Customer Reviews

The Wine-Dark Sea

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I strongly recommend the sadly hard-to-find fiction of Robert Aickman to ghost story aficionados, lovers of British literature, horror fiction readers willing to try something different and challenging, or just lovers of the short story form. Aickman's compelling, beautifully written, dreamlike stories are often puzzling, always atmospheric, and generally extremely memorable. The title story, a "strange story" (as the author liked to call his fiction) of a British tourist who journeys to a very strange Mediterranean island and meets three even stranger women, is typical of Aickman's bizarre, unsettling fiction. These stories are among his most accessible (although some readers will still undoubtedly find them opaque). If you are willing to risk being confused, Aickman's fiction is well worth your time. If you ever come across a copy of his first novel "The Late Breakfasters," which I don't believe has ever been published in this country, I would recommend that book perhaps even more highly.

'The Wine Dark Sea' is a fabulous collection by an unjustly neglected author. Robert Aickman writes stories unparalleled by any other writer. It's not hyperbole to call him the finest spooky story writer of the 20th century.

This particular collection, published several years after Aickman's death, gathers together several of his later stories. My favorite story is the eerie 'The Wine-Dark Sea' which tells the tale of a vacationer in Greece who, against the admonishments of his Greek hosts, takes a boat out to a deserted island. Once there he finds three exotic women who claim to be sorceresses. What follows is a magnificent story of magic, love, and betrayal. Quite simply one of the finest novellas I've ever read.

The rest of the stories in the collection are all fine reading, but none approaches the level of the title story. Of particular note is 'The Trains', the creepy story of two girls bumming through Europe who stumble across a mansion with a mysterious past.

As a previous reviewer noted, Aickman's stories aren't easy to read. You get the most out of an Aickman story if you go slowly, read every word, and occasionally re-read paragraphs. This method, combined with his lengthy stories, means that one story can take you up to an hour to read. It's a lengthy process, but the stories are worth it.

I'm only exaggerating a little when I say that it's a tragedy Aickman's stories are out-of-print. There was a very ..., complete collection released in the UK in 2000, but that doesn't help us Americans!

Robert Aickman's "strange stories" are far from the usual horror fare, and readers who prefer straightforward, no-nonsense spectres are well-advised to steer clear of Aickman's work. But if you are a fan of the beautifully-crafted supernatural stories of Henry James and/or Walter de la Mare, Aickman will be *essential* reading for you. At his best, his stories are small masterpieces of the uncanny that are all the more disturbing because it's often not entirely clear what has happened. *The Wine Dark Sea* is an excellent collection, which brings together a number of Aickman's most evocative tales. Try "The Inner Room" if you're skeptical--if it doesn't work for you, then Aickman may not be your cup of tea. Some of the stories in this volume are a bit uncharacteristically direct--"The Fetch and "Never Visit Venice" for example--but even they have layers of multiple meaning that make them very rich and rewarding reading. ...................... so don't give up on finding some of the stories of this great and sadly under-appreciated master of the supernatural story.

This is the only book entirely by Aikman I have, and it has given me enormous pleasure. The title story is my favourite, though "The Trains" (I think that's the title - book is not to hand)was delightfully unsettling. Aikman, similar to Blackwood, weaves an atmosphere that surrounds the reader all too snugly, making the impact of each occurrence in a tale similar to having the wind knocked gently out of oneself. I first met RA in an anthology of 'ghost' stories, his selection being "The Hospice". Not a true horror story per se, but discomfitting, with a lasting, lingering impression which is still with me. Based on that reading, I've been collecting what I can find of his since. Nothing personal, but with Stephan King hardcovers on the remainder tables (and everywhere else!), it is a shame that this master of the "strange story" should be allowed to go out of print! Find him if you can, and settle in for a memorable and probably disquieting reading experience.

Enjoy!

