Croquet Player (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

by H.G. Wells

Something is horribly wrong in the remote English village of Cainsmarsh. An elderly woman stiffens in dread at her own shadow; a terrified farmer murders a scarecrow; food prepared by others is eyed with suspicion; family pets are bludgeoned to death; loving couples are devoured by rage and violence. A spirit-corrupting evil pervades the land, infesting the minds of those who call Cainsmarsh home. Is this vision real, or a paranoid fantasy generated by an even darker, worldwide threat? And is the call to resist the danger itself a danger? These are questions that disturb the calm of an indolent croquet player who happens to hear the tale of the unlucky village. H. G. Wells's ambiguous story of horror is a modern classic, a prophetic, disturbing glimpse of the primitive distrust and violence that gnaw at the heart of the modern world.

• ISBN10: 0860251535
• ISBN13: 9780860251538
• Publish Date: 10 October 1979
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 October 2003
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Ian Henry Publications Ltd
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 78
• Language: English

Reviews

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

This is an interesting work from an author whom readers most closely associate with science fiction. Most reviews and summaries describe the novella as a “ghost story,” although there is no ghost, only an ambiguous fear of impending war and the cruelty of which humankind is capable. Wells does a surprisingly good job in writing a story about essentially nothing. There is no direct action, only the men telling their stories to the croquet player as they sit on the terrace, and the precise nature of the fear they are describing is evident only near the end of the tale. In some ways, the fear is more convincing when it is amorphous and men are seeking to describe it as a ghost of cavemen or of Cain. Once they begin talking about reading the newspapers and their visions of air raids and uniformed men marching in columns, the book begins to have too much of a political or social message for it to truly be “haunting.” Nonetheless, there is some interesting commentary about human nature to be found in The Croquet Player, and at roughly 100 pages it is worth the short time to read for anyone who likes Well’s work.