The Green Room

by Walter de la Mare, Seth (Illustrator)

Upstairs from the shabby book store was a private room for the favored customers. A strange little room with a stranger atmosphere. What was the feeling there? Oppressiveness? Loneliness? Or perhaps there was a presence―something trying to contact him as he browsed. Strange thoughts crossed his mind and even after leaving he knew he must return. Something was being asked of him and he must comply. Series Description Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but H.R. Wakefield, Walter de la Mare, and Daphne du Maurier felt otherwise. They were among the many authors who set their scariest stories during the dark and shivering days of ― yes, Christmas. Biblioasis is thrilled to announce three new books in this series of beautifully illustrated collectibles that share these classic Christmas ghost stories with readers across North America. Seth, our world-famous and beloved cartoonist, has designed and illustrated each book in his own inimitable way. Trimmed to fit the coziest stocking, they're specifically made for placement beside the registers of the finest bookstores.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Christmas, Holiday, Supernatural, Fiction, Fantasy

92 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2018

About the author

Walter John de la Mare was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for his psychological horror short fiction, including "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows". In 1921, his novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and his post-war Collected Stories for Children won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British children's books.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alan’s indolence was even more extreme; he was at this moment merely over-reading what he had read — and what he had read again and again and again. For the eye may be obedient while the master of the mind sits distrait and aloof. His wits had gone wool-gathering. He paused, then made yet another attempt to fix his attention on the sense of this simple quatrain. But in vain.

which was my experience reading this book.

i did not like it.

you would think that a ghost story set in a cluttery antiquarian bookstore with secret passages leading to additional books, accessible only by invitation, would be an easy sell to a booknerd like me, but whooooo no.

the writing is incredibly dull, it's full of bad proto-emo poetry, and i don't even understand what happened, really. i thought maybe i just read it too late at night after too long of a day, but i tried revisiting it this afternoon in the fullness of my energy/mental acuity and got glazed all over again. not LGM.

i think the moral of the story is 'don't read a lady ghost's private brokenhearted poetry journal.'

if you can't manage that, 'don't presume to publish a lady ghost's private brokenhearted poetry journal because you think that's what she would have wanted.'

but there may be more to it than that and i'm simply losing my ability to read or parse or think enough to grasp it.

it's not scary at all, which at this point in my reading of the series should come as no surprise, but for a single moment, i had hope. there's this little slip of verse that reads like a nursery rhyme, but there's an edge of creepiness to it:

Well, well, well! squeaked the kitten to the cat;
Mousie refuses to play any more! so that's
the end of that!

that carefree whimsy in the face of death, if applied towards something, could have been perfectly chilling. but NOOOOO.

he doesn't pursue it and the creepiness is left in the eye of the beholder who is trying really hard to find some satisfying meat in a sea of poetry, obsessive doomed love, self-loathing and alla that. don't give me lovelorn suicide when i can have the careless brutality of kitten teeth.

i'm probably just too dumb/not fancy enough for this one.

my brain used to be better than this. welcome to my downslide



mission statement copied from my review for One Who Saw:

this holiday season, i am going to read through 'seth's christmas ghost stories' line on biblioasis, and i encourage you to do the same. the books are so cute and tiny, you can stuff someone's stocking or dreidel with 'em! the cover art and interior illustrations are by seth, and they are seasonally spoooooky, blending the spirit of halloween with christmas cheer the way nature, and jack skellington, intended.

one more to go!

come to my blog!

[Ilya Solovyev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the beginning with the spooky old bookshop, but then the writing grew too wordy and blurred for my humble taste, and resulted in an unexplained ending. The rainy and ghostly atmosphere was great. However, this Biblioasis edition has many typos, and I didn't find the illustrations exactly corresponding to the story atmosphere. The 1957 book with its foxed pages and musty smell is much more appropriate :)

[Laura VanZant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure how this was going to end, but I quite like how it wrapped up

[Lydia Schoch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who says ghosts have to be scary?

Alan, the customer who saw the strange woman in the private book room, was someone I liked immediately. His strong sense of compassion for someone he knew virtually nothing about made me hope he’d find out what happened to her and then go on to live happily ever after himself. Most folks would have been frightened of her. The fact that he wasn’t speaks volumes about his character, and it encouraged me to keep reading.

I did have a minor quibble with the ending. It was well written, but it was also strangely abrupt. This reader would have appreciated a little more time spent developing it and explaining how it was meant to tie into the previous scenes. While I did figure it out, having more details about this sure would have been helpful.

Unlike many of the other stories in this series, this wasn’t intended to be frightening. The spirit remained restless for a specific reason that was mentioned later on in the plot, but she was never dangerous. This isn’t so common in modern ghost stories, and it was something I found refreshing. There are plenty of interesting things to do with ghosts that don’t involve them saying boo to anyone.

The Green Room made me smile.

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of all the little Christmas ghost stories in this series, this is the most - tedious one. If you like, older maudlin poetry and listening to the mullings of a young man infatuated.... this may be your cup of tea. For me, it dragged on and on, and not having some real information about the “ghost” made the ending of the story feel empty.

