The Wine-Dark Sea

Was it overheard in that dingy freight elevator in the Shoreditch Arms that lost weekend back in November? Was it mentioned in that disjointed conversation with Aunt Betty shortly before she disappeared for six weeks? Was it in that diaphanous lucid dream whose fragments I reassembled into an erroneous epiphany that led me to an ill-fated excursion to Crete? Or maybe it was at the absurdly crowded marketplace in Crete? Frankly, I can't remember exactly when or how I first heard of Robert Aickman and his Wine-Dark Sea anthology of horror stories. Though ostensibly held in my e-reader, Aickman's stories are more accurately within me now. When I prematurely wake from my nightly fitful sleep, generally around 3 AM, snippets of these stories show more flutter in the haze and perch resolute in my semiconscious state...

Here lie eight brilliantly sly tales, often in mundane yet ominous settings, served understated in a unique and compelling style:

(1) The strange amalgam of heaven and hell that Grigg encounters in the title story. (2) The secrets of the isolated farmhouse that hikers Mimi and Margaret discover in "The Trains". (3) The telephone's unrelenting torment of Edmund St Jude in "Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen". (4) Millie's uncontrollable twins rampaging across the bizarre Grimm's fairy tale landscape of "Growing Boys". (5) The justifiably fearful Brodick Leith, forever haunted by a wraith in "The Fetch". (6) "The Inner Room" featuring Lene's most peculiar dollhouse, which her father described as "the most depressing-looking plaything I ever saw." (7) A crabwise turn of events enables Henry Fern to reach his destiny in "Never Visit Venice". (8) Accompanying her husband on a business trip to Sweden, forewarned Margaret Sawyer nevertheless decides to spend a night at the scenic Kurhus sanatorium with an unforeseen consequence in "In the Wood".

Here there are unsettling clouds of doom gathering just in sight at the periphery, but encroaching ever closer; and curious events and odd pathways that lead all travellers, whether ever-watchful or blithely unsuspecting, into an enveloping shroud of unease. show less

Strange stories
By sally tarbox on 17 May 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
My first foray into the deeply strange world of Robert Aickmann. The seven short stories are not ghost stories of the usual type- although strange beings do occur. But always there's a sense of uncertainty, of wondering whether the supernatural explanation is really the true one, as the characters are beset by their own psychological issues, by heat, exhaustion, depression, loneliness...
I found the stories varied in quality: for me, the strongest was definitely "The Inner Room", where the female narrator recalls a fabulous dolls' house bought for her from a strange junk shop. Very very creepy... but as with them all, we are aware of the protagonist's life and show more difficulties - did this all really happen as she tells?
The weakest was definitely "Growing Boys", where attempted (humour?) definitely fell flat for me.
I would also mention the atmospheric "Never Visit Venice", where a lonely male determines to fulfil his long-time dream of travelling to the city; the difference between the magical place of his imagination and the touristic reality are vividly evoked. And then he steps into a gondola...
Also "Into the Wood", where a slightly bored wife of a businessman, accompanying him to Sweden, decides to take a couple of days; rest-cure at the lovely sanatorium in the forest...

I see macabre artist Edward Gorey owned a copy of this book, and can definitely see that some of Aickman's creations could have informed Gorey's work, especially the 'old carlin' in "The Fetch."

I must say that my volume (by Faber Finds) contained a truly horrendous amount of misprints - in "The Trains", almost every conversation is incorrectly typed; they obviously didn't have a proof reader for this one!! show less

This really clicks only twice: "Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen," a telephonic horror story as winding and tightly coiled as an old-fashioned spiral cord; and "The Fetch," as close as Aickman comes to a traditional ghost story. Others don't quite reach the center of the maze Aickman appears to be building. There are other pleasures, as in the titular story which, set on a Greek island that may or may not exist, exploits an eroticism that Aickman does well; and in "The Trains," with its desperately waving women. Like M.R. James, he makes tingling reading even when the destination turns out to be less than the journey.

Disquieting, darkly sexual, moody. I haven't read a book that had me so unsettled in quite a while. Like hearing a minor chord of music held too long in the air. Or experiencing deja-vu in the most unexpected of places. Or suddenly sighting your doppelganger on the streets. Aickman explores the uncanny and strange and more in the stories in this collection.

In style and approach, the stories are far removed from contemporary modes of horror. The Wine-Dark Sea is more in the vein of Turn of the Screw and the works of [author: Shirley Jackson]. There is a lot of psychological dark magic here...

Aickman's hypnotically lucid prose style helps, oddly enough. The writing, in being so exacting and clear, distracts you from the creeping unease, show more until it's too late! A major thematic artery that runs through all the stories is that every narrator/protagonist seems to be an iceberg of secrets and sordid pasts and family skeletons. Literary horror laced with the gothic at its best. show less

I like what this book is going for, which seems to be a literary, thoughtful, more grounded and cerebral horror anthology. I really couldn’t get into this though. With a couple exceptions, the stories just didn’t give me a lot do chew on, and the prose was stiff and a bit pretentious.

A fine collection of quiet horror stories masterfully written. Some of these tales were genuinely wonderful, classics of the genre. and stood out, even amongst their most excellent peers. Highly recommended to fans of intelligent, articulate prose, and quiet, unsettling horror.

Hm. I'm not quite sure how to rate this one.

This was my first Aickman. I know his influence on modern horror is great and reading this I can see why. He is a master at constructing subtle but oppressive atmospheres of unease, disquiet, and eventual fear. Aickman writes nervous stories about nervous people, caught up in themselves and terrified of a world they feel they will never quite understand, or be truly part of. This works in some of these stories but in others, unfortunately, it becomes almost farcical. I'm thinking specifically of "Never Go To Venice," a story that spends far too much time building the nervous ennui of its main character and far too little time on anything else. The same holds true for "The Fetch," although that show more story is more effective.

I think my biggest issue with this collection was how unwieldy so many of the stories were. While each of them had moments of expertly worked tension and suspense and weirdness, those moments were utterly smothered by the chronically self-obsessed anxieties of the characters. I will have to read more of Aickman before I make up my mind on him but overall, I found this collection both effectively creepy and frustratingly dull show less