A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

I have a confession to make. I often write reviews, planning to post them at some future date—after I have let my thoughts on the book simmer a little longer and given the review a final edit—but often those reviews don’t get posted at all. My review of Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour is one of them. I loved this book and thought about it long after reading it. I had planned to share my review in the summertime. Well, summer came and went, and what do you know? This review was still sitting in the drawer. So this is a book that is set in the warm weather, but I actually think Elizabeth Taylor’s writing lends well to the quiet, still days of winter. I will explain. 

A couple of years ago I read another of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, Palladian. At the time, I thought it was very well written, but maybe a bit dull. 

Perhaps the setting of my reading was partially to blame, as I mostly read it while sitting down at the harbour in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I honestly can’t remember a thing about the novel now. Even reading the blurb doesn’t ring any bells. It’s quite likely that, for me anyway, Elizabeth Taylor novels are best read in a quiet, distraction-free environment.

Anyway, I’d heard wonderful things about Elizabeth Taylor so decided to keep trying. I’m so glad I did!

She wanted to watch the great dappled waves riding in to the foot of the cliffs, breaking and crumbling and scurrying back in confusion, to be conscious of the pulse of the lighthouse, to see once more visitors with folded raincoats stepping into rowing-boats named Nancy or Marigold or Adeline; the moving water, the sauntering people, the changing sky, the wrinkled moonlight on the sea, and fishermen coming out of the Anchor on Saturday nights, standing round the lamp-post singing Sweet Genevieve. 

A View of the Harbour is a subtle novel. At first, I thought it might be a great deal too subtle for me. But by about the end of chapter two I started to get the characters straight and I realised that because this is a novel where not too much happens in terms of plot, you start to pay attention to all the little things that get missed in easier to read books.

By the time I finished this book I was wondering why in all my time at university I had never heard Elizabeth Taylor mentioned. I hear you Elizabeth Taylor fans saying, “You must have been taking the wrong courses.” Well, quite. She is a writer that is meant to be studied. Although, the casual reader could enjoy this book just fine. I know I did!

This book is set in the seemingly sleepy coastal village of Newly, where everyone knows everyone, and knows everything about everyone else. Well, almost.

Tory is divorced and involved with her neighbour and best friend’s husband. Beth is so absorbed by her writing that she doesn’t notice her husband is in love with Tory. Their teenage daughter is more perceptive than her mother and is disgusted by the two.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Bracey, an invalid who drives her daughters to distraction with her changeable moods and thirst for information on the goings on in the village. There is a real sense of claustrophobia in the houses around the harbour, but especially in theirs. 

When a retired naval officer visits the town with the intention of painting the picturesque harbour, he can’t help but stir things up.

There are so many real moments of both humour and longing in this novel. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. Oh, and terrifically well written. So well written that I need to go back and reread Palladian and see what it is that I missed. This time I will take my own advice and read it in a more distraction free setting, because Elizabeth Taylor's writing is something to be savoured.

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Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

I picked up Christianna Brand’s 1955 novel, Tour de Force, hot on the heels of finishing another British Library Crime Classic, Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins. It crossed my mind as I was trying to decide what to read after finishing The Wheel Spins that whatever book I landed on was going to have a tough act to follow. I was a bit wary of starting another Crime Classic, if I’m being honest, because it couldn’t possibly be as good as The Wheel Spins, or so I thought.

I could not have prepared myself for Christianna Brand’s quality of writing, plotting, and character development. Of course, I had heard positive reviews about her books, but as we all know, taste is subjective and what one person loves, another might loath. But in my opinion, the hype around Christianna Brand’s writing is well deserved. Now, in some ways this one is a very different book from The Wheel Spins, so I hesitate to pit these two against each other. The Wheel Spins is atmospheric and tense. There is a lot of imagery and fine writing in that book. The other thing that makes it special is that no murder takes place on the page. On the other hand, Tour de Force follows the traditional trajectory of a body being found a quarter of the way through the book, which is not a bad thing. There is a reason mystery novels tend to follow this progression, because it works well as it both provides the author with enough time to set up the world of the novel, and then on the other side of that there is ample time remaining to solve the murder.

