The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories

by Joan Aiken, Lizza Aiken (Introduction)

Joan Aiken's stories captivated readers for fifty years. They're funny, smart, gentle, and occasionally very, very scary. The stories in The Monkey's Wedding are collected here for the very first time and include six never before published, as well as two previously published under the pseudonym Nicholas Dee. Here you'll find the story of a village for sale... or is the village itself the story? There's an English vicar who declares on his deathbed that he might have lived an entirely different life. After his death, a large, black, argumentative cat makes an appearance... This hugely imaginative collection includes introductions by Aiken as well as by her daughter, Lizza Aiken.
Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband's death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women's Own, and many others. Visit her online at: www.joanaiken.com.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Collections, Ebooks, Magical Realism

203 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2011

About the author

Joan Aiken was a much loved English writer who received the MBE for services to Children's Literature. She was known as a writer of wild fantasy, Gothic novels and short stories.

She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. She worked for the United Nations Information Office during the second world war, and then as an editor and freelance on Argosy magazine before she started writing full time, mainly children's books and thrillers. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972).

Her most popular series, the "Wolves Chronicles" which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was set in an elaborate alternate period of history in a Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution,and so supporters of the House of Hanover continually plot to overthrow the Stuart Kings. These books also feature cockney urchin heroine Dido Twite and her adventures and travels all over the world.

Another series of children's books about Arabel and her raven Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake, and have been shown on the BBC as Jackanory and drama series. Others including the much loved Necklace of Raindrops and award winning Kingdom Under the Sea are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski.

Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.

Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye (now a National Trust property). This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.

Reviews

[Laurie]

I love the dream like quality of Joan Aiken's short stories. These are just plain fun to read if you enjoy a little weirdness.

[Charles Dee Mitchell]

Early on in this collection, we encounter a young Polish officer who chases the devil out his bedroom with a garlic sausage and a beloved vicar whose true nature is not revealed until he is reincarnated as a black tom cat. Aiken throws together characters and plot elements taken from the cozy playbook of English village plot lines and does very peculiar things with them. She does not seem determined to undermine the traditional material itself, just the standard means of its presentation. At times her light touch can become, well, a trifle light, but not to worry. When she chooses to show her scary side, as in the story "Hair," she can be as creepy as she is delightful in most other circumstances.

[Riju Ganguly]

1. These tales are short, stunning, and truly fantastic in terms of quality.
2. They evoke a strange sense of enchantment & unreal even at the time of describing things that are apparently mundane or domestic.
But are these fantasy? I can't say. But one thing I can confirm. Once read, several of these stories would remain with you permanently, etching your thoughts, and making you gasp in disbelief that how could stuff written in such loving, lucid style have such an effect.

There are, apart from 'Introduction' by Joan Aiken and 'The Making of a Storyteller' by Lizza Aiken, 19 stories in the book. Several of them are heartbreakingly brief. But some have just the right length to go beyond fable-like vignette and become those unforgettable memories mentioned above.

No. I'm most assuredly not going to facilitate you in a skimpy reading by listing out those select gems. Instead I would exhort you to read this beautiful book cover-to-cover, and identify the gems of your choice. Let me only assure you that there are no duds here. Some story would make your hair rise with their creepiness, some would leave you baffled amidst all the dark humour and nuanced macabre, while some might induce you to fall in love with life anew.
Highly Recommended.

[Manuel Alfonseca]

ENGLISH: About one half of these nineteen stories are weird (Aiken's speciality), while the other half are realistic, although in a few cases the difference is not clear. Some deal with romantic subjects with difficult partners, such as girls who hate men ("Girl in a whirl"), men who are afraid of girls, or an unconsummated marriage ("Model wife"). Among those I liked most were the following:

"Red-Hot favorite": A shortsighted artist, tired of dodging girls who want to darn his socks, gets tangled in the theft of a race horse, the front-runner. "Honeymaroon," with two intelligent mice adept to marxism. And "The monkey wedding," about a painter who recovered a lost painting, but lost his life, and his mother, who lost her son, but recovered a lost great-grandson.

