sure the contribution by Marjorie Bowen, a master of the weird, is entirely suited to the theme, but I’m glad that Bowen is more and more startling me with her regular inclusion in similar collections.
Likewise, Hawthorne’s ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ is an awkward fit, but nonetheless a masterpiece. I hadn’t read it before and feel somehow ashamed for it. Coleridge’s ‘The King is Dead, Long Live the King’ is a cute moral fable that, in its political sensibilities, is a little Thomas More.
A couple of names this collection has made me take note of: Robert Aickman and Donald Barthelme. Aickman’s tale - placed towards the end of the collection - pulls a modernist surprise, with an ending that plunges an unexpecting reader into a truly visceral yet surreal Ligottian climax. Barthelme is used to provide a sort of emotional yet postmodern conclusion to the collection, following on from a rather odd du Maurier tale - THE du Maurier- that, with its graveyard romance and murder, has the master of 20th century uncanny producing something that in tone and sentimentality ascends to the B-side of an early My Chemical Romance album. The thirteen year old in me found it cute.
Has Greg Burwell played it a little safe with this collection? Eh - the big names mostly justify their inclusion in relation to the central theme. I found his introductions to each tale a bit inconsistent: some are insightful reflection on the life of the author in questions, whilst others substitute meaningful context for the stale formula of listing how an artist is also famous for x y and z. His shortest introduction, the one for Barthelme, is ironically Burwell’s most substantial.
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November 7, 2023You could suggest that mortality and 'encounters with the end' is a bit of a non-theme for a book of ghost stories; isn't any encounter with a spook at once a memento mori, and a suggestion that on some level death isn't in fact the end? But apart from anything else, these aren't just ghost stories. Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge doesn't even use supernatural elements, yet fits the bill perfectly; Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter may be a bit scientifically wonky by modern standards, but all takes place just this side of the veil. It is also surprisingly effective given its central motif, of a young woman immune to and infused with poison, has now been rendered commonplace and fun in the form of Poison Ivy; perhaps it helped that I was reading of all those cursed blooms in an autumn park with a graveyard at my back.
Hawthorne is also the only story of the first four that isn't already pretty well-known - and, in a more niche kinship, for my money all three of them are also surpassed by their screen adaptations (Schalken, Red Death, Signalman). But those are the only three where that applies; even familiar writers such as Graham Greene, Daphne du Maurier and HG Wells (credited, curiously, as Herbert George) are represented with less often seen pieces, and despite having read three books of Robert Aickman I hadn't encountered the entry here (though I did have to check - I knew he was an ornery soul, but Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen not coming from the collection Cold Hand In Mine is just weird). That tale served mainly to remind me what a ludicrous form of communication landlines were (not, I need hardly add, that anyone conducting more than emergency mobile telephone conversations in public should be spared their own terrible warning from beyond). I wouldn't call anything here an outright flop, though it would have been nice if either Marjorie Bowen or the editor could have decided whether one central character in Kecksies was called Richard or Robert. Overall I'd say the most chilling entry is Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched by May Sinclair, despite (or maybe because of) the tediously conventional morality which underwrites it, where a whole lifetime's memories can be corroded by one shabby affair. But I got a special shiver up my spine from the final story, Charlie Fish's Death By Scrabble; I may not find it half so funny as the compiler did, but reading a story in one of these by someone born after me feels a lot like a tap on the shoulder from the bony lad.
Hawthorne is also the only story of the first four that isn't already pretty well-known - and, in a more niche kinship, for my money all three of them are also surpassed by their screen adaptations (Schalken, Red Death, Signalman). But those are the only three where that applies; even familiar writers such as Graham Greene, Daphne du Maurier and HG Wells (credited, curiously, as Herbert George) are represented with less often seen pieces, and despite having read three books of Robert Aickman I hadn't encountered the entry here (though I did have to check - I knew he was an ornery soul, but Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen not coming from the collection Cold Hand In Mine is just weird). That tale served mainly to remind me what a ludicrous form of communication landlines were (not, I need hardly add, that anyone conducting more than emergency mobile telephone conversations in public should be spared their own terrible warning from beyond). I wouldn't call anything here an outright flop, though it would have been nice if either Marjorie Bowen or the editor could have decided whether one central character in Kecksies was called Richard or Robert. Overall I'd say the most chilling entry is Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched by May Sinclair, despite (or maybe because of) the tediously conventional morality which underwrites it, where a whole lifetime's memories can be corroded by one shabby affair. But I got a special shiver up my spine from the final story, Charlie Fish's Death By Scrabble; I may not find it half so funny as the compiler did, but reading a story in one of these by someone born after me feels a lot like a tap on the shoulder from the bony lad.
