(He Left Words and Flowers, by Jennifer Gordon)
I could not have dreamed up a more tailor-made afternoon for the imbibing of eldritch tales than what occurred on this day. Temperatures in the upper sixties, a low autumn breeze, and cloud-laden skies provided the perfect setting in which to be carried away by short stories of the chilling and macabre variety. I spent the greater part of the afternoon outside, surrounded by trees, feasting on many a variety of gothic goodness.
I began this first Short Story Sunday of the R.I.P. IV Challenge shortly after the witching hour with a reread of Angela Carter’s poetic tale The Lady of the House of Love. In this tale of a vampire countess and a test of love, Carter demonstrates that she has the rare gift of putting pen to paper to craft a story that feels as if it is derived from an earlier age. Much of what I ended up reading this day was from writers well before her time, and yet The Lady of the House of Love stands proudly right next to stories from these classic authors. The nostalgic lyricism in this tale made it an instant favorite when I read Angela Carter’s short story collection, The Bloody Chamber, for last year’s R.I.P. Challenge.
(A review of The Bloody Chamber can be found here.)
Later on in the day I picked up the The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James. At the recommendation of R.I.P. participants year in and year out, I asked my wife to find this collection in her library system for me. I read Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, a deliciously gothic tale of fear and foreboding set in and amongst an old church. I could not help but think, despite the dread induced by this scrap-book collection, that I would love to have seen this book for myself. Cryptic scriptural references and late night horrors make this story a good one to read with the lights on!
I also read Lost Hearts, by M.R. James, a great ghost story, written in a manner that had me picturing each and every scene so very clearly that I felt like I was watching an old classic horror film. I have high hopes for the other 29 stories in this collection.
From The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James I traveled to The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson. What is it with these classic horror short story authors and their initials? I read The Room in the Tower, a recollection of a dream, but like no dream you or I have ever experienced. The story is one related by a narrator who will never ever wish that all his dreams would come true. I followed that up with the second story in the collection, The Dust-Cloud, a precursor of sorts to stories like Stephen King’s Christine. A bit predictable and ever-so-slightly cheesy, the story did shed an interesting light on the earliest days of motorcars. Like the M.R. James collection, this one looks to be a fun one to spend the next two months with. There are over fifty stories in this collection.
While considering stories to read today I remembered that there was a story in Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu that had a bit of a creepy element. After thumbing through the book I realized that it was the story Mr. Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower. I am quite enamored of this collection and it was a real pleasure to read one of Clarke’s stories for the challenge. Mr. Simonelli has a wonderful kinship with the works of Jane Austen and includes just the right element of darkness, goblins, abducted women, and fairy hi-jinks, that it fit perfect with today’s selections.
(A full review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu is here.)
I next pulled out my copy of Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales to read Joan Aiken’s wonderfully told story, Lungewater. It is a sweetly told haunted tale. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Joan Aiken, I highly recommend her, most notably her Wolves Chronicles beginning with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. The young adult novels in this series are a treat.
I couldn’t complete the first Short Story Sunday of the R.I.P. IV season without sampling a couple of my favorite authors.
I took a small taste of Poe with a reread of his poem, The Conqueror Worm, and finished up the short story reading for the day with one of my absolute favorite Neil Gaiman short stories. One that is the epitome of the R.I.P. Challenge:
Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire
How’s that for a title?!?
Forbidden Brides is a story that pays loving homage to the gothic tradition, doing so in a respectful tongue in cheek manner. It is a story that doesn’t drip with gothic atmosphere, it is immersed in gothic atmosphere. No well-worn trope is left unwritten. I just love it. In speaking of the story, Gaiman says, “I love the true gothics and the faux gothics, and any book with a lady in a nightdress holding a candelabra and running away from an old dark house on the cover. This story’s sort of a love letter to them, and to the imagination.”
Forbidden Brides is one of those stories that I freely admit some people may not find as intensely gratifying as I do. It certainly could come off as a silly, one-trick pony story, and yet to me it speaks deeply to the part of my young self that embraced the scariness of ghost stories when I was a kid–that same part that has me devote time each year to hosting and participating in this challenge, hoping to kindle other fires of enthusiasm for the genre.
