Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Wrap- Up

Are you tired of hearing about The Virago Book of Ghost Stories yet? Just a few final thoughts in this wrap-up post and then we move on... I promise.

As I've mentioned before, this volume contains thirty stories, all by women, written over a period of 150 years and arranged chronologically. Rather than read straight through, I picked a couple of stories, and then jumped ahead 40 or 50 years for the next week's selections. This method may have caused me to miss some of the more subtle changes, but still provided a fascinating look at ghost stories over time.

Ghost stories really began to increase in popularity when they appeared in magazines like Dickens' Household Words and All the Year Round. They were not limited to writers specializing in the genre. Many mainstream writers also experimented with the form. Edith Wharton admitted that writing a convincing ghost story was very difficult, saying "It is luckier for a ghost to be vividly imagined than dully 'experienced'; and nobody knows better than a ghost how hard it is to put him or her into words shadowy, yet transparent enough.... If a ghost story sends a cold shiver down one's spine, it has done its job and done it well."

Of the stories I read, only Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" (my post is here) truly sent a shiver down my spine. This was one of the oldest stories in the collection and, to me, represents the classic ghost story. Moving forward in time, the stories seemed to exhibit more realism ("The Villa Lucienne" by Ella D'Arcy - post here), then a focus on supernatural phenomena ("Roaring Tower" by Stella Gibbons or "The Station Road" by Ann Bridge - post here) and finally arrived at a retelling of Cinderella ("Ashputtle" by Angela Carter - post here).

Not only did the focus of the stories change, the language changed. It was interesting to read as it became more contemporary by increments. The sentences got shorter, there was less punctuation, and word choices and usage became more modern. To go directly from Gaskell to Carter would have been to miss the progression.

These stories have been great fun, and were responsible for quite a bit of 'Halloween spirit'. Maybe I'll focus on Edith Wharton and Henry James next year. But for now, does anybody have a recommendation for a good collection of Christmas stories?

Short Story Monday is hosted by The Book Mine Set.

RIP IV Challenge Wrap-Up

Happy Halloween! Before I don my black cape, witch's hat, and pick up my broom to head out for some spooky fun, it's time to wrap up the RIP IV Challenge. Since horror is a genre I usually steer clear of, it was a relief to learn the challenge included mystery, thriller, suspense, and gothic.

Peril the Third was my chosen level of participation. It asked that you simply test the water by reading one book from any of the subgenres mentioned. I love sensation novels and chose to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. You can find my review here.

I was also tempted by the Short Story Peril. All stories came from The Virago Book of Ghost Stories and were posted for Short Story Monday. You may click on the title to read my post.

"The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell

"The Villa Lucienne" by Ella D'Arcy

"The Station Road" by Ann Bridge

"Roaring Tower" by Stella Gibbons

"Ashputtle: Or, The Mother's Ghost" by Angela Carter

"Redundant" by Dorothy K. Haynes

Thanks so much, Carl, for hosting this challenge. I had a great time and have already started a list for RIP V!

Still More Virago Ghost Stories

Another Short Story Monday, and my adventure with The Virago Book of Ghost Stories continues. This is a wonderful collection, arranged chronologically and spanning a period of 150 years. There are two contemporary stories (1980's) to talk about this week.

"Ashputtle: Or, The Mother's Ghost" was written by Angela Carter in 1987. It opens:

"A burned child lived in the ashes. No, not really burned - more charred, a little bit charred, like a stick half-burned and picked off the fire; she looked like charcoal and ashes because she lived in the ashes since her mother died and the hot ashes burned her, so she was scabbed and scarred. The burned child lived on the hearth, covered in ashes, as if she was still in mourning."

One paragraph in, and I was wondering if this story was really for me! But since it's very short and an author I'd been wanting to read for quite some time, I persevered...and I'm so glad I did! The story is simply magical and reads like a fairy tale.

"Her mother was dead and buried but still felt perfect, exquisite pain of love when she looked up through the earth and saw the burned child covered with ashes."

The story tells how the mother's ghost won't rest until her child is safe and cared for. I loved it!