So, ghost read at your own risk.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25⭐

[Michael Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, that was a big pile of nope.

So I love a good ghost story, and if that ghost story is a good christmas story to boot? Count me in! Unfortunately, this had neither of those aspects. I've noticed authors are confusing 'Ghost Stories' with 'Haunted Stories'. This is a book that deals with a haunting, and ghosts of the past, but it is not a ghost story.

Also, I might need to address the language in the book. Not that it's vulgar or crass, but rather that it feels overly flowery and verbose without needing to be. I understand it's trying to set "The Mood", but it creates a linguistic gymnastic set that leaves the reader questioning what the author is actually trying to say. There are times when this style of writing does work in setting a good mood, but more often than not, it just leaves me going "Ok, what was just being said?" I felt as though either a word was out of place or missing entirely more often than not.

I really hope the other titles in this "Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories" lives up to the name, as this one did not.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird ghost story in which a haunt's bluff is inadvertently called and unappreciated, with the presumable end result that [potential spoiler alert] the haunting has ended.

[Liana9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short scary stories about ghosts were a popular feature of the Christmas season in the previous centuries. Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is the most famous, although most likely not the first Christmas story featuring ghosts. Walter de la Mare’s “The Green Room” belongs to the same tradition, except that it’s much more ambiguous and doesn’t focus on any particular moral message.

According to Walter de la Mare, the term for improbable spooky stories told by people during the festive season was ‘winter tales’. Quite fittingly, “The Green Room” is a chilling story. I love stories set in bookshops, and this particular bookshop hides a ghostly secret. All in one short story, the young protagonist meets the specter of the green room, discovers an unpublished manuscript, and tries to help a ghost who doesn’t want help. Not actually set during Christmastime and not too terrifying either, this intriguing ghost story explores obsession and the dangerous lure of the past that can sometimes steal the actual, living present.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although not set at Christmastime, this still felt like what it must be like to slog through a hallway filled with figgy pudding. The plodding writing style was a chore to get through and the story, while interesting, would have benefited from some slimming down. The text covers only 76 of the small pages in the Biblioasis edition, the rest being taken up with Seth's drawings and publisher info. About eight pages are filled with verses in an old book the protagonist finds in the hidden room at the back of the bookstore, and which he comes to believe were written by an apparition he sees. One of this series misfires.

[Cynthia Egbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was more depressing than spooky. I like a chill for Christmas, but not sadness. I did like the focus on books! Such as this quote: "Books - and particularly old books - tend to be dusty company. This may account for the fact that few antiquarian booksellers are of Falstaffian proportions. They are more usually lean, ruminative, dryish spectators of life. The gnawing of the worm in the tome is among the more melancholy of nature's lullabies; and the fluctuations in price of 'firsts' and of 'mint states' must incline any temperament if not towards cynicism, at least towards the philosophical."

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit of a slog - which is saying a lot for a story this short. The premise of a ghostly presence in the back, seldom-accessed room of a bookstore had promise, but (for me) it got lost in the style of the writing. Dense and verbose sentences that rambled on had me constantly re-reading pages to see if I had missed a few words or punctuation marks along the way. If the aim of this Christmas ghost story was to lull the kiddies to sleep, mission accomplished.

[Catherine Mason · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very creepy story. It required a lot of thought, and I am not sure I 'got' it.

[Cristine Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very strange!

[Benjamin Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got a little over a quarter of the way through when I gave up on this one. It was a little convoluted, and I didn't like the writing. Tried to continue reading but I just couldn't do it.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

A not scary slog chockful of self indulgent poetry. Not sure why I didn't like it.

[Drew Canole · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mysterious backroom at a local bookstore. A ghostly spectre, original verse manuscript. Pretty good premise but it does drag out for a bit too long.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a hecking odd short story about a restless ghost in a secret library. The start was cool even if the writing style was ponderous but I, like others on this site, found the ending confusing.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written and the poetry is amazing

[Kevin Burns · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice setup but the story starts crawling along and loses steam quickly. Unremarkable.

[Plateresca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with many reviewers that the beginning of this story is more satisfying than the end.

The premise is lovely: a second-hand bookshop has a secret room with more books, and, of course, strange things happen there. What could be better, right?
The narrative is pensive and romantic, which I quite enjoyed.
Well, the end is a bit underexplained, a bit sad, a bit underwhelming.

Still, I did enjoy the overall experience, and I am very willing to read more by Walter de la Mare, who was obviously a very interesting person.

(I am reading a ghost story a week until Yule, and this was not a bad start!).

Regarding this particular edition, though.
The sentence 'His cheek was almost as colourless as the paper on which the poems had been printed...' looks like 'His check was almost as colourless us the paper...' And there are other typos of this kind.
And I'm sorry to say I did not feel that the artwork conveyed the atmosphere of the story or in any way enhanced it.

---

A month later, I find I recollect the story with such tenderness that I should give it another star :)

[Ruthenator · Rating 2 out of 5]

First it's 92 pages, not 62. I know the story was written nearly a hundred years ago but the prose was so overwrought it was almost unreadable. It may be that he was paid by the word, but the story would have been okay in a different writer's hands.

[Euan M LLL · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5/10

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