ESPAÑOL: Alrededor de la mitad de estos diecinueve cuentos son raros (la especialidad de Aiken), mientras que la otra mitad son realistas, aunque en algunos casos no se sabe a qué grupo pertenece el cuento. Algunos tratan sobre temas románticas con parejas difíciles, como chicas que odian a los hombres ("Chica en un torbellino"), hombres que temen a las chicas, o un matrimonio no consumado ("Esposa modelo"). Entre los que más me gustaron están los siguientes:

"Red-Hot Favourite": A un artista miope, cansado de esquivar chicas que quieren zurcirle los calcetines, lo enredan en el robo de un caballo de carreras, el favorito. "Honeymaroon", con dos ratones inteligentes con tendencias marxistas. Y “La boda del mono”, sobre un pintor que recuperó un cuadro perdido, pero perdió la vida, y su madre, que perdió a su hijo, pero recuperó a un bisnieto perdido.

[Nancy]

Again, Joan Aiken has delighted, intrigued, and enchanted me with her short stories. I love the creativity and unexpected nature of her stories. "The Monkey's Wedding" is a term used to explain rain on a sunny day. My grandmother always said it was a sign the devil was beating his wife. Whatever you call it, it is the element of the unexpected, the unexplainable, the magical. She begins with familiar territory: a small English village, a reclusive hermit, the ghost of a small child, a jealous wife, but then the story progresses in unexpected and new directions. Her stories rarely leave you with a feeling of satisfied completion. You're left wondering what more happens that is left unsaid, did the character reach a new insight that you, the reader, failed to notice? I kept wanting to go back and re-read the story, or at least sit with it a while and contemplate it. (Hence, it took me months and months to finish this book!) I love that her stories have the simplicity of children's stories, or fairy tales, but yet they have unexpected adult motifs of sorrow, loneliness, isolation, along with whimsy and a fair sprinkling of irony.

[Hayley]

Joan Aiken's boundless inventiveness and wonderful storytelling always leave my brain buzzing and whirring with delight. Her creativity is inspiring--I only wish my imagination was as fertile. Aiken writes beautifully. Her prose is flowing, intelligent, and descriptive--as always, a pleasure to read.

These stories tell of a mermaid brought back from the sea in a glass bottle, a stolen horse, a man haunted by octopi only he can see, a vicar who is reincarnated as a cat, and a village that only exists for three days out of the year, among other equally intriguing subjects. I felt that some of the stories seemed like only sketches and some ended too soon, but maybe that's just me wanting more.

Finishing this has reminded me that The Serial Garden is waiting patiently on my shelf, and I look forward to reading it.

[Cheryl]

Very mixed... but the stories I liked the best are probably not the same ones you'd like. All are inventive and gracefully written, and they are by turns magical and grounded, charming and horrifying.... But glancing at the table of contents to refresh my memory, I find I don't actually remember any of these brief fancies, though I finished reading only yesterday.

I've enjoyed other stories by Aiken and will continue to read her short work when I come across it, and one of these days I'll reread the favorite of my childhood, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. But I can't recommend these... except, perhaps, to a young teen who thinks she is outgrowing fairy tales, and who has a penchant for the gothic and the metaphysical.

[Beth]

A weird collection of stories. I’m not really sure what to say about these. Most of the stories are very short, all of them are beautifully written and weird. I’ll definitely be reading more of Aiken’s work! Two of the stories stood out to me:

The Sale of Midsummer - Travelers hear several conflicting accounts of a mysterious town called Midsummer Village.

The Helper
A creepy story about the invention of a robot. This has my favorite opening:
"Paris in the rainy morning: like a series of triangles cut from pewter. The wet grey streets met one another at acute angles, shutters peered down slit-eyed, the town reflected a murky, watery sky."