If you are not sampling short stories during the next two months, I highly encourage you to do so. The Short Story Sunday Peril need not be an every week event, but you are certainly missing out if you don’t include a bit of Poe, a bit of Lovecraft…some Carter, James, Benson, Gaiman, the list goes on and on…into your R.I.P. reading. It really is a delight!
What about the rest of you? Read any good short stories today? Have any good short stories to recommend? Remember that if you post about Short Story Sunday for your R.I.P. reading that I’d love to have you post a link on the review page. Speaking of, reviews are starting to pile up on the R.I.P. IV Review Site–be sure to check them out!
I have a bit Lovecraft on my shelves with Re-Animator and Gaiman’s Fragile Things, but apart from that no short fiction for me. Great post though. Makes me want to come in the US and live ina library for a few months with no contact to the living world. A book a day would be my motto. Anyway I admire your choice of short stories as they really touch the essense of the challenge, something I think my reads won’t do, but we shall see. 🙂
There are some great stories in Fragile Things, definitely ones that have a gothic/horror element to them.
I’d love to live in a library for a few months as well. I think I could certainly lose myself in a lot of different stories.
You have introduced me to some new authors today and I hope to check them out over these next two months!
Dang it! I just remembered I have a book of ghost stories by Edith Wharton, some of which I thought were very creepy. I might just have to re-read them for the challenge :-).
I got a short story anthology from the library for this today, based solely on its title (Poe’s Children: the New Horror), it’s incrediblye creepy cover (http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780385522830-1), and the fact that it has Gaiman’s “October in the Chair,” one of my favourites, in it. I can’t wait to get started reading it! 😀
Glad you enjoyed the MR James, Carl, I’ve always been a huge fan. The BBC have done some wonderfully creepy adaptations of some of the stories which they used to show over the Christmas holidays – and once had a series of Christopher Lee reading them in his wonderful baritone. Some of the TV movies are a wee bit dated now but still worth a look; they can be very unsettling!
I just picked up The Wolves of Willoughby Chase yesterday and I am really looking forward to reading it. I might have to succumb to the short stories Sunday as a lot of the stories you mentioned sounded fabulous.
Ooo, more authors for me to check out! Thanks for such a wonderful post here Carl.
And yes, the title Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire is to-die-for. *swoon*
Carl, I’ll definitely be reading short stories where I can, even if it’s just Carter, Gaiman, and Poe (my three favourites). Which volume of Gaiman’s does Forbidden Brides belong to?
sometimes i want to have Mark Harmon slap me upside my “hed”! Numerous times I have tried short stories and RARELY come away with one or two out of a whole book that I enjoy.. you’d think I’d learn and just stick to longer stories..but nooooooooooo i sent for a used copy of Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories by Richard Dalby . Why, you ask? (ask! ask!) because it said they were Victorian and Edwardian. “ghost stories from the genre’s golden age of 1839 to 1910, including works by Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker” It is used and it was not expensive, but I have GOT to quite buying books.. and will do a post about that very soon. So. anyway. I will try a short story or two eventually. I still think Mark Harmon needs to “do his thing” to me though.
Deslily: It is funny, because were it not for me seeing some interview with MH once, I would have had no idea what you were talking about. Hooray for trivial knowledge! 🙂 That book you bought certainly sounds like one I would enjoy. I hope that your find it a better experience than your past experiences with short stories.
Claire: Forbidden Brides is in Fragile Things, an excellent short story collection. I have it on audio as well. It is wonderful to hear Gaiman read it and I will no doubt listen to the story at some point during the challenge.
Michelle: You’re welcome…and isn’t it though?
Vivienne: Oh, I think you’ll enjoy it. I picked it up at the bookstore one day because of the Edward Gorey cover and was not disappointed.
Bride: Even if they are dated I am sure I would enjoy them. I find dated horror stories even more creepy than up to date ones. There is just something about them. I particularly enjoy the Roger Corman adaptations of Poe’s works. I would love to hear Christopher Lee reading MR James. That would be fantastic.
Eva: That is a creepy cover! But I like it. October in the Chair is another great Gaiman short story, I agree.
Valerie: I’m not sure if I’ve ever read and Edith Wharton short stories or not. I’ve read some anthologies in the past that cover many authors of her time and it is likely that I have, but I sure don’t remember. If you do any sort of review on these I look forward to it. I’ll add her to my list of people to check out.
Molly: Thanks, I’m glad to have done so. One of the most pleasurable things about the challenge is discovering other authors/books that one might not have heard of or considered.