Another feature of the book that I recognised and was both intrigued by and a bit worried about is that the premise of Tour de Force reminded me of an Agatha Christie. Not necessarily a bad sign, as there are many books by her that I love. But Evil Under the Sun isn’t an absolute favourite. It is a fine book and I will likely find myself reading it again in the future, but it didn’t blow me away. (Christie fans, please don’t come for me.) Similar to Evil Under the Sun, Tour de Force is about a detective going on holiday to the seaside. Instead of Hercule Poirot, our detective is Inspector Cockrill or Cockie, as he is so endearingly referred. Brand even has her detective refer to Poirot, so perhaps she was aware that her readers might make the connection.

It was exasperating to be able to do so little, to feel so hamstrung without his little black bag, the graphite and the foot-rule and the magnifying-glass and all the rest of it, backed up by the vast departments of Scotalanda Yarda. All one could do was to emulate M. Poirot, use the little grey cells and observe the psychological behaviour pattern of those concerned. (158)

Cockrill also refers to Norbert Davis’s Detective Inspector Carstairs on more than one occasion and Cockrill has brought one of his detective books along with him on holiday to read on the beach. The Case of the Leaping Blonde is the title of that detective novel, which I suspect Brand had a giggle over when inserting it into her book. Although, Cockrill does not seem to align himself with that fictitious hardboiled detective.

And on the terrace above them, Inspector Cockill stired restlessly in his deck-chair and tried to get back to Carstairs and could not concentrate. Carstairs never fell in love: perhaps because his eyes were so constantly narrowed that he was unable to recognize a pretty girl when he saw one. Inspector Cockrill, on the other hand, recognized a pretty girl only too easily and nowadays sometimes worried in case he should grow into a dirty old man; and he could not help being fond of this particular girl — and sorry to see her making such a mess of things. (48)

Cockrill has flown from Britain to Italy on a package tour. After a bit of touring around, taking in the sights with a night here, a day there, the group ends up on a small island off the Italian coast, where they will spend the duration of the holiday. And what a holiday they have!

One of the group is murdered, and Cockrill believes it must be one of his fellow beachgoers that has done it. But as he spent the afternoon reading with a view of all of the suspects from his spot on the clifftop, it seems virtually impossible that any of them could have snuck away unnoticed to commit the crime.

So much for lying all day in the sun and reading his detective novel, like he had planned. He could just wait around for the local police force to find the murderer, only they aren’t so particular about who they charge with the crime, just so long as justice is seen to be done. After a brief stay inside the damp underground tomb they call a jail, Cockrill is determined that none of his fellow compatriots will be wrongfully committed. Did I mention that not even Cockrill is safe from wrongful arrest?

I hesitate to share too much about this book, because there are a few twists that are really very well done and I would hate to spoil. But I do want to give you a sample of Brand’s really wonderful writing.

It was half past four. In the sky the sun was high, glittering down upon the curly blue-green tiles of the hotel roofs, on the long lines of the walls, studded like a dovecot with rounded arches of windows and doorways, facing out over the sea. Behind the white buildings, the chill pines whispered together; mourning their lack of the colour and scent of the rose and geranium, the jasmine and myrtle, massed on the many-coloured, pebble-patterned terraces below: and it seemed to Inspector Cockrill, who on the whole is not given to fancies, that something of its cold breath struck through the windless heat of the afternoon. Despite his mistrust of the forthcoming performance, he found he could not stifle a rising excitement oddly at war with a sense of foreboding and dread. (190-191)

Isn’t that wonderful? Brand’s descriptions throughout the book of the setting and characters are so well-drawn. From the start, I never needed to remind myself of where the action was taking place and there was no confusion over the characters. From the start, I had a clear picture of what each of them looked like. We even get descriptions of the clothing characters are wearing, but without it dragging down the narrative, because the descriptions we get always have a purpose. No extemporaneous writing here!

And I think that ease of narrative is what makes this book particularly good. I appreciated the writing as I was reading, of course. But it is not until the very end that I fully realised just how brilliantly this story is woven. When you get to the end you will start to remember little throwaway tidbits that were actually breadcrumbs Brand left for us to find our way to the murderer.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Tour de Force for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

And I have to thank my lovely friend, Gina (@babsbelovedbooks on Instagram), for sending me two John Dickson Carr books for Christmas, which you can see in the image below. I cannot wait to read them! Thank you, Gina!

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The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White

As she listened to the gush of words behind her, Iris was again perplexed by the discrepancy between Miss Froy's personality and her appearance. It was as though a dryad were imprisoned within the tree-trunk of a withered spinster. (78)

Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, The Wheel Spins, attracted Alfred Hitchcock’s attention and in 1938 it was made into the film The Lady Vanishes. Before I had read the book, I thought the film had the better title. But now, I believe the film just has the more obvious title, and while that perhaps makes it more suited to cinema, The Wheel Spins is the superior choice for this novel. 

