Status Updates From Masters of the Weird Tale -...

“Larger Than Oneself” is probably my least favorite so far, not that it’s a bad story. Philosophically provocative and a bit scathing with a tremendous climax, it felt as if it ambled a bit needlessly. First time reading it though, so I may come around.

“Just a Song at Twilight” - pure Aickman enchantment. Took me totally by surprise; thrilling eerie, melancholic, and dreamlike…even post apocalyptic at times. Wow.

“Choice of Weapons” found me struggling to stay focused and ultimately lost. First story in the collection that felt like a bit of a slog. Plenty to like here, just couldn’t find the love.

“Bind Your Hair” is a lovely dark fairy tale (?) of folk strangeness that I just adore. The ambience is pitch perfect and the darkness is in the periphery most of the time. Closer to fantasy than horror, this is one of my Aickman favorites.

“The School Friend” - Excellent. Much more frightening than I remember it being, amongst other things. Of his earliest works, it seems the most indicative of the strangeness to come (a simple story on the surface, but complex and dense, suggestive and subtle, ambiguous and atmospheric).

“The Waiting Room” - a perfectly fine ghost story with an evil little rind on it.

“Ringing the Changes” contains some singularly eerie moments (plus its a dynamite folk/zombie story as straight up or metaphor) but what’s really chilling is the long shadow it casts with its close.

“Your Tiny Hand is Frozen” - simple but deeply uncanny. even knowing where this one is headed, the climax chills me every time.

“The View” is quite good, and far closer to the strange than unsettling side of Aickman. A meditation on perspective, obviously, but within it, time, presence, place, love and aging. And…well…that massive other presence.

An Insufficient Answer: slow burning, subtle and ambiguous, even by Aickman standards. Marvelous gothic tale of mysterious women in a massive, remote, forgotten Eastern European keep. I can feel the haunting intensifying the further I get from the story…

the Trains: Plenty eerie in its action and ambience, although a bit muddled in its climax (maybe it’s me? Probably is). For Aickman, I’d give it a 4/5.