Well then. After I am done with my sci-fi anthology “Subterfuge” I am on “Fragile Things”. 🙂 Thank you for the information.
Wow. I haven’t read any of those but I certainly jotted down a few authors’ names there. I do enjoy Angela Carter though – The Passion of New Eve was one of my favourite reads in uni.
Harry: I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Have you read Neil Gaiman’s book, American Gods? If not the only thing I would suggest is that you leave of reading the final story, a novella, until after you’ve had a chance to read American Gods, as it is a follow up story for one of the characters. You certainly don’t have to have read AG to enjoy it, but you’d get much more out of it if you had.
Ceri: I look forward to reading some of Carter’s longer works at some point. I’m glad I was able to add to your reading list…or, maybe not if you’re like me and it is a huge list. 😉
It seems you had the same kind of weekend that I did. I enjoyed it so much and have so many anthologies I want to read from that I think I’m going to have to try to do it every weekend. LOL.
I’m glad you enjoyed your first M.R. James. I haven’t read Lost Hearts so will give that a read soon. Canon Alberic is excellent I agree, also try Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to Thee My Lad, The Ash Tree and Vignette (though I’m not sure if that’s in the collection you have.)
Benson is patchy, some of his are cheesy, I quite agree. But I do like Mrs. Amworth and A Tale of an Empty House. It’s years since I read the same book you have so I can’t remember which of the others are good.
I clearly need to read some Joan Aiken!
Oh Whistle and The Ash Tree are indeed in this collection, but not Vignette. I’ll need to see if I can find that one online somewhere or in another collection.
I LOOOOOOOOVED Forbidden Brides! i heard it as part of Fragile Things, read by Gaiman himself *sigh* I’ve read all of Gothic as well for RIP last year, but, umm, can’t remember much…arg! looking back at that review i gave it 4/7. so so.
Melanie: Gothic is one of those books I bought on a whim mostly because of the cover. I’ve only read the Aiken story and the Gaiman story (which I had already had in the Fragile Things collection). I’m sure I’ll sample some more of it, but I am not nearly as interested in it as I am in some of the older, classic tales.
Isn’t is wonderful hearing Neil read his own work? I just love it. And that story in particular has a much more fun air about it when you hear the author putting the emphasis where he wants it, etc. Neil’s books on audio are a great pleasure. Even the ones he doesn’t read: American Gods, Anansi Boys, are fantastic.
I’m kinda jealous. You sound like you had one exciting weekend devouring amazing short stories.
And I’m kinda mad because now my Want™ list has grown. LOL
In all seriousness, I adore the title Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire.
Ann-Kat: If it is any consolation, these things always make my own Want list grow too. 🙂
I will be referring back to this post! Some great recommendations for the ‘to read’ pile here!
Also, I love the artwork you post on your blog by Jennifer Gordon, which is partially (also, you have an excellent blog) why I have given you this award:
http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/2009/09/awards-id-like-to-thank.html
Thanks Michelle, I really do appreciate it. And yes, Jennifer deserves all the credit for my recent blog beauty. 🙂
I love Susanna Clarke and Joan Aiken. I think I was drawn to the gothic after I read Wolves of Willoughby Chase when I was a child. This is such a great challenge and I’m enjoying myself tremendously. Thank you!
Chasingbawa: I’m glad that you are having fun…it has barely started and yet I too am super excited and having a great time with my reading and hosting duties.
Oh Carl, what a wonderful post! You’ve made me want to blow off our plans to go to the zoo today and just go curl up with a pile of short story collections! I’m serious. (But of course, I won’t…Maxidoodle has waited so patiently to go see the visiting white tiger.) But maybe this evening. Yeah. Definitely.
I can relate Debi, I’d like to blow off work (not nearly as fun as your plans) and go sit at home on this rainy day and read some more from these authors! Have fun at the zoo!!!
Oh I just want to run out and get all of these! They sound wonderful. I am most interested in the M.R. James stories and need to see about finding a copy. I didn’t get a chance last weekend to sample some spooky short stories but I’m definitely planning on reading some for the R.I.P. challenge! I think we are supposed to have cloudy days all week so perfect for spooky tales 🙂
Iliana: That is perfect weather for spooky reading! The weather is like that here today and it is hard being at work when I really want to be curled up with a good book!