I strongly recommend the sadly hard-to-find fiction of Robert Aickman to ghost story aficionados, lovers of British literature, horror fiction readers willing to try something different and challenging, or just lovers of the short story form. Aickman's compelling, beautifully written, dreamlike stories are often puzzling, always atmospheric, and generally extremely memorable. The title story, a "strange story" (as the author liked to call his fiction) of a British tourist who journeys to a very strange Mediterranean island and meets three even stranger women, is typical of Aickman's bizarre, unsettling fiction. These stories are among his most accessible (although some readers will still undoubtedly find them opaque). If you are willing to risk being confused, Aickman's fiction is well worth your time. If you ever come across a copy of his first novel "The Late Breakfasters," which I don't believe has ever been published in this country, I would recommend that book perhaps even more highly.

Robert Aickman was a writer of what he called 'strange stories', but of the eight stories in this collection 'The Fetch' is the only piece resembling a traditional ghost story. Aickman's work contains acute psychological insight; he is master of a unique and very modern form of horror where the protagonist often doesn't know what he or she has done to bring about disaster. This is seen at its starkest in 'The Inner Room' (the first story I read by Aickman and still my favourite - a truly haunting piece which will stay with me for as long as I live), and in the title story, where protagonist Grigg allows "the last living rock" be killed...but doesn't actually know what he did to let it happen.

The twentieth century was a time of disorientations, when Europeans were walking "on overgrown paths" as Knut Hamsun famously put it. So how is one supposed to act in such situations? There is something, a hidden room, to which we don't have access...

Aickman reveals subtle and ambiguous sympathies for fascism and Nazism in this book - admittedly far more ambiguous than those of Hamsun. In the final story of this volume, 'Into the Woods', a Polish officer asserts there was "darkness on both sides" in what Aickman describes elsewhere ('The Inner Room') as "the late, misguided war". And in 'Never Visit Venice' Aickman mentions an inscription left "by the previous regime" (i.e. Mussolini's) to the effect that a minute as a lion is preferable to a lifetime as an ass. This has been left up, not just for difficulty of access but also apparently for deeper reasons.

In 'Your Tiny Hand is Frozen', the central character Edmund St. Jude is a member of an old, aristocratic family, and an authority on obscure 18th century poets. St. Jude (named for the patron saint of lost causes?) struggles to fit in with his contemporary surroundings. This mirrors Aickman's own deep suspicion of modernity. In another story, a character observes that "the Greeks used to decorate their houses with flowers and sing songs. Now they buy tinsel from shops and listen to radios."

'Never Visit Venice' demonstrates Aickman's antipathy to the modern world at its starkest. Mass tourism has made the world into "a single place, not worth leaving home to see." The protagonist Henry Fern has something inside him which makes him different, something indefinable which he would like to be rid of, yet at the same time which he is sure is the best thing about him. This undefinable something acts as a barrier between Fern and other people, and holds him back in his career. He feels work and relationships are largely a charade, and one girlfriend accuses him of being "too soulful". He dreams of a woman with whom he attains understanding and affinity. But that woman turns out to be...Death.

"The city fathers are all dead. Everyone in Venice is dead. It is a dead city. Perhaps it died when 'Tristan und Isolde' was composed here." Aickman feels cut off from the feminine, something which emerges more explicitly in a story of his not included in this collection, 'Ringing the Changes' (which itself is something of a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth').

Aickman is not without humour, though, as shown in the grotesque and hilarious 'Growing Boys'. The boys' repulsive father, a hypocritical, Guardian-reading leftist called Phineas Morke, is seen by his own wife as resembling "an immensely long anchovy, always with the same expression at the end of it."

'Into the Woods' delves into more esoteric regions. This tale of insomniacs (read: initiates) whose knowledge makes them feared by the general populace is an allegory about finding the true Self, which very few ever do. The forest, or Self, has "no beginning or ending", similar to Jung's description of the Self as a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. This Self cannot be quantified, but contrary to the claims of certain totalitarian empiricists, it most definitely exists...and no one knew this better than Robert Aickman, one of the finest supernatural writers of the twentieth century.

