Review: The Wine Dark Sea, Robert Aickman

Sometimes, it's all about synchronicity. Like how I was walking across town shortly after Time's Fool had been released when a nice local gentleman stops me, tells me he's read it and enjoyed it. Have I, he asks, ever read any Robert Aickman?
Who?
Wrote ghost stories. Apparently my work reminded him of it.  

And what should my excellent godparents have got me for Christmas this year but a copy of Aickman's The Wine Dark Sea? With such a lovely co-incidence in place, how could I resist reading it?

And reader, I must say, I am terribly flattered.

Aickman is nasty. Cold, a little detached, his writing is wonderfully chilling, creating quiet, horrible ghost stories with some moments of gorgeously dry observation cutting through it all. This is the real world, stifling and mundane, shot through with horror that is never lessened by explanation. This is not the vaulting, heartless skies of Lovecraft, this is an insiduous little curl of darkness in your very heart.

Of the collection, my favourites were probably The Fetch, and Never Visit Venice, just because... *shudder*. Perfect build of atmosphere against the gothic set pieces. Love it.

Look, alysdragon dot blogspot isn't a book reccomendation site, really, or a review blog, or even - as I'd once hoped it would be - a criticism blog, really it's just a place I come to write about books in whatever form I see fit. Normally, this takes the form of reviews because normally my response to reading is weighing the good and the bad of any given book and trying to work out who else might enjoy - even if I didn't. Sometimes, my emotions hijack me and I want to rave about something, or else throw it in to the firey pits of perdition. But occasionally, a book is simply mine. I'll read something and not want to judge it, or pull it to pieces, or even reccomend it. I just want to put it on my eternal reread shelf and stroke it occasionally because it is mine and I have just discovered it.

I could talk about Aickman's politics, or his prose, or my analysis of his stories, or the fact that he actually seems to like women and the surprising amount of lesbianism in this book, and I might do all of that when I get a chance. 

But for now I just want to say with credit to a local reader and to my godparents, I've just discovered Robert Aickman.

This book is mine.