Painted Devils: Strange stories
by Robert Aickman
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Robert Aickman's Painted Devils is another excellent anthology of strange stories in the author's inimitable style of slowly encroaching eeriness... Metaphorically, it's as if you're wading comfortably care-free in ankle-deep water, and before you realize it you're up to your neck in a roiling river. This collection contains one of Aickman's very best, "Ringing the Changes", wherein a honeymooning couple in a small seaside village are suprised to find that the local church bells are pealing incessantly. Other favorites here include "The School Friend", "The Waiting Room", and "Marriage".
Aickman is a master storyteller with a sly wit and an ability to craft memorable passages of insight and detail. For example: concerning interpersonal show more relationships: "... associations that are not alive are best amputated as skillfully as possible before the rot infects too much of one's tissue and unnecessarily lowers the tone of life.", and "There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward."
I will also note that this collection includes perhaps the only Aickman story of the few dozen I've read so far that did not really intrigue me. "My Poor Friend" is a rather bland tale which draws on the author's interest in Britain's waterways (he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association), skewers the conventions and machinations of Parliamentary government, but ultimately offers little of his signature strangeness. show less
Aickman is a master storyteller with a sly wit and an ability to craft memorable passages of insight and detail. For example: concerning interpersonal show more relationships: "... associations that are not alive are best amputated as skillfully as possible before the rot infects too much of one's tissue and unnecessarily lowers the tone of life.", and "There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward."
I will also note that this collection includes perhaps the only Aickman story of the few dozen I've read so far that did not really intrigue me. "My Poor Friend" is a rather bland tale which draws on the author's interest in Britain's waterways (he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association), skewers the conventions and machinations of Parliamentary government, but ultimately offers little of his signature strangeness. show less
Aickman's stories don't jump out from behind a gravestone and yell "boo" at you. They creep up on you, perhaps on the second reading, and reveal their true sinister nature. I think it's about time for me to read them again!
Awesome...
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Author Information
68+ Works 3,562 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Painted devils : strange stories
- Original title
- Painted Devils: Strange Stories
- Alternate titles
- Ravissante; The Houses of the Russians; The View; Ringing the Changes; The School Friend; The Waiting Room (show all 9); My Poor Friend; The School Friend; Marriage
- Original publication date
- 1979
- People/Characters
- Madame A.
- Important places
- Brussels, Belgium; Unilinna, Finland
- Dedication
- For my friend
KIRBY McCAULEY
Perceptive in appreciation as he is persuasive in agency
To Whom I Owe Much - First words
- I had an acquaintance who had begun, before I knew him, as a painter but who took to "compiling and editing" those costly, glossy books about art which are said to sell in suprising numbers but which no person one knows ever ... (show all)buys and no person one sees ever opens.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Maybe it really is just part of the fall of man and irredeemable without special grace.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror
- DDC/MDS
- 823.0872 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Mystery fiction
- LCC
- PZ4 .A288 — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction in English
Statistics
- Members
- 214
- Popularity
- 151,870
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.22)
- Languages
- English, Finnish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 4