If you have a taste for truly original horror stories; stories such that you will never anticipate where the tale is going until its over; stories that you will probably never forget; then how I envy you if you haven't yet read Robert Aickman. Discovering his stories was one of my pleasantest surprises in reading. These strange tales go beyond surreal. They seem to me to mine some source that predates civilization and its armor against forces felt to be sinister and inhuman. There is a rich literary flavor to many of these stories, but that is only a sort of backdrop that doesn't interfere with the telling. Also, they have a distinctly English flavor which seems to go hand in glove with the subject matter. In my estimation Aickman was the master of the horror genre and a strong contender among writers of fine literature in general.

aickman's stories in 'the wine dark sea' are cataloged as `supernatural' and also described in a publishers' weekly review as `tales of suspenseful unease'. both descriptions strike me as accurate. his stories aren't quite horror stories, that is, not the horror story of violence visited upon the innocent, the unexpected, or the over confident person caught off guard by perpetrators lacking remorse who believe themselves outside society's rules. there are a couple of horror stories in this collection, just as there are ghost stories, but aickman, even at his most grisly, is a pedestrian writer, pedestrian being, admittedly, a loaded word. not only is aickman's style a pastoral prose walk in the woods of great britian, with two trips to rural switzerland and to venice, his characters are tireless walkers who encounter problems when they stop walking, as in the story, 'never visit venice' when henry fern ends his peregrinations of the watery city by stepping into a gondola, or when stephen hooper in 'the stains', halts his solitary walks to talk with nell, a strange girl in the woods.

some of aickman's characters live in cities, usually london, but they find reason to travel to rural areas. once within the wooded surroundings there's usually a house from which the character leaves for a long walk, or a house found during a long walk. even in 'never visit venice' the water becomes a grid for the dense woods in his other stories.

aickman's few chosen objects, woods, houses, as well as children, and the activity of walking, establishes a familiarity of place found in classic childhood fairy tales that for odd reasons, with their poisoned apples, conniving dwarfs and wives with carving knives, children are expected to sleep. such places aickman revisits as an adult, after all the happy endings believed to have happened fall flat. with aickman's adult tales there is that unease of lessons which should had been learned, perhaps some step not taken, and the step that should had been taken. in the story, 'the inner room', a doll house, a child's toy, provides a frightful lesson in responsibility regarding the importance of play, as well as becoming symbol for the adult houses throughout aickman's stories.

high marks for good writing and good storytelling not busied by blazing effects and the blare of screeching vehicles out of control.

What the other reviewers say is true. Aickman's stories are painstakingly crafted, or at least appear that way, to maximize a feeling of subtle dread and darkness. There is rarely blood or death, but horror is always lurking, in these and other more poignant forms, just beyond the periphery. The titular story is indeed excellent, but I'm partial to the gloomier "The Trains", "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen" (which actually raised goosebumps once or twice), "Into the Wood", and "The Stains".

Highly recommended for horror enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike. These are just great stories!

Aickman is the best "horror story" writer you've never heard of. Those who prefer head-on, go-for-the-throat type terror will not like Aickman. Though beautifully atmospheric, and yes, haunting, his prose is often thorny, and as one reviewer noted, challenging to read. Aickman's frequent use of the passive voice can be slightly irritating at times, but no doubt he used it purposely. Sometimes the subject is not important, and in any case the reader is often not sure who or what is performing the action. No doubt Aickman intended it this way. More oblique than direct, his stories are often like something glimpsed from the side of the eye. Though it isn't in this collection, "The Hospice" is an excellent example. It also features Aickman's dry English wit.
"The Stains" (in this collection) is especially creepy, with beautiful descriptions of the English countryside.Believe me, you'll never look at mosses and lichens in the same way again.
"The Fetch" is more straightforward, but not a story to read alone at night. Aickman bloodless, finely wrought tales appeal to the mind, not the gut. It's a shame there aren't more of his kind on the horror circuit today.