Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951)

My favorite Blackwood story (though Wendigo is a close second). It takes everything unnerving about a Lovecraftian sort of mythos and distills it into all the essential horrors. Really, this is a timeless work.

"'It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,' he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; 'we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our show more only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.'"
-pg 43

I could write an entire essay on that paragraph alone. It contains all the dread conjured up by this story. The feeling of powerlessness and of the dark part of ourselves, which might act on murderous impulse when faced with that same power. The horrors are inescapably all around us in the tale, like the endless droning of the strange willows. show less

This has become one of my favourite reissues in the Tales of the Weird series. A gripping, powerful and chilling novel of a group attempting to tap into the Word of God.

What impresses me most about Blackwood's writing is always how he marries an original, imaginative idea with slow build crescendo that is almost perfect in its craftmanship. The basic premise involves four people coming together under the leadership of the dominant personality of Reverend Slake who has discovered a way to show more divinely control all things by uttering their "true name". By bringing together four people who tune together as a "chord", they dare to capture even a part of the greatest of all powers. It's a big, bold idea and is told secondhand from the point of view of susceptible adventurer Robert Spinrobin, focusing strongly on the spectrum of emotions that he is put through.

In Blackwood's (shamefully) lesser known work here, it becomes largely clear early on the scope of where the book is leading such a group of disparate individuals to - even if it isn't apparent to themselves. That sort of character ignorance and idiocy is normally a bugbear of mine, but here the unreliable narrator plays its card well as the focus keeps on how Robert Spinrobin tries to describe aural concepts beyond our comprehension, whilst trying to balance his own conflicting emotions of increasing terror and divine aura of his companions - particularly towards his mentor Slake who he is both in awe of and yet afraid of due to increasingly manic, otherworldy behaviour.

As you'd expect with something dealing with both biblical mythology and pseudo-science, the imageries and explanations of how this system of divine magic works is steeped in dreamlike sentences which rely on plentiful supplies of metaphor and simile, but it helps offset the otherwise basic presentation of the ideas to produce something that is both legible and incomprehensible at the same time. It's what makes Blackwood such a great compositor of the weird that he can harmonise in this way and pull it off. It's not flawless, but his rich personal knowledge of the various subjects it explores provides credibility even when stretched to these levels.

With a pacing that is deliberate and builds slowly to its frightening crescendo, it wont chime with everyone who wants action or a slideshow of big events happening all around. I certainly think it suits this story much better in this way as I increasingly felt unable to turn away as each stage unfolded in teasing fashion. But readers of more modern styles may feel unsatisfied for much of the story.

For me though, this is a stunning ‘weird’ novel of the grandest scope that I didn't know previously existed, but has cemented a place firmly amongst my favourites in the genre. show less

Blackwood is a master of the ghost tale….a master at creating eerie environments and taking the reader on a weird and a sometimes wild ride. It’s a collection of short, creepy, goose-bump producing stories that have obviously well stood the test of time. They are, or are like, the stories that have been told by dying campfires…told on dark & stormy nights…and passed down from generation to generation. Some things are just timeless and that certainly applies to these stories that will show more tickle your imagination no matter what you believe or disbelieve about the supernatural. My Scottish granddad used to say “I don’t believe in ghost…but I’m very much “afeared” of them.” I bet you’ll be “very much “afeared” of them” after reading the first few. show less

Published in the early 1900s as part of a collection of stories, H.P. Lovecraft felt that Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows was simply the greatest tale of the supernatural in English literature. It is a novella, and has a bare minimum of dialog between the narrator and his good friend, the Swede. It lacks the blood and gore and violence so endemic of horror today, and yet despite what some would consider handicaps, The Willows is one of the most atmospheric books in the genre you will ever show more read. I had heard of this author but never read him, now I can’t imagine not reading some of his other work, and very soon.

The tale begins with two men on a canoe trip down the Danube. Their destination barely comes into play in this most elegantly written masterpiece of sustained atmosphere. The farther they get along the rising river as a storm approaches, they each begin to realize something is wrong. In these remote wilds, an eerie foreboding sets in that the protagonist conveys to the reader in elegant prose. The willows along the river manifest strange movements, independent of the fierce winds assaulting the small island where he and the Swede have camped for the night. The howls are sounds outside of humanity, and the protagonist fights the feeling that they have somehow stumbled into a border between the known world, and one which is unaware of them — as yet.

This is so fabulous it is difficult to give readers a sense of how good it is. Nor do I want to give away some of the surprises or the ending. While the Swede is painted as practical and perhaps not as bright as his companion at first, eventually their roles become reversed. The narrator discovers the Swede has accepted the supernatural circumstances they’ve found themselves in, and knows they must not be discovered, lest they become a sacrifice. Truly a tale of the supernatural, and the boundary between this world and another, you’ll probably never read anything else like The Willows. I would not say that The Willows is scary, nor does it contain any shocking moments, rather it is a quiet and meticulously crafted tale of being alone and isolated, cut off from the rest of the world, and finding something in the darkness, in the surroundings, that is alive.

I can’t recommend this highly enough. I suspect many modern readers might not enjoy it as much as I did, its horror unseen and merely suggested. But those who love elegant writing and a memorable, atmospheric tale certainly will. A masterpiece. show less