Curfew

By -
Curfew and Other Eerie Tales, by L. M. Boston

I bought this book on my UK trip and have been saving it for October!  L. M. Boston wrote several creepy stories in the early 1930s, but only three were ever published (each in different anthologies).  The stories were found among her papers and published together in this collection, along with a short play suitable for young amateurs to put on. 

 The stories are really pretty creepy!  I enjoyed them a lot.  They are similar in style to M. R. James' stories, in that they have a kind of domestically-flavored horror, and frequently feature children, but Boston is less tidy in her endings; they are left open and mysterious, with no solid conclusion.

The play, "The Horned Man," is set at a country manor house in the reign of King James I, who has sent witchfinders to roust out any witches there might be around.  The two older daughters of the house, bored and mischievous, try to curry favor with the official in hopes of being whisked off to court, but he has motives of his own for his work.

There is also an introduction by Robert Lloyd Parry, who sometimes gives performances at the Manor, reading M. R. James stories in the dark.  Oh, how I wish I could go to one of those!

Dialogue from the story "Pollution:"
"They behave, with their smoke and slag heaps, as if they had killed the very forces of nature. But nature has a dual personality.  They may think its beauty not worth bothering about, but it may still have surprises for them more hideous than they expect."
The book itself is lovely.  Published by Swan River Press, it is a hardback book with a 19th-century painting of the Manor on the cover.  Then the dust jacket features a painting by Lucy Boston's close friend Elizabeth Vellacott; a few of her paintings are on show at the Manor.

Comments

  1. Kristen M.October 20, 2016 at 12:52 AM

    What a perfect book for the season! I'm actually dipping back into MR James' stories now. It's surprising how these older stories still have the ability to send shivers down a modern spine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TinaOctober 21, 2016 at 7:53 AM

    I'll by it was hard to wait until October, great book.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoyOctober 21, 2016 at 7:14 PM

    The perfect souvenir from your trip! What a pleasure to get to rid it in October.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more