The Wheel Spins opens with Iris Carr on holiday in the mountains somewhere in Europe. Her friends and herself have made general nuisances of themselves during their stay, and destroyed the tranquil setting that no doubt would have attracted the other guests to the location. Iris, who, by the end of the trip, has grown tired of her friends, happily waves them off at the train station. Glad to see the back of them, she is looking forward to some quiet time in the remaining days of her holiday.

Her solitude becomes a bit too real when she gets lost in the mountains without food, water, map, or the means of asking directions. Because as well as not knowing the language, she is unable to tell the one person she comes across the name of the village where she is staying. So when it comes time for her to return home she is starting yearn for company, though she is barely able to acknowledge this herself. When one of her fellow guests, a vicar’s wife, extends an olive branch, Iris snaps it in two, making it perfectly clear she is not interested in making nice.  

Iris was awakened that night, as usual, by the express screaming through the darkness. Jumping out of bed, she reached the window in time to see it outline the curve of the lake with a fiery wire. As it rattled below the hotel, the golden streak expanded to a string of lighted windows, which, when it passed, snapped together again like the links of a bracelet.

After it had disappeared around the gorge, she followed its course by its pall of quivering red smoke. 

[…]

Once again she was flooded with home-hunger, even though her future address were an hotel. Mixed with it was a gust of foreboding—which was a legacy from the mountains.

“Suppose—something—happened, and I never came back.” 

At that moment she felt that any evil could block the way to her return. A railway crash, illness, or crime were possibilities, which were actually scheduled in other lives. They were happening all around her and at any time a line might give way in the protective square in her palm. (45)

Previously, she had been told that the lines on the palm of her hand formed a protective square, which Iris has been willing to believe keeps her from harm. Her experience in the mountains is the first time Iris has felt the weakness in her belief. Iris is coming to feel how vulnerable she is as a woman travelling in a foreign country without friends and not speaking the language.

While waiting at the station for the train that will start her on her journey home, she collapses and we begin to wonder if Iris’s feeling of foreboding wasn’t warranted. She wakes up not knowing how much time has passed. Overcome with panic that she has missed her train, she struggles to get up. But she is forced to rest and drink something. Still feeling ill and disoriented, she is bundled onto the train, a porter aids her in squeezing into a packed compartment as the train pulls away from the platform. She gets a cold feeling from people in the compartment, as though they don’t like her. But that doesn’t make any sense. They don’t even know her. It’s not like they could have talked to anyone from her hotel. Thankfully, a woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy, befriends Iris and noticing she doesn’t look well, takes her under her wing. Feeling better after a cup of tea, Iris drifts off to sleep.

When Iris awakes Miss Froy is no longer across from her. At first Iris assumes the woman has just stepped out of the compartment for a bit—a trip to the lavatory or the dining car would explain her absence—but as time goes on, Iris’s worry builds. The train is full to the brim, so she couldn’t have simply changed compartments. When Iris finally gets to the point of questioning her fellow passengers about the missing woman, they all say they don’t know who she is talking about. The suggestion is made that she has dreamt the woman up, and Iris herself admits that she was suffering from heatstroke. Could she have hit her head when she collapsed? Iris even begins to doubt herself, at first. But the more she thinks of all the details that chatty Miss Froy shared with her, Iris knows Miss Froy is not simply a figment of her imagination. She was too unexpected. Too unlike the person she appeared. She may have looked middle-aged and dowdy, but she was almost girlish in her behaviour and vocabulary. 

“Oh, isn’t all of this fun?”

Her pleasure was so spontaneous and genuine that Iris could not condemn it as gush. She stared doubtfully at the faded old gold plush window-curtains, the smutty tablecloth, the glass dish of cherry jam and then she glanced at her companion.

She received a vague impression of a little puckered face; but there was a sparkle in the faded blue eyes, and an eager note in the voice, which suggested a girl.

Afterwards, when she was trying to collect evidence of what she believed must be an extraordinary conspiracy, it was this discrepancy between a youthful voice and a middle-aged spinster, which made her doubt her own senses. In any case, her recollection was far from clear, for she did not remember looking consciously at her companion again.

