Fionnuala’s Reviews > Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic > Status Update

I've been admiring the way Alberto Manguel groups the stories in his Anthologies of the Fantastic since the beginning of the first volume. Charlotte Perkins Gillman's story, The Yellow Wall Paper, is a good example. Manguel placed it right after Peter Green's The House-Hunters, about the eerie doings in a strange house and right before Eric McCormack's Eckhardt at the Window about grisly murders in empty houses.

'The Fall of the House of Usher', he said, squinting up at the eaves. Then he chuckled, in a way he had when he was about to say something particularly unpleasant, and added, 'Do you remember that MR James story, The Mezzotint, wasn't it?' and left the rest of the sentence hanging in mid-air. I looked at the house again and the feeling I had tried to stifle ever since we arrived came flooding into my throat like bile

'Now they're going to see who I am, he said to himself in his strong new man's voice, many years after he had first seen the huge ocean liner without lights and without any sound which passed by the village one night like a great uninhabited palace, longer than the whole village and much taller than the steeple in the church...'
'The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship', Gabriel García Márquez

'The old man stood before them like a living monument. Most joys of existence meant nothing to him any more. But within him still trembled a faint echo of that sweet feeling of power he had known when he last held the rulership. It made you feel younger, stronger, more alive, to know that you could change the destiny of hundreds of thousands just by signing your name.'
'Faithful Peter', Lion Furchtwanger

My story was to be set in classical times, in the Mediterranean. My narrator would write plainly, without an attempt at period style or historical explanation. He would arrive—for a reason I had yet to work out—at that classical port with the walls and gateways like cutouts. He would walk past that muffled figure on the quayside. He would move from that silence to a doorway.."
The Enigma of Arrival, V. S. Naipaul

"I began to make my way to the door but at the third step I caught my foot in a ruck of the chocolate-coloured carpet and in reaching out my hand for support, I sent a small pink vase flying.
Suddenly I felt very small and very angry. I saw my mother's mouth opening and it reminded me of the front door and the front door reminded me of my urge to escape—but to where, to where?"
'Same Time, Same Place', Mervyn Peake

As they jostled they walked along, "a thought occurred to Ratanbabu. He was better off as he was—alone, without a friend. He didn't need a friend. Whenever he had spoken to Manilalbabu, it had seemed as if he was carrying on a conversation with himself, as if he knew all the answers before he asked the questions. There was no room for argument, no possibility of misunderstanding."
Ratanbabu and that Man, Satyajit Ray

"Tea was over (today it had been pilchard salad and chips); and Colvin had set out from the Emancipation Hotel, where he boarded, upon his regular evening walk. There had been no one else for tea and Mrs Royd had made it clear that the trouble he was causing had not passed unnoticed. Outside it was blowing as well as raining, so that Palmerston Street was almost deserted..."
'The Visiting Star' by Robert Aickman

'The versions of the story about Ch'ien-niang were so varied that some people said it was all a fabrication. But years later I heard the whole story from Chang Chung-hsien, who had it from his uncle, Ch'ien-niang's father, and when he told it to me, I wrote everything he said down. "In the third year of the T'ien-shou reign, Chang Yi of Ch'ing-ho came to live in Heng-chou..."'
'Ch'ien-niang' by Chen Xuanyou, c900 CEA

Her name was Belisa Crepusculario, not through baptism or because of her mother's insight but because she herself sought it out until she found it and dressed herself in it. Her occupation consisted of selling words...For 5 cents she would give out poems learnt by heart; for 7 she would improve the quality of dreams; for 9 she would write love letters; for 12 she would make up insults for enemies
'2 Words' I. Allende