[Danielle]

This volume of fantastical short stories includes some of her earliest works circa the 1950s right up to several stories that were previously unpublished and written after the turn of the millennium. It also features an introduction by the author, as well as one in which her daughter details Joan's life and her writing philosophies, which I really appreciated.

There are some wonderful and concise insights, such as (in no particular order):

1) Besides inspiration and a lot of sheer hard labor, a story requires, for its germination, at least two separate ideas which, fusing together, begin to work and ferment and presently produce a plot."

2) "You are trying to kindle the reader's interest, feeding it with little nourishing bits of fuel, not dumping on too much at once. Lots of people when they begin writing make the mistake of putting in too much description - describing is lovely - but the reader can only take so much at one time, and he will begin to skip."

3) Reading dozens of stories daily provided a perfect opportunity to study both what made appealing story content, and also what made a story memorable. Joan summed up the story-writing formula she worked out for the necessary combination of elements as exotic background, touch of sex, twist ending, and a touch of humour if possible."

The titles of the stories within are:

A Mermaid Too Many
Reading In Bed
Model Wife
Second Thoughts
Girl In A Whirl
Hair
Red-Hot Favourite
Spur of the Moment
The Paper Queen
Octopi in the Sky
The Magnesia Tree
Honeymaroon
Harp Music
The Sale of Midsummer
The Helper
The Monkey's Wedding
Wee Robin
The Fluttering Thing
Water of Youth

Some favorite segments/lines:

1) "You'll tire yourself out!" somebody said to Sarah as she plunged from deck-tennis to swimming to the ship's pool, from swimming to dancing, from dancing to Ping-Pong. "As if I could," she said to Tom. "I've done so little all of my life, I have twenty-one years of accumulated energy to burn off."

But just the same, that was what she had done. She had died, vanished, gone out, as completely as a forgotten day, or a drift of the scent of musk. Gone, lost to the world. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, he thought. Not matter, no. The network of bones and tendons, the dandelion clock of fair hair, the brilliantly blue eyes that had once belonged to Sarah, and had so riotously obeyed her will for a small portion of her life - a forty-second part of it, perhaps - was now quietly returning to earth in a Christian cemetery in Ceylon.

- Hair

2) The other officials felt that this was a very proper solution to a problem which was inconveniently out of their scope, involving, as it did, moral and literary questions of which they neither took, nor wished to take, cognizance. They departed with dignity.

- The Magnesia Tree


For me, the most engrossing aspect of reading this collection, which is composed of stories written over five decades, was noticing the shift in behaviour of her characters, and how they interacted, across the spectrum of her writing career. Later stories had female characters that were less helpless and predictable, and male characters that were more nuanced. It is like seeing under the surface of the narratives not only a writer's progression of human understanding but also of the corresponding times in which she lived. I think that I will seek out more collections that span a writer's career.

Recommended for readers who enjoy short story collections, fantastical tales, humour, body-of-work collections, posthumously published works, British writers, women writers, legends and fairy tales.

[Chris]

In the introduction to this posthumous collection of short stories Joan Aiken describes the three ingredients that have gone into the making of these tales: fantasy elements ("witches, dragons, castles..."), realistic elements culled from everyday life ("mending punctures, winning raffles...") and, finally, dreams ("an old lady hunting for lost things..."). Unlike her longer novels, the tales aren't planned but spring from a chance combination of two or more of these ingredients; in The Monkey's Wedding you can marvel at how these elements appear and re-appear in limitless permutations, always surprising, always entertaining, and always haunting.

This score of contributions (including the introduction) reminds me of how much I enjoyed reading her short stories whenever they appeared in paperback. Though written in a variety of tones (there are ghost tales, horror stories, travellers' accounts, tales of requited and unrequited love) they retain the very best features displayed by all those successful purveyors of anecdotes that we might have encountered: the mesmerising raconteur in the pub, the illuminating extempore speaker at a conference, the entertaining travelling companion, all following in the tradition of the tellers of Kinder- und Hausmarchen. Like many a tall story, there is enough familiar stuff mixed in with the fanciful to make you almost believe it is true, or mostly true, or very likely, or deserving to be true.

