Status Updates From The Late Breakfasters and O...

5/17:4. A Roman Question. More obviously eerie but still just as reluctant to spell things out. Which is A Good Thing. A rather unusual incantation in a dreary house - with results that we don’t fully get to see.

3/12:3. Larger than Oneself. A bit of a slog to get through all the party conversations and a quite abrupt and mystifying ending. Maybe the conversations point to the denouement and I’ve failed to pick up on the clues.

Visiting Star. 5/9:2. This seems far less inconsequential than when I first read it (one of Richard Daley’s Xmas anthologies). As ever with Aickman, the readers mood and ability to concentrate are critical. Very readable and convincing tale bringing to mind Dorian Grey, vampires and prolonged mortality. But not in any direct way.

My Poor Friend. 4. Far more obscure than I remember it being on my last reading. Maybe I sent in the right mood, but parts of it seemed to drag. Still, the mystery of why (presumably) Mrs Enright was in the Commons so much and what the children were doing there is something substantial to muse upon

Six stories plus the title novel, to be read out of sequence of the collection, and sometimes from other volumes - each short is 7% and title novel is 58%

Reading selected stories in this book and The Wine Dark Sea as substitute for Powers of Darkness in my chronological Aickman re-read 2025.