Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Ghost Stories of almost anyone, December 6, 1999
The best ghost stories of J S LeFanu are among the best ghost stories ever written. This is an extremely fine collection, including all the stories from LeFanu's greatest book, "In a Glass Darkly", plus more than a dozen others. There are regional tales of the author's native Ireland; traditional tales of supernatural revenge; and, as the title says, much if not all of LeFanu's best work, which prefigures the best modern horror in its psychological sophistication and absolute lack of the sentiment and moralising common to many Victorian ghost story writers (as well as to far too many of the moderns). Is "Green Tea", for instance, the story of a supernatural visitation or merely, as the narrator would have us believe, of "the process of a poison"? Is Captain Barton, in "The Familiar", haunted by guilt alone or by something more? The collection also includes LeFanu's most famous story, the subtle vampire novella "Carmilla"; and the horrifying, tragic, repulsive and wholly inexplicable masterpiece, "Schalken the Painter". Grab it; read it; lie awake at night.
|
|
|
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Powerful Collection of Ghost Stories Ever Published, May 12, 2001
I have probably read this book more often than any other book on my shelves. In the creation of mood, the elaboration of motifs and their own inexorable progression beyond the veil of reality into the numinous, these tales have never been excelled. As highly respected a practitioner of the ghost story as Montague Rhodes James wrote:"He stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories. That is my deliberate verdict, after reading all the supernatural tales I have been able to get hold of. Nobody sets the scene better than he, nobody touches in the the effective detail more deftly." I first read "Green Tea" in the mammoth Modern Library anthology GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL at about the age of 11 after reading several tales by Poe. Poe I had found fascinating, feverish and disturbing, but this tale terrified me. Unlike Poe's often dream-like excursions, the settings in Le Fanu's works are quite concretely of this world. The characters are tied to this world by the same dull occupations and concerns with commerce or law that dog us to this day. However, a subtle intrusion is soon seen or otherwise makes itself felt, and from this point the conclusion, no matter how surprising, is inevitable. Nothing will save the seemingly upright man from "The Familiar." Nothing anyone does in their ineffectual way will keep the beloved of "Schalken the Painter" from her fate as a death-bride. A more lyrical version of the same motif appears in a less unified, but equally fine tale set in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion in Ireland. "Squire Toby's Will" both as document and motive force will have its way no matter how what is done in an attempt to circumvent it. The implications of the haunting in "Green Tea," wherein a man falls subject to demonic harrassment by making his presence know to those from outside through the slightest of infractions - I am abusing caffeine by way of sipping an enormous glass of green tea as I write this - terrified me when I read it 30-odd years ago and continues to terrify me to this day. "An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House," with its seemingly inexplicable haunting, "Mr. Justice Harbottle," which raises the question, "Whose justice are we seeing here?" "Carmilla", whose final line hints that the victimization may have ended only with the heroine's death, and the short novel "The Haunted Baronet," in which nature itself seems to be imbued with the evil genius presiding over the title character's doom are just a few of the tales in this volume that have haunted me for decades. There is nothing else quite like them in literature, their mixture of fantasy and reality, illusion and verisimilitude is so assured. As bonuses to an already excellent volume, E. F. Bleiler's introduction and notes are exemplary and though a large paperback, it is solidly bound in signatures, with durable, laminated cover stock, uses acid free paper and is better made than a majority of hardcovers.
|
|
|
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deceased judges, a vampire, & a nasty supernatural monkey, October 22, 2004
Until the Dover edition of Sheridan Le Fanu's stories appeared in 1964, this nineteenth-century Irish author's tales were almost impossible to find. This is a shame, since M.R. James considered Le Fanu the best of all ghost story writers (I would put M.R. James at the top of my list, and J. S. Le Fanu, second). According to Jack Sullivan in "Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood," "...Nearly all of the early twentieth-century writers in the [supernatural story] field paced and structured their narratives in the Le Fanu manner."
This edition has an introduction by E.F. Bleiler who limns a brief biography of the author, and his influence on the ghost story writers who followed him. The sixteen stories in this collection range from 1837 to 1871. One is an essay presented as non-fiction, i.e. "An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House." Concerning this essay, Bleiler states, "Personally, I am inclined to accept Le Fanu's strong statement that he was not writing fiction in the guise of fact, and that he is simple reproducing what others had told him."
Some of the stories are obscured by dialect, e.g. "Madame Crowl's Ghost" and parts of "The Haunted Baronet." Lines like "...twad gar ye dodder to hear him" can usually be worked out in the context of the plot and Le Fanu's stories are worth the extra effort. Quoting Jack Sullivan again, "Le Fanu's tales suggest a world in which we are unbearably alone in situations of escalating awfulness." The little maid is sleeping alone in one of Madame Crowl's chambers when the old beldame's ghost appears, "her eyes as wide as saucers, and her face like the fiend himself." Rose in "Schalken the Painter" is deserted by her guardian and minister after she begs them not to leave her alone, and she is doomed. In one of my favorite stories, "An Account of some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," two medical students move into a house once owned by an infamous, hanging judge. They are afraid to tell each other about their supernatural encounters for fear of being mocked--at least until one of them almost dies.
This book is the finest collection of Le Fanu stories ever compiled, and all ghost story connoisseurs should hasten to read it.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Ambrose Bierce
by Michael Cox