The sun was blazing in through the window, so that she shaded her eyes with one hand most of the time she was having tea. But as she listened to the flow of excited chatter, she had the feeling that she was being entertained by some one much younger than herself. (73)

I just loved this book. Everything is against Iris, not least of all herself. For a person who is bored and doesn’t do much of anything, it is easy to imagine that she has never gone out of her way for anyone in her life. Frankly, as privileged young woman, she has never had to. Ethel Lina White does a fabulous job of laying the groundwork for Iris’s character, so by the time Iris gets on that train, we have a good idea of what she is like and what she would do in most circumstances. 

One of her fellow passengers, a young man offers to help, but he is as sceptical as everyone else about Iris’s claim that Miss Froy has disappeared.

“Have I got it right?” he asked. “Is this Miss Froy a complete stranger to you?”

“Of course.”

“Yet you’re nearly going crackers over her. You must be the most unselfish person alive. Really, it’s almost unnatural.”

“But I’m not,” admitted Iris truthfully. “It’s rather the other way round. That’s the amusing part. I can’t understand myself a bit.’

“Well, how did it start?”

“In the usual way. She was very kind to me—helpful, and all that, so that at first, I missed her because she wasn't at the back of me any more. And then, when every one declared I dreamed her, it all turned to a horrible nightmare. It was like trying to explain that every one was out of step but myself.”

“Hopeless. But why had you to prove that she was there?”

“Oh, can’t you understand? If I didn’t, I could never feel that anything, or any one, was real again?” (123)

If Iris had been travelling with even one other friend she would not have worried herself about Miss Froy. She likely wouldn’t have treated her disappearance with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders between pulls on her cigarette. And this begins to explain why I think The Wheel Spins is such a fantastic title. It is only by chance that a selfish person like Iris takes any interest in Miss Froy’s disappearance. As more and more of her fellow passengers plead ignorance or claim the woman didn’t exist, Iris realises that if the situation were reversed and something were to happen to her on that train, no one would do anything about it, except for Miss Froy. She feels sure Miss Froy would have caused a commotion and searched until she was found, because Miss Froy showed her a kindness when she needed it most, and Iris is sure Miss Froy is that sort of person. With each spin of the wheel, the fate of Miss Froy is put into question. Will the wheel of fortune spin in favour of Miss Froy, or not?

The wheel is part of “the great machine” which is capable of catching people up in one of its revolutions (183). This great machine might be the wheels of the train that can bring a person safely home, or not, which we can see from Iris’s feeling of foreboding in contrast to other characters in this book who also view this train from their windows and interpret the image with hope and anticipation. This intertwining of the unpredictability of Fortune’s Wheel with the wheels of the train conflates the idea that on this train ride fates will be decided and all of the passengers take a turn at spinning the wheel that decides the fate of Miss Froy, and Iris’s fate, too. 

The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy. (180)

Wheel imagery continues to appear in unexpected places throughout this book. At one point even “the drone of masculine voices” make a drumming sound “like the hum of a spinning wheel” as they decide a woman’s fate (225).

This is a beautifully written book, full of atmosphere, tension, and—a rare thing to find in a mystery thriller—hope. If you pick up one British Library Crime Classic this year, I highly recommend choosing this one.

Oh, and here’s a small spoiler, but I anticipate it will offer comfort to some, so I have decided to share it. This is a mystery with only the passing mention of a murder, but no actual murder on the page. The Wheel Spins is a very rare book, indeed.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Wheel Spins for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

*This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell's, which means I will make a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through one of these links. See Affiliate Disclosure at sidebar for details.

The Ghost Stories of Wilkie Collins edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes

I hope you all had a relaxing and fun festive season and a very happy New Year! We watched a lot of Christmassy movies, read as many seasonal books as we could, and ate just the right amount of sweets to keep us going. Well, we might have overindulged a touch! We had a lovely white Christmas, then a big melt with a ton of rain, but by New Year’s Eve the temperature dropped and snow fell across the countryside like a dusting of icing sugar. And it has snowed here every day since. Twelve days and counting! What a great excuse to curl up with a hot cup of tea by the fire and dip into some ghost stories. That is, right after you have exerted yourself outside with a brisk walk, of course! 

I had not read anything by Wilkie Collins since reading The Moonstone for a Victorian literature class in uni. I remember it was a favourite of many of my classmates, which surprised me, because I wasn’t blown away by it. However, when you are taking five English courses, all of which have you reading a minimum of one assigned novel per week, plus reading the current research, and writing essays, not to mention going to lectures and seminars, sometimes it can be hard to find joy in what you are reading. I always gravitated towards the novels I read before I started uni, but I’m guessing that had a lot to do with how I read before I started university. There was no rush to get through a book. I read in my leisure, and even when I was reading a weighty tome, it was for leisure.

