Painted Devils

This is a collection of nine of Aickman's eerie stories, five of which are published here for the first time. I always find this author unsettling: the words and sentences are lucid, even elegant, but the plots inspire strong feelings of confusion and uncertainty because it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the horror lies. Aickman never comes at you head on. Even the titles of some of Aickman's stories, and the epigraphs, obscure rather than enlighten. The stories usually feature a protagonist who undergoes a bizarre, probably supernatural, life-changing experience. A common theme is his search for an underlying pattern, or meaning, which may not exist. Aickman makes effective use of symbol and allusion, much more strongly in some stories than others. Even the names of the characters (Mrs. Iblis, Phyrnne) seem charged with secret meaning. I found the strongest stories in this collection to be Ravissante and Ringing the Changes, but I recommend the entire collection highly.

Although some reviewers describe Robert Aickman's work as being "unclassifiable", I believe it falls squarely in the Horror genre, within the subgenre often known as "quiet" or "psychological" horror. I also believe he is one of the greatest practitioners ever of the Horror writing craft, and should be required reading both for fans of the genre and aspiring horror writers. Horror is not about a guy in a hockey mask, high body counts, or nonstop action. Horror is internal. Good horror provokes a primitive visceral response of fear or unease in the reader. Aickman is a master of this kind of writing. His stories often provoke the reader to think: "I'm not really sure what's going on here but something very creepy is happening." The ambiguity heightens the feeling of menace. His stories are often laced with a dry English humor. I often find myself chuckling while reading them. But make no mistake, these are not quaint English ghost stories. While subtly told, his stories often deal with themes of incest, necrophilia, fetishism, monstrous offspring, and insanity. They are often structured to consist of an overlay of a fairly commonplace story beneath which something much darker is going on, something which asserts itself more and more as the story progresses. This is a fine collection. "Ravissamante", "Ringing the Changes", "Larger than Oneself","The School Friend", "Marriage", and "My Poor Friend" are all excellent. "The Houses of the Russians" was more of a standard ghost tale, and atypical for Aickman.

Aickman's books are hard to find in the U.S., but his weird tales are among the best ever written, and it is definitely worth the time involved to scour used bookstores for his stories. Aickman is a ghost story writer in the classic English tradition of M.R. James, E.F. Benson, and H. Russell Wakefield, but his tales are more haunting and mysterious than those of his predecessors. The main difference is that, while the earlier writers often took great pains to leave no loose ends, Aickman seems to delight in ambiguity and uncertainty. For example, in the story "Ringing the Changes," the heroine gets caught up in a dance involving the recently dead in a small town, but it is never made entirely clear what happens. The action is off-screen, as it were, and the main witness really doesn't say much. There's a hit that something sexual may have been involved, but it is never resolved. The story ends: "She seemed to have forgotten Gerald, so that he was able to examine her closely for a moment. It was the first time he had done so since the night before. Then, once more, she became herself. In those previous seconds Gerald had become aware of something dividing them which neither of them would ever mention or forget."There are nine stories in "Painted Ghosts," but only three of them appraoch being standard ghost stories ("The Houses of the Russians," "The Waiting Room," and "My Poor Friend"). "Ravissante" involves a presence, but not really a ghost, and some strange animals. "The View" seems to be heavily influenced by European folktales of men who become enthralled by the fairies. "Ringing the Changes" involves the dead, but in more physical form than mere ghosts. "The School Friend" may involve a ghost, and certainly involves a monstrous baby that is heard but not seen. "Marriage" may or may not even have supernatural elements in it, depending on what you think of the main character's sanity. "Larger than Oneself" involves nothing less than the appearance of God. These pocket descriptions may give some idea of what these stories are about, but they do not hint at the richness and strangeness of the stories themselves. Some of the tales raise more questions than they answer, which is what makes them worth hunting down and reading.

As a modern virtuoso of atmospheric horror, Robert Aickmaninjects each of his "strange stories" with a lingering, surreal terror. "Painted Devils" is all the more disturbing for the recurring themes that echo down the chilly corridors of this nine story collection. The most pronounced of these themes are doomed romance, communal hauntings, and abominable, monstrous offspring. A typical story begins with the protagonist venturing into the unknown, perhaps going to a new country or city, though sometimes the change is as simple as beginning a new job or visiting the theatre. There an unexpected friendship or love affair forms, and suddenly great gaps appear in the protagonist's conception of reality. In Aickman's world children are not always cute or even harmless, neither sex nor love brings contented bliss, and the dead don't always stay in the ground, nor are their spirits carted conveniently away to either heaven or hell. In "The View," a man named Carfax is recovering from a vague illness. His doctor suggests taking a long holiday at an island retreat. On the boat Carfax meets a woman who is the sole inhabitant of a small mansion. She opens her home to him, and they slip effortlessly into an affair. Carfax is an artist and attempts several drawings around the mansion, becoming alarmed as the surrounding landscape seems to shift somehow from day to day. Carfax might live forever with his lover in their isolated paradise if only he could accept this disturbing, irrational phenomenon, but of course he can't. "Ringing the Changes," probably an homage to Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," tells of a honeymoon couple who choose their destination from a guidebook. This fateful decision leaves them stranded in the small, dreary, seaside town of Holihaven. The town is saturated with a terrible, fishy sea-stench; the water has rolled back far from the town, leaving a deep shoreline of muck; and worst of all, the odd inhabitants are obviously up to something infernal with their late-night bell ringing. These stories have nothing to do with the heavy-handed, popular, shock horror usually associated with the genre. There are no movie monsters here, no blood-soaked demoniacs or ritualistic serial killers. Aickman's tradition is that of Lovecraft, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, where the ambient eeriness is enough to stop a heart. His signature technique is a sort of narrative ambiguity. If Aickman's characters lose their metaphysical footing along the way, so do his readers. For instance, in "The Houses of the Russians" a character has a close brush with fate outside a pub. Apparently he is nearly run down in the street, and his escape is something of a miracle. Yet Aickman never gives a clear picture of the scene. As the man enters the pub, we receive the incident secondhand, just as many of the pub's customers do. Aickman pulls the rug out from under us, initiating a momentum that sends us scrambling ahead for hearsay, conjecture

The late Robert Aickman is generally considered by aficionados of horror fiction to be the 20th century's greatest writer of ghost stories, if not the greatest of all time. This is understandable, but a bit ironic, as Aickman wrote very few tales that involve the obvious appearance of a ghost, which is probably why he preferred to describe his work as "strange stories." It would be difficult to find a more appropriate label. Strange they are, to put it mildly. They're also dreamlike, unsettling, and completely original. Like a David Lynch film, they speak directly to the subconscious and affect the reader in ways that are difficult to describe. These stories often unnerve you even though you can't explain exactly why. Aickman also posesses a sense of the absurd that is similar to Lynch's, and many of his stories contain oddly humorous moments. Aickman's stories are deeply enigmatic, and cry out for multiple readings, which often dispel some of the mystery, but never all of it. One thing that seems clear is that the events in the stories arise from or are mirroring the psychological states of their protagonists. "Marriage" in particular packs a powerful Freudian wallop. All of the tales in Painted Devils are, to some degree, literally haunting; you'll find yourself turning them over in your mind for days and weeks and months after reading them. Anyone interested in challenging, unique fiction will find this book thrilling.