December 19, 2024
Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter - meh
The Masque of the Red Death - read many times before, still great
Rappaccini's Daughter - nothing he writes ever RESOLVES...but it was entertaining with some great lines
The Signal-Man - genuinely creepy but for goodness' sake, SHOW, don't tell. Needlessly waffly.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - excellent
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King - entertaining
Under the Knife - mesmerising
Laura - a funny little thing
Where the Fire Is Not Quenched - just phenomenal
Kecksies - grammatically almost impossible to read, not to mention overtly homophobic, misogynistic despite being written by a woman, and generally off-putting
A Little Place Off the Edgware Road - soooo good, everything about it
Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen - fantastic and eerie...but then the usual Aickman ending where I'm left thinking WHAT?? I'm just so confused. The solution made zero sense and contradicted so much of the story. What even does the TITLE relate to?
Kiss Me Again, Stranger - EXCELLENT
The School - not for me
Death by Scrabble - how the hell is this 'funny'? It's awful. A married couple who hate each other and want each other to die? The brutal wife-beating thoughts the man has, too...this isn't comedy, regardless of how it ends. What is wrong with the editor, saying it's one of the funniest things he's ever read?
The Masque of the Red Death - read many times before, still great
Rappaccini's Daughter - nothing he writes ever RESOLVES...but it was entertaining with some great lines
The Signal-Man - genuinely creepy but for goodness' sake, SHOW, don't tell. Needlessly waffly.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - excellent
The King Is Dead, Long Live the King - entertaining
Under the Knife - mesmerising
Laura - a funny little thing
Where the Fire Is Not Quenched - just phenomenal
Kecksies - grammatically almost impossible to read, not to mention overtly homophobic, misogynistic despite being written by a woman, and generally off-putting
A Little Place Off the Edgware Road - soooo good, everything about it
Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen - fantastic and eerie...but then the usual Aickman ending where I'm left thinking WHAT?? I'm just so confused. The solution made zero sense and contradicted so much of the story. What even does the TITLE relate to?
Kiss Me Again, Stranger - EXCELLENT
The School - not for me
Death by Scrabble - how the hell is this 'funny'? It's awful. A married couple who hate each other and want each other to die? The brutal wife-beating thoughts the man has, too...this isn't comedy, regardless of how it ends. What is wrong with the editor, saying it's one of the funniest things he's ever read?
July 30, 2022
My least favorite of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird collections. I’d read more than half of these stories in other anthologies. Some very good ones here, though, and a couple sort of postmodern ones toward the end that I hated. Lolz. So it goes. Glimpses of the Unknown Is, in my opinion, by far the best collection in this series, full of obscure spooky tales, so I definitely recommend that one over this collection.
February 14, 2019
An excellent, eclectic selection of short stories.
While they are all connected loosely by the idea of death/the end, it is a great range of styles collected in this volume.
From serious spookers like Poe, through to the more light hearted story that ends the collection, a series of very enjoyable short, creepy tales.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a personal favourite. - Grace
While they are all connected loosely by the idea of death/the end, it is a great range of styles collected in this volume.
From serious spookers like Poe, through to the more light hearted story that ends the collection, a series of very enjoyable short, creepy tales.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a personal favourite. - Grace
May 23, 2022
Most anthologies are "meh" since it is hard to balance out all the stories. This anthology began and ended with grate stories, to open and close out the book. And in-between? Most stories were above "meh" so overall, one of the better horror anthologies I have read. The collection of voices is well balanced in this compilation.
October 12, 2022
A varied compilation of stories, all enjoyable to read. Favourites included 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' by Daphne du Maurier and 'Kecksies' by Marjorie Brown. The introduction to each author was also very helpful for the context of their writing and provided a nice insight into each one's style. Very tempted to buy more of the BL Takes of the Weird!
March 16, 2022
Nice to revisit some classic tales, particularly Le Fanu's dread-filled Schalken the Painter, but the ones that were unknown to me weren't up to scratch.
December 2, 2023
An excellent collection of stories from an eclectic collection of authors.
The du Maurier story was my favourite.
The du Maurier story was my favourite.
February 28, 2024
An incredible collection with more than a few anxiety inducing tales but a fun pair to finish it off.
May 18, 2024
Don't think I overly loved any of these stories.
May 13, 2022
I do like these British Library anthologies, though their quality is uneven. The stories in this anthology repeat that pattern: also, I had read four of them before. The weakest is the one featuring the transcendental musings of H.G. Wells and the best the wonderful 'Kiss Me Stranger' by Daphne du Maurier.
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