Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

Compulsory games, and other stories, Robert Aickman ; edited and with an introduction by Victoria Nelson

eng

no index present

fiction

Compulsory games

Robert Aickman ; edited and with an introduction by Victoria Nelson

New York Review Books classics

and other stories

"The best and most interesting stories by Robert Aickman, a master of the supernatural tale, the uncanny, and the truly weird. Cross Henry James with M.R. James and you might end up with a writer like Robert Aickman, though his self-described "strange stories" remain confoundingly and uniquely his own. Aickman's superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange, of the "void behind the face of order," is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames, or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress, and then another--and then another? Do a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover, this collection offers a generous introduction to a sophisticated, psychologically acute modernist whose achievements have too long been hidden under the cloak of genre"--, Provided by publisher

Machine generated contents note: Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman -- PROVISIONAL TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Compulsory Games -- Le Miroir -- Raising the Wind -- Residents Only -- Hands in Glove -- Wood -- Laura -- Just a Song at Twilight -- Letters to the Postman -- Marriage -- No Time Is Passing -- The Strangers -- The Fully-Conducted Tour -- A Disciple of Plato -- The Coffin House

adult