Customer Reviews

Curios: Some Strange Adventures of Two Bachelors

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"Curios: Some Strange Adventures of Two Bachelors" by Richard Marsh is a collection of seven short stories told from the perspectives of two rival collectors - the easily-excited Mr. Pugh and the sinister Mr. Tress. Sometimes they manage to work together to solve the mystery of their latest curio, the rest of the time they spend trying to deceive each other. It's this odd and complex friendship that brings a delightfully dark humor to each story.

The adventures vary in theme and are each fun in their own right, though my favorite definitely has to be "The Adventure of Lady Wishaw's Hand" because it's the most gothic and interesting in the collection; although the funniest would have to be "...the Phonograph," thanks to the hilarious antics and interactions of the two gentlemen. I don't want to ruin the experience by giving away too many details, so I've listed each of the titles below.

The Adventure of the Pipe
The Adventure of the Phonograph
The Adventure of the Cabinet
The Adventure of the Ikon
The Adventure of the Puzzle
The Adventure of Lady Wishaw's Hand
The Adventure of the Great Auk's Egg

"Curios" was originally published in 1898 but has been reissued by Valancourt Books, a small press dedicated to bringing back forgotten literature from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. They've done a fantastic job with this little gem and have introduced me other amazing works by Richard Marsh.

This is essentially a collection of quirky tales, steeped in the humor of the late nineteenth century. It was first published in 1898. The main characters are types quite amusing to turn-of-the-century readers: old bachelors who collect curios with fanatical enthusiasm.

The cynical Mr. Tress and the flighty Mr. Pugh will not hesitate to hoodwink a shopkeeper or a poor widow to get a treasure for a song. And they'll cheat each other just as brashly, to get possession of a rare cabinet or a curiously carved pipe, even though they've been close friends since boyhood. Their searches for curios lead them into strange adventures, which they narrate by turns in this book.

The tales concern rivalries between collectors, ghosts both fake and real and startling discoveries of various sorts. I was distressed by the anti-Semitic stereotypes in one tale, but readers venturing into vintage literary waters are likely to encounter the prejudices of the times.

Leaving aside this tale, Richard Marsh is a gifted observer of human foibles. He's also a fine prose stylist. One of the stories, "The Adventure of Lady Wishaw's Hand," is entirely delightful and alone worth the price of the book.

Curios is not to be compared with The Beetle, Marsh's famous supernatural thriller. But the author's skill at building suspense in bizarre situations is present even in this light work.

I'm just beginning to explore Richard Marsh myself, having very much enjoyed his whimsical mystery, Philip Bennion's Death.

I didn't really care for this book. The main two characters Mr. Pugh and Mr. Tress weren't really all that developed. I found it hard to understand how they felt about each other. They kept talking about being friends and yet they were so underhanded and deceiving with each other. The stories themselves were really odd. They items that the two collectors find were very unique, but that's about where the interest ended for me.

I couldn't get into the writing, I couldn't connect to the characters, and the stories were just too odd for me.