My second collection of Aickman's "strange tales" (I've also enjoyed his novel The Model) and I'm now convinced of his genius for the uncanny. I love the way his precise, controlled sentences work to open up dense, foetid regions of the psyche. He's like a dapper surgeon ministering to our ugliest internal maladies. I loved all six of these, but the standout was The View, in which a mid-life civil servant and amateur painter boards a ferry in Liverpool (as I used to, and bound presumably for the Isle of Man) and finds himself on a version of Circe's island, time liquefying and the days accumulating blurrily like impasto — and all the fuckedupnesses of life, work, love, creation, and the basic question of what gives our days meaning somehow leach out of the gauzy, indeterminate atmosphere. But there are true ghost stories here, too: I think Aickman is the worthiest inheritor of M.R. James in his understanding that ghost stories are stories of place, of the semantic range of the word "haunt". Immaculately spooky and suggestive. ( )

The stories:

The School Friend: An old school friend of the protagonist returns to her father’s house after his death. The house seems to have a weird effect upon her. A masterful story, a subtle journey into female oppression, a spin on speculative fiction of the created, and a hint of Greek mythology, with strong Lynchean vibes, as well as a cryptic finale; this is a tour de force of Aickman motifs.

Ringing the Changes: A couple visit a seaside village where bells seem to be constantly ringing and the border between life and (un)death is occasionally thinning. Less abrupt than the average Aickman, this is an exemplary lesson of how to craft an unsettling settlement. Strong aesthetical hints of the Carnival of Souls.

Choice of Weapons: A young man falls furiously in love at the first sight of a woman, becoming obsessed with her and ending up in a weird house crossing shoulders with even more weird characters. It takes the reader through a spectral range of expectations before abruptly ending, leaving him dazed with a quintessential Aickmanish ending.

The Waiting Room: A man spends the night alone in a haunted train station room. This short story is much smoother than its other counterparts. A traditional ghost tale which is a delight to read, creating a much appreciated wintry atmosphere.

The View: An artist ends up in the secluded manor of a woman, in an island where space seems to be malleable. The book’s largest story, this has an almost dreamlike quality and more than a hint of Odysseus’ time with Circe and Calypso as well as folktales of time spent in fairyland. Can be a bit slow-moving, but ultimately satisfying.

Bind Your Hair: A woman visits her fiance’s village and family. She meets an eccentric old lady and wanders in the countryside discovering a strange labyrinth and equally bizarre guides. A folk-horror masterpiece, slightly hinting of Machen’s The White People, also doubling over as a subtle study of the collective versus the individual (rural/urban, traditional/modern), of boundaries and their dissolving. My personal favourite of the book.

Full review here: https://industriesofinferno.github.io/books/2020/07/02/robert-aickman-dark-entri... ( )

A bench to sleep on
an off season honeymoon
misty moonlit path. ( )

This was a strange, but interesting collection!

I've been hearing from a number of other readers I trust that Robert Aickman's stories are fantastic. I was recently presented with the opportunity to pick up a few of his collections for free, and I jumped at the chance. Since Dark Entries won the September Monthly Read poll at the Literary Horror group on Goodreads, I started this one first.

These are NOT horror stories. Some of them hardly even seem to be stories at all...they're more like windows that look briefly on to some strange portion of someone's life and then they move on. There is no clear plot or point usually, but I found myself thinking deeply about every one of these tales, wondering if there were some hidden meaning that I wasn't getting. There was one seemingly clear ghost story here, "The Waiting Room." (I wonder if it was decided that there needed to be one clear, straightforward story included with this collection just to give the reader a break from all the thinking?)

I think my favorite story in this collection was the last one, "Bind Your Hair". I'm still thinking about it. I'm still thinking about "Ringing the Changes" as well. Don't ask me why, because I don't know...but it's still turning round in my noggin just the same.

I'm a horror loving gal...and I cut my teeth on the short stories of King, Straub, Etchison, Bradbury, Rasnic Tem, and other greats. I loved those tales with all my heart and I still do. I can't compare my Aickman experience to these other authors. That's not to say that I didn't like this collection, because I did. It's to say that these stories aren't even in the same league as those others. It's apples and oranges and both of them taste just fine to me.

Recommend for fans of weirdness.! ( )

Dark Entries is another stellar collection of "strange stories" by Robert Aickman, characterized by an enchroaching sense of uneasiness and brooding atmospheric detail. Here there are no neat and tidy conclusions, but rather there are frayed endings, loose ends, and stray threads that continue to wriggle unresolved. These are masterful tales that tend to linger restive in the reader's mind. ( )