And we mustn't forget Joan's writing skills. For instance, the descriptions and instances of reported speech read so easily that one is never aware of the care that must have gone into their crafting. Opening a page at random ("Spur of the Moment") I find that she rings the changes on the manner of character utterances (called, asked, panted, gasped as well as said), but when I first read it I wasn't aware of her consciously creating any variety, just the rhythm of the narration which pushed me on to the dénouement ("Perhaps we'd both better begin at the very beginning," she suggested).

All the stories have their strengths, their images, their echoes, but a few will linger a lot longer in my mind: "Reading in Bed" for its atmospheric recreation of an Eastern European folktale; "The Paper Queen", one of at least two stories which must surely pay tribute to her native town of Rye in Sussex (Rohun or Rune in this tale, Ryme elsewhere); and the bittersweet story that gives its name to the collection, "The Monkey's Wedding" (which, strangely, involves neither a monkey nor a wedding). The settings also vary widely like a chocolate box selection, ranging from Wales and Ireland to France and Poland via the middle of the ocean, all given a coating of the whimsy or a suggestion of a shiver.

Aiken aficionados must be grateful to Small Beer Press for publishing this story collection, many unpublished before now or virtually unobtainable because they first appeared in the 1950s. Although the tales are quintessentially British the publishers, apart from the occasional spelling change ("favorite" for "favourite", "labor" for "labour"), seem to have respected the texts by making no obvious adaptation for a North American audience. Lizza Aiken's introduction, "The Making of a Storyteller", nicely complements Joan's with some biographical details, her modus operandi as a writer and her meticulous attention to detail. This is a volume to keep, to re-read and to pass on to discerning young relatives.

[Andy]

Offbeat and weird stories that are often sweet but occasionally feature a light tinge of horror. For the most part they are really very inventive; Joan Aiken says in an introduction that she often gets her ideas from dreams, and you can kind of see that - the boundary between the fantastic and the mundane is frequently crossed and is casually regarded in the breach, the same way that in dreams sometimes a totally bizarre incident is just normal happenstance and doesn't surprise you the dreamer or the other people in your dream at all.

Beneath the weirdness, there is a really cute and honestly traditional undercurrent to some of these stories, where the boy gets the girl or the town is saved or things otherwise end well. In that sense this volume is very much like a volume of fairy tales. One complaint is that the stories sometimes start and stop very quickly and are too jerky, giving the reader no chance to get settled into an enjoyable flow. My favorites: "The Sale of Midsummer," "Girl in a Whirl," "Second Thoughts."

[Stacy]

It took me a while to get into Aiken's style, but once I did, I saw she is a consummate storyteller. Great observations, too.

I think one of the reasons it took me so long to get into her writing is that she's not particularly close with her 3rd person narrative. It's not always omniscient, but it's pretty close. My favorite is 3rd person closed (or whatever it's called), where the writer is knocking around in the main character's head.

Aiken doesn't do that much here, but still her writing is, by turns, fun and horrifying.

[Acacia Irving]

this book will be reviewed on my channel soon. I loved most every story some just were not ones that stuck in my mind but for the most part really wonderful and small beer press does really amazing work!

[Janice]

This is a book of short stories. They're weird, a little surreal, and generally hard to describe.

I liked them, though, even though sometimes I'd read one and think "Whoa, that was crazy." But then it was over, and you were on to the next story.

I like the way this author thinks. (thought)

[Barrita]

Historias simples y nada memorables

[Venus Maneater]

Three stories in I was sure I'd give this book five stars.

Five stories in I was sure I'd give it four.

And now we're at three.

I prefer to read fiction in long sittings. This book isn't made for that. The stories are all just a little too similar. All lean a little too much on the whimsical elements. I can deal with Magic Realism. I can deal with Magic and Surrealism but I'd sure like a little substance to the tales, and there's just too little of that. Substance, I mean. There are a lot of stories in this book and I would advice you to keep it next to your bed and read one before sleeping, every night. Let your mind wander.

