May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her Uncanny Stories (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle. Two lovers are doomed to repeat their empty affair for the rest of eternity...A female telepath is forced to face the consequences of her actions...The victim of a violent murder has the last laugh on his assailant...An amateur philosopher discovers that there is more to Heaven than meets the eye. Specially included in this volume is 'The Intercessor' (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontes.
May Sinclair offers us eight ghost stories with her trademark psychological stamp, exploring themes including consciousness after death. I think the first two give an example of the collection as a whole. "Where Their Thirst is Quenched" is original and stimulating in both content and style whereas "The Token" shows how Sinclair's work is sometimes boring and unsurprising. A couple of the stories were really quite touching, notably "If the Dead Knew".
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