"Redundant", written by Scottish horror/supernatural writer Dorothy K. Haynes (1918-1987), is the final story in the collection. It tells of Hamish, a hapless man who goes through life taking the jobs that nobody else wants.

'Taken' was perhaps the wrong word. It implied choice, and Hamish never chose anything. He simply accepted what was left.... Sooner or later every job he took would end. He was never fired, or angrily dismissed; he was too well-meaning for that. Simply, he was made redundant, but not nobly redundant, with a handsome settlement as a reward for years of service; merely unwanted after a period so short that there was no time for benefits to accrue.

When Hamish becomes ill and dies, his ghost assumes the job as driver for "the death coach". The ghost really likes the job but, in death as in life, Hamish becomes redundant once again. While this story was pleasant enough to read, it was not particularly memorable .

Visit John at The Book Mine Set to see more Short Story Monday posts.

Teaser Tuesdays - October 20

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Here's how it works:

-grab your current read

-open to a random page

-share two teaser sentences from somewhere on the page (avoid spoilers!)

-be sure to include the title and author so other TT participants can add the book to their tbr list if they like your teaser

-leave a comment with your link at Should Be Reading

My teaser:

I hugged my grief; it was all I had. Nothing could heal it; it was a deathless wound.

Alas! the bitterest lesson I have since learned is how gently and remorselessly Time steals even our deepest wounds from us. (page 304)

"Roaring Tower"

by Stella Gibbons

from The Virago Book of Ghost Stories

More Virago Ghost Stories

The Virago Book of Ghost Stories is still supplying plenty of Halloween-themed reading. This week, I've moved ahead another forty years, to the late 1930's, and selected works by two new-to-me authors.

"The Station Road" by Ann Bridge was originally published in 1936. It begins:

There was a little pause when the last speaker finished. We sat round the fire, each occupied with his own thoughts; the mind of each seeking its own solution of the problems raised by the uncanny story to which we had just listened.

I was immediately reminded of Henry James' The Turn of The Screw, which also opens around a fire with the telling of a strange tale. The similarities may not extend much further, but an outstanding ghost story was already anticipated. Bridge did not disappoint. A mysterious evening visitor, a deserted road, a train station, a murder, and a warped time dimension combine to deliver a chilling story.

Next up was "Roaring Tower" written by Stella Gibbons (author of Cold Comfort Farm) in 1937. This story is about a young woman sent away by her parents to visit an aunt in Cornwall, in hope that she will forget an inappropriate attraction.

The passions which invade a heart at nineteen, like a beautiful menacing army, seem faded and small enough if one looks back on them after a lapse of fifty years, as I am doing now, but on the late summer morning I describe, as I waited with my parents under the dome of the railway station, no heart could have been fiercer, and yet colder, than mine. One voice, which I should never hear again, sounded in my ears, and one face, which I had promised to forget, filled my eyes.

The ruin of the Roaring Tower, surrounded by beautiful rose bushes, captures her imagination after hearing a strange sound emanating from deep within. This story involves village lore, a large bear-like monster, a fall into the tower, and a questionable state of consciousness. It proved to be another wonderfully atmospheric Halloween read.

Next week, the last Monday before Halloween, I'll be reading a more modern ghost story from the same collection. Visit The Book Mine Set to see more Short Story Monday posts.

"The Villa Lucienne" by Ella D'Arcy

It's back to The Virago Book of Ghost Stories for this week's short story post. The clock has been turned ahead almost fifty years from Mrs. Gaskell's suspenseful tale, "The Old Nurse's Story". This week's story is "The Villa Lucienne" by Ella D'Arcy. Here are the opening two sentences:

"Madame Koelegon told the story, and told it so well that her audience seemed to know the sombre alley, the neglected garden, the shuttered house, as intimately as though they had visited it themselves, seemed to feel a faint reverberation of the incommunicable thrill which she had felt - which the surly guardian, the torn rag of lace, the closed pavilion had made her feel. And yet, as you will see, there is in reality no story at all; it is merely an account of how, when in the Riviera two winters ago, she met with some friends to look over a furnished villa, which one of them though of taking."

Upon finishing the story and rereading the first paragraph, it's apparent this opening is also the perfect review. I wondered how it had come to be included in a collection of ghost stories, when there is only a passing mention of a woman (or ghost) seen by a child, that remains unseen by the adults. What the story does, however, is paint a series of very vivid images which rapidly shift between great beauty and eerie, cool darkness and unease.

Ella D'Arcy (1856? - 1939) was a regular contributor to The Yellow Book Quarterly, where "The Villa Lucienne" appeared in 1896. Her writing was said to be influence by the "New Realism" of naturalistic French fiction. Her stories often show a psychological realism and an unsentimental treatment of character and situation that critics have compared to Balzac and Zola.

D'Arcy's descriptions were, for me, clearly reminiscent of Zola. Although this story is representative of this "naturalistic fiction", I am surprised at it's inclusion in a collection of ghost stories. It can be read in its entirety here.

"The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell

As promised, this month's Short Story Monday posts will come from The Virago Book Of Ghost Stories. The book is arranged chronologically so, if the stories are read in order, the reader can see how ghost stories have changed and developed over the years. "The Old Nurse's Story" is the second in this nearly 500 page edition. Next week, I'll fast-forward fifty years and see if I can spot some changes.

My experience with ghost stories is limited, but "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell is now among my favorites. It contains all the ingredients for a good tale (orphans, family secrets, sibling rivalry, love, jealousy, tyrannical father-figures), but Gaskell also adds in a few Gothic features (an old manor house with a locked-up wing shrouded in branches, some bad weather, over-wrought emotions, and a child-ghost) and creates real winner!

"...it was a very strange noise, and she had heard it many a time, but most of all on winter nights, and before storms; and folks did say, it was the old lord playing on the great organ in the hall, just as he used to when he was alive; but who the old lord was or why he played, and why he played on stormy winter evenings in particular, she either could not or would not tell me."

"...would I leave the child that I was so fond of, just for sounds and sights that could do me no harm; and that they had all had to get used to in their turns? I was all in a hot, trembling passion; and I said it was very well for her to talk, that knew what these sights and noises betokened, and that had, perhaps, had something to so with the Spectre-Child while it was alive. And I taunted her so, that she told me all she knew, at last; and then I wished I had never been told, for it only made me afraid more than ever."

The story is not horrifying (as I found "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson), but rather a good, chilling, suspenseful ghost story.

"The Old Nurse's Story" was published anonymously in the 1852 Christmas issue of Charles Dickens' magazine, Household Words. You may read the entire 23-page story here.

This story served as my introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell. I'm looking forward to reading Cranford within the next couple of months and, hopefully, Wives and Daughters sometime next year.

For other Short Story Monday posts, click over to The Book Mine Set.

Short Story Monday: "The Necklace" and a new collection

If you're at all interested in short stories, then you won't want to miss this great discussion that occurred over at Farm Lane Books a few days ago. Rob from RobAroundBooks encouraged Jackie (not a fan of short stories in general) to read "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant. He claimed the story would "touch her heart and soul". Jackie willingly obliged (it's only 8 pages long), then offered an excellent dissection of the story containing her reasons for not liking it.

There are naturally spoilers in her analysis, so take a few minutes and read the story here first. I hadn't read it since high school and was glad for the refresher. "The Necklace" is not one of my favorite stories, and Jackie's criticisms certainly have merit.

It was the discussion that really captured my attention, though. Commenters offered thoughts on what a short story is and what it should try to accomplish, as well as several suggestions for future reading. If you've got a few minutes, I encourage you to read though it...it will be time well spent!

In other short story news...

Yesterday while browsing at Barnes & Noble (I had some free time while Twin A was at her SAT prep class), I came across The Virago Book of Ghost Stories. The cover immediately caught my eye but, on closer inspection, I found that it contained tales of the supernatural written by 34 top female authors from Elizabeth Gaskell to Angela Carter. How could I resist?

Since I recently imposed a ban on buying books that I wasn't going to start reading the same day, I did quickly read "Napoleon and the Spectre" by Charlotte Bronte. While it didn't really capture my imagination, it did fulfill my self-imposed condition of purchase. I plan on sharing stories from this collection throughout the month of October. Stay tuned...

Visit John at The Book Mine Set to see who else is talking about short stories today.