[Kate]

I always loved anything by Joan Aiken as a child, and as an adult I very much enjoy seeking out her books for grownups, which are similarly strange but lighthearted, drawing from the same expansive imagination and deep love of genre (esp. folk/fairytales and gothic romance) as do her books for kids. Like any story collection, their quality varies (or at least their appeal to me personally), but there were several I really loved, and many images that will linger.

[Marya DeVoto]

Funny, creepy, kind of conventional mid-20th century in a way that's usually subversive enough not to feel stultifying the way books of that era often do. The sexual politics for example are forthrightly retro but everyone usually seems happy to do end runs around them to get what they want.

[Jenne]

Some of the most perfect writing I’ve ever read, although the endings sometimes don’t quite come together for me (and I would avoid the story called “Hair” entirely).
But the way she uses words! So good!

[Tobias Asplund]

Some good stuff here.

[Betty]

Delightful fables.

[Valerie]

These are weird and strange, which is the author's style, but not really scary. I was looking for a little bit scarier for a Halloween read.

[Jay]

Joan Aiken wrote some of my favorite children’s books accompanied by whimsical illustrations, unfortunately I lost interest partway in these short stories.

[Arasibo Campeche]

Some of the stories are interesting but for the most part, it feels like the same story told over and over again.

[MB (What she read)]

Joan's daughter points out in the foreword that Aiken's creative process (amazing, btw) came from her practice (spotlighted herein) of looking through the news of the day, finding quirky items or elements, and combining them madly to germinate a story. Now that's been pointed out to me, I can see it happening in real time here, and I am enjoying trying to guess what the original 'seeds' were.

BTW, I had an assignment somewhat like this in an art class (except we used random ad elements) and it was a truly fun and surreal. It forced students to put their creativity to work 'out there' in a way that was uncomfortable for most of us--really took us out of our usual. Result=some really interesting artworks came out of it... All that to say: I think JA's idea could spawn an interesting creative writing assignment if you ever need to assign one.

[Artur Nowrot]

The Monkey's Wedding felt slightly less substantive than The People in the Castle (Aiken's other collection published by Small Beer Press), but it was a delight nonetheless. Funny, eccentric, often surprising stories.

[Dan Ust]

This is a collection of yarns, most of which are very entertaining. The bulk are light-heated, though a handful are harsher and even darker, such as "Hair" and "The Helper."

Some of the yarns sputter out or fail to have a strong ending, such as "The Paper Queen" and "The Magnesia Tree." They're still worth the read to enjoy Aiken's sheer inventiveness. And I'm not talking about a lack of an epiphany because epiphanies are not necessarily strong and stories without them are not necessarily weak.

My favorites were "A Mermaid Too Many," the first story in the book, throws the reader into her approach to storytelling; "Honeymaroon;" "Second Thoughts;" and, of course, "The Monkey's Wedding."

[For Books' Sake]

"From a bottled mermaid brought home from a sailor’s adventures at sea to a vicar reincarnated as a malevolent cat, fantasy is combined with magic, myth and adventure to form weird, wonderful and immersive tales."

(Excerpt from full review of The Monkey's Wedding & Other Stories at For Books' Sake)

[Joseph Lerner]

Joan Aiken is famous as a writer of children's books. But in this early collection she demonstrates that she also mastered the art of adult fantasy short story writing. These tales are whimsical, witty, and beautifully written, models of compression and style. Also wholly original. Joan Aiken's stories are unmistakably her own, and, more than sixty years later (most were written in the early 50s), they appear as fresh as undated now as they did upon publication. Highly recommended.

[Jim]

Aiken was obviously an incredibly gifted writer, as these stories make abundantly clear... normally i must be in the mood for short stories, as they are so different in style and affect than novels... i started this one without thinking, but was soon swept into Aiken's world of tales at pace... just superb ideas rendered superbly... all these stories had beautiful turns of phrase, indelible concepts, and stark readability... fun and sad and fantastical...