So, as I said, I had not read any Wilkie Collins in a while, and what a shame that is, because I absolutely loved reading this collection. I grew up reading Charles Dickens, so the language of Collins, a contemporary and friend of Dickens, felt like slipping on a favourite sweater that had got pushed to the back of the drawer and forgotten. What a joy to find the sweater still fits!

“The Last Stage Coachman”

Originally published in 1843, this story was haunting and a bit scary. The narrator comes across an inn, which would have been used in the days of the coach, but has since become derelict. He is bemoaning the loss of the coach in replacement of steam trains, when he spots a coachman. But the coachman is changed of yore. Altered by his fate, the coachman’s clothes hang off him in tatters. His face is lined, and his expression changed. This coachman is not smiling in greeting anymore. 

The story provided me with a perspective of the advent of steam trains that I had not considered. The fact that people might actually mourn the loss of the coach isn’t something that had occurred to me. But I found myself thinking about the changes to rural areas when a highway is put in, diverting traffic away from the smaller communities and their businesses, causing them to have to close up in favour of these big box stores that open just off the highway. The same thing must have happened when the rail lines were put in. This was a great start to the collection. It made me very excited for what was to come.

“Nine O’Clock!”

This is a chilling story about a family prophecy. First published in 1852, but set on June 30, 1793 when a prisoner awaits execution by guillotine. The Girondin party in the first French Revolution are to be taken out to make way for the Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. Many of the prisoners, laugh and joke and make light of their impending doom, even going so far as to place bets on what time they are to die, as a way of dealing with the serious nature of what is to happen in the morning. But one man, Duprat, stands apart. He is serious but calm, and his good friend Marigny asks him why. This was such a compelling story. Sucked me right in!

“Mad Monkton”

First published as “The Monktons of Wincot Abbey” in 1855 in Fraser’s Magazine, this one made an appearance in the collection The Queen of Hearts in 1859, under the title “Brother Griffith’s Story of Mad Monkton”. But whatever you want to call it, at just under 70 pages and divided into four chapters, this one feels more like a novella than a short story. 

Told from the perspective of a neighbour we hear the story of a mysterious family who keeps themselves apart from the rest of the community. It’s rumoured that there is a strain of madness that runs through the family. So when the last surviving son leaves the country to look for the body of his recently deceased uncle, who he was all but a stranger to him and not a particular favourite of anyone, by all accounts, everyone thinks he must have succumb to the madness of the Monktons. The fact that he has recently become engaged to a young woman in the community, only adds to the strangeness of his departure. But he insists he must find his uncle’s body before he can marry. The narrator, this neighbour, ends up helping the man find his uncle‘s body. 

It is terrifically creepy, gothic, disturbing, and I found myself, like the narrator, questioning Monkton’s sanity. I really enjoyed this one. It is a highlight of the collection, as far as I am concerned.  

“The Dream-Woman”

This one was first published in 1855 under the title “The Ostler” in Household Words, then in 1874 it was expanded to appear in The Frozen Deep and Other Stories. A lot of these stories have a frame narrative which, for the most part I don’t think is necessary to the integrity of the story, however, in this one, I think the frame adds to the atmosphere of the story. A doctor is called to a rural area. Once his errand is finished he looks for someone who can give him a ride, as his horse has hurt himself. Calling at an inn, he asks if there’s someone available. The landlord tells him his regular person is out, so they will have to wake up Isaac. 

“Wake up Isaac?” I repeated; “that sounds rather odd. Do your ostlers go to bed in the day-time?”

“This one does,” said the landlord, smiling to himself in rather a strange way.”

“And dreams, too,” added the waiter; “I shan't forget the turn it gave me, the first time I heard him.”

“Never you mind about that,” retorted the proprietor; “you go and rouse Isaac up. The gentleman’s waiting for his gig.” (104)

The narrator’s interest is peaked, as he thinks this ostler, Isaac, could be an interesting medical case. And so we find out the story of how Isaac came to be at this working at this inn and why he sleeps during the day. Let me tell you, he has good reason to be afraid of sleeping at night! 

