Robert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories where strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged but all have the same thing in common - they are all brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is. "The Next Glade", "Bind Your Hair" and "The Stains" appeared together in "The Wine-Dark Sea" in 1988 while "The Unsettled Dust", "The House of the Russians", "No Stronger Than a Flower", "The Cicerones" and "Ravissante" first appeared in "Sub Rosa" in 1968. The stories were published together as "The Unsettled Dust" in 1990. Aickman received the British Fantasy Award in 1981 for "The Stains", which had first appeared in the anthology "New Terrors" (1980), before appearing in the last original posthumous collection of Aickman's short stories, "Night Voices" (1985). "We are all potential victims of the powers Aickman so skilfully conjures and commands." (Robert Bloch).
Having read and quite liked "The Trains" and "Ringing the Changes", I was hoping to find a handful of great Aickman stories. This collection, although rich in atmosphere and architectural detail, was a little disappointing. The tales lack narrative and direction, thus coming across as dream sequences rather than works of fiction. This may have been Aickman's point, but it gave me the impression that they had been poorly planned or left unfinished.
Reading updates
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16 March, 2016:
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16 March, 2016:
Reviewed