Customer Reviews

The Willows

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a recent purchaser of a Kindle, I naturally wanted some content, but felt somewhat bewhildered by the vast range of pricing--from free to relatively expensive--for what appeared to be identical works. In order to test the "free" works, I decided to download Algernon Blackwood's short novel, "The Willows," fully cognizant of the old adage that one gets what one pays for.

Well, the edition here is superb. No misspellings or misplaced punctuation that I saw; the only flaws were a handful of missing paragraph indentations, and they did not interfere with the flow of the story. I heartily commend those who took the time to transcribe this story for their excellent work.

As for the story itself, it remains a very unnerving read. Like Lovecraft, Blackwood spends most of the time building up a near palpable atmosphere of dread, with only a few fitful sightings to give shape to that dread. "The Willows" remains one of his best tales, and this edition is highly recommended.

The review by Nick Estes is for a different edition from another publisher, not the Copper Penny Press edition, ISBN 978-0615182414, released in February 2008.

Found this to be a wonderful and quick read for those who enjoy classic horror of times now past. There is no gore, no slashing, no blood: just pure exciting and well done storytelling.

This is only the only story in a very slim edition, accompanied with outrageously gargantuan chapter numbers and first-letter-of-sentence characters at the beginning of every chapter. The typesetting is quite ugly, but the story is classic and holds the attention. One can find the story elsewhere: in the Penguin Classics and Dover editions with other fine Algernon oddities. This book is overpriced, as is the The Wendigo, by the same publisher. For its price, you should have more to read, in a better layout.

PREMISE / WHAT IT IS:
Two men get stranded on an island and there's lots of willows. Willows start closing in on them; they get paranoid; there may or may not be a Lovecraftian force on the island (which I'm assuming its an island). It's a first person novel that's about 40 pages give or take. That's pretty much it.

WHO IT'S NOT FOR:
I can assume that if you're looking at this book then it's probably not by accident; which means, you're either a connoisseur of horror (H.P. Lovecraft, Henry James, etc.); or an aspiring writer or seeking some other profession in the literary business. And that should be the readers, too. If YOU do happen to stumble upon this book, and you like . . . let's say 'Twilight' . . . well, this book is not for you. And, if you're a connoisseur of contemporary horror (Stephen King, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon), then I still can't highly recommend this book. Because, you must understand, that nothing really happens in the book. It's how the book is written that "sort of" makes it worthwhile. Honestly Blackwood does speak more clearly than H.P. Lovecraft and describes the horror a bit more crisply, but what hurts is that it's not as odd as H.P. Lovecraft.

WHO IT IS FOR:
Which comes to point of who this book is for: aspiring horror writers--and that's about it. Because, firstly, reading this to be entertained is a joke, because it's not an entertaining book. It's not even a very scary book (though there are moments of "implied" horror"--but that's just the writing style of the early 1900's; they (writers) didn't "show" the horror, they just "explained" it).

BUY IT ON EBOOK:
Don't spend your money on paperback or hardcover. Just buy it free on your Kindle or whatever it is you have. It's worth a quick read; it's worth owning in your bookshelf (unless you're a fanatical collector of all horror novels ever written, then go ahead.

ALSO:
If you are an aspiring horror writer with a kindle, there's A BUNCH of words to highlight and add to your grammar toolbox! Sadly that's the greatest part of the story: the words.

I learned about this story after reading that H. P. Lovecraft considered it the best piece of weird fiction he'd ever read. This story does not disappoint; the imagery and atmosphere pulled me in to the point where I couldn't put it down and finished it in one sitting. Would recommend to anyone and everyone!

For those interested in early examples of "cosmic terror" that influenced later writers such as Lovecraft or Leiber, there's no better place to start. The dark and sinister mood evoked in this novella is almost unmatched. The feeling of helpless humanity versus the unfathomable is perfectly done. And the free Kindle version reads just fine.

An excellent longer short story! Almost a novella. I've read that Lovecraft considered this his favorite short story, and it's no wonder why. Blackwood's tale here has a very Lovecraftian feel to it, and I'm not surprised it had a major influence upon Lovecraft the writer. Published in 1907, modern readers might find this tale a bit slow, as I did at first, but it does get going in an eerie fashion that is quite superb. Truly glad I read this one.

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English author noted for the remarkable number of "weird fiction" stories that he wrote.

"The Willows" details a canoe journey down the Danube by two adventures. They enter an extensive flooded swamp filled with a vast sea of low willow-bushes. A mood of dread and unease overshadows our unnamed voyagers. Blackwood maintains this gloomy mood by allusions to the noise of rushing water, branch movements and cloud formations. What he does not do, to his everlasting credit, is drag on stages some nefarious entity but uses the senses to convey a convincing atmosphere of dread.

An excellent story of the supernatural by a masterful writer.