This one was unsettling and creepy, in the best way. Like “Mad Monkton” and some of the other stories in this collection, the story has a sort of inevitability to it. I read a lot of mystery novels and short stories, which tend discredit the possibility of the supernatural being to blame in favour of a human cause, so it is a rare treat to read something like this that entertains and even encourages those what-ifs.

“The Dead Hand”

The darkness forced his mind back upon itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully vivid distinctness the momentary impression it had received from his first sight of the corpse. Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of the darkness, confronting him through the window, with the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light between the imperfectly closed eyelids broader than he had seen it—with the parted lips slowly dropping farther and farther away from each other—with the features growing larger and moving closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence the rain and to shut out the night. (141-142)

I don’t want to share too much about this one because I think the story spins out very nicely and is especially effective when you know very little about what is going to happen. Here’s the premise… A man arrives in a town in the middle of race week and there are no rooms available to rent for the night. He is desperate and is on the brink of thinking he will have to sleep outside, when he finds an inn far off the beaten with a bed available. Immediately agreeing to the price the landlord stipulates, he finds out too late that he will be sharing the room with a dead man. First published in Household Words in 1857 as “The Double-Bedded Room”, this one was thrilling, really well executed, and nothing like what I was expecting. 

“Blow Up with the Brig!”

I have an alarming confession to make. I am haunted by a ghost.

If you were to guess for a hundred years, you would never guess what my ghost is. I shall make you laugh to begin with—and afterwards I shall make your flesh creep. My Ghost is the ghost of a Bedroom Candlestick. (155) 

So begins “Blow Up with the Brig!”. It has a humorous beginning, but by the end, you see the man has good reason for being haunted by a candlestick. As with all of these stories the tale l is spun out in such a way by the teller that there’s an inevitability to the conclusion. But this makes it no less creepy, terrifying, and exciting to read. It was first published in 1859 as “The Ghost in the Cupboard Room” in All the Year Round. 

“Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman”

“The Clergyman’s Confession” is the title this one was first appeared as when it was published in Canadian Monthly in 1875. It opens with our narrator reading a collection of famous trials that has been recently published, when his brother, a clergyman, recognises the case he is reading. 

“You don’t mean to say you know anything about the Trial?”

“I know this,” he said. “The prisoner was guilty.”

“Guilty?” I repeated. “Why, the man was acquitted by the jury, with the full approval of the judge! What can you possibly mean?”

“There are circumstances connected with that Trial,” my brother answered, “which were never communicated to the judge or the jury—which were never so much as hinted or whispered in court. I know them—of my own knowledge, by my own personal experience. They are very sad, very strange, very terrible. I have mentioned them to no mortal creature. I have done my best to forget them. You—quite innocently—have brought them back to my mind.” (171-172)

Part murder mystery, part ghost story, this story is creepy and again has a sort of inevitability to the ending. I really enjoyed it, though it was quite sad.

“Mrs. Zant and the Ghost”

This one dates to 1885 when it was published in Harper’s Weekly, under the title “The Ghost’s Touch”. What a strong story to end on! Unlike many of the stories in this collection, which have a rural setting, this one is set in London with the inciting incident occurring in the middle of the day in Kensington Gardens. But it is no less unsettling for it! Mrs. Zant is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband. He seems to be trying to warn her about someone, but Mrs. Zant is hesitant to believe the ghost. This one was a favourite of mine and the perfect one to end on. And it is probably one of the safer stories in this collection to read before bed!

Many of these stories are set in the autumn months. Although, “Mrs. Zant and the Ghost” is different in this regard, too, as it is set in April. Ghost stories can be enjoyable any time of year, but I think the cooler months are when I favour them the most. Curling up with this one during the long winter nights with the wind whistling outside, I found to be particularly atmospheric.

All of the publishing dates and original story titles can be found in Xavier Aldana Reyes’ insightful introduction. I thought it might be helpful to include that information in my review for anyone who is trying to figure out if any of these stories can be found in other collections.

It is hard to believe that six months ago, I did not gravitate towards short story collections and now I get so excited when I get my hands on one. In the past year I have read nine collections, eight of which happen to be published by the British Library, and all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have read a lot and consistently my whole life, so I thought my reading taste was fairly unchangeable. Apparently, not!

I had such a great time reading Wilkie Collins’ ghost stories that it has me eyeing my old copy of The Moonstone. It might be time to give it a second chance.

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Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Ghost Stories of Wilkie Collins* for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

*This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell's, which means I will make a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through this link. See Affiliate Disclosure at sidebar for details.