Robert Aickman's position in the world of fantastic literature is a strange one - on the one hand he was heavily influential on authors like Neil Gaiman, on the other his work has the tendency to be very much out of print most of the time. The second hand availability of the books is spotty, what is available tends to be somewhat overpriced.
Nonetheless I was able to acquire my first collection of some of his "strange stories", as he called them, and am positively enthusiastic. What we have here is the work of an author with a very British voice, sometimes deceptively stiff sounding, in truth precise, often highly ironic, but still graced with the ability to somehow and puzzlingly use his distancing style for full emotional effect.
"Strange Stories" really is the best phrase to describe these pieces - they are at once absolutely realistic in their characterizations and the tangibility of the details of the world they describe and utterly puzzling and unpredictable in their use of the fantastic.
Based on this book, I can't recommend Aickman's work highly enough. And it's just gotten easier to get hold of his work. "Faber Finds", Faber & Faber's new print-on-demand imprint has three of Aickman's collections in its program, for a reasonable price.
For further explorations of Aickman and his work, this site is a fine starting point.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment