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Women in Horror Fiction: Joan Aiken– Give Yourself A Fright

Joan Aiken, born September 4, 1924, was a British author well known for her children’s novels (especially for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase), but she also wrote excellent short stories, and fiction for teens and adults. While her work could be fantastic (as it is in the Armitage Family stories) and subversively funny (such as the tales of Arabel and Mortimer, her raven)  her writing for all three audiences often contained dark, Gothic, or supernatural elements.

Can you tell that I love Joan Aiken?

I have enthusiastically read everything of hers that I have found since I first read her A Necklace of Raindrops, when I was about eight years old. Which is not to say I have read everything she’s written. The book she’s probably most well known for is her Gothic historical fantasy for middle graders, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but that was published in 1962, and she continued to write for the rest of her life. Although she died in 2004, her works are actually still being published (The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories, from Small Beer Press, was released as recently as 2011). A review from Bookslut, quoted on Small Beer’s website, compared Aiken to Shirley Jackson.

Because Aiken is mainly identified as a children’s author, it’s quite possible that you have never considered reading her work. But if you love ghost stories, Gothic atmosphere, and tales both disturbing and enchanting, you should.

In a blog post on Aiken’s short fiction, Jed Hartman notes:

…In general, Aiken doesn’t much distinguish between stories for children and stories for grown-ups…  And it’s often hard to decide whether to class a given Aiken story as a kids’ story or a grown-ups’ story, which is all to the good. Almost all of the best children’s books — from Alice onward — can be enjoyed by adults as well.

Ready to give yourself a fright, Joan Aiken style? Here’s the official Joan Aiken site’s  list of books specifically with supernatural themes. And here’s the complete biblography, just in case you get carried away.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Posted on January 24, 2014 by , Reply

Memorable Short Stories

 

After my last post on how short stories are awesome, it was suggested to me that maybe I could make a few recommendations. So here you go– my totally subjective choices. These are stories that I personally have found memorable– either because I never, ever want to read them again, or because they draw me back, again and again. A few of them may not be in print anymore, and some are considered classics (you might have read them in school) but some are relatively new. Some might be considered YA, but don’t feel excluded! They are great reading for us older folks too.  And I’d say nearly all of them have either a creep factor, or a fear factor (with the possible exception of “In The Jaws of Danger”. Almost all those images are clickable, just in case you’re interested in checking out these authors on your own. If you have a memorable short story of your own that you would like to share, I’d be very interested in your comments!

Please don’t be thrown off by the overuse of blockquotes. It’s hard to tell when I’m formatting what it will look like when I’m done, and frankly, while I was a little startled to see how it looked when I previewed it, I’m way too tired to fix it right now. Thanks for understanding!

 “The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft

My best friend in high school handed me her used copy of  The Lurking Fear and Other Stories and said “You’ve gotta read this”! I handed it back to her after reading just this story, and have never read Lovecraft since. It terrified me that much.

 “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Anyone who has made it through high school without reading “The Lottery” should go do it right now. It is a chilling tale.

 

“High Beams”, collected by Alvin Schwartz

I love to tell this story to kids at Halloween, but it’s hard to go wrong with any story by Alvin Schwartz.

“The Tell-tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe is a master of the short story form. “The Tell-tale Heart” is only one of many memorable stories he has written: others include “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury is another master of the short story. This list would be a much longer one if I included every story by him that I have found memorable. If you can believe it, I first read this in elementary school as part of the Junior Great Books program. I always found “The Veldt” to be a creepy story, and now that I’m a parent living in a hyperreal world, it’s chilling. Other stories I considered listing here included “A Sound of Thunder”, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, “The Flying Machine”, “The Third Expedition”, and, of course, Bradbury’s homage to Poe and to monster movies, “Usher II”

 

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut

Ah, the nightmare of a world where everyone is required to be average. Welcome to the Monkey House, which contains “Harrison Bergeron” also has a memorable title story involving Ethical Suicide Parlors, and one of my favorite stories of redemption ever, “The Kid Nobody Could Handle.”

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

“Survivor” has nothing on this masterpiece about hunter and hunted.

“Leinengen Versus The Ants” by Carl Stephenson

I can’t think of a better illustration of “man vs. nature”, which is probably why this story appeared in my high school English textbook. By the way, this particular book I’ve linked to here also has some other great stories, including Ambrose Bierce’s “Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”.

“We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman does a wonderful job with the short story form, be it in the flash fiction format used in Half Minute Horrors, the parody of “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire”, or the poetic brutality of “Harlequin Valentine” (both in Fragile Things). “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” is, for me, anyway, unforgettable.

“The Open Window” by Saki

Saki is brilliant. “The Open Window” is extremely creepy. Another story of his I find very thought-provoking is “The Toys of Peace”.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A hallucinatory, semi-autobiographical tale of one woman’s descent into madness, this is also a vivid illustration of how many women with intelligence and will were treated at the time that it was written.

 “Monster” by Kelly Link

“Monster” could have been just a tale about bullying gone horribly wrong. But it’s much more frightening than that. It’s nearly impossible to go wrong with this collection, though. There are notably creepy, weird, and fantastical stories in here. Kelly Link is a true artist.

 “In The Jaws of Danger” by Piers Anthony

That cover image illustrates “In The Jaws of Danger” pretty effectively. Who knew dentistry could be so hazardous? Young Extraterrestrials is a book I treasure. It is filled with great stories, as you would expect from anthologists like Greenberg, Waugh, and Asimov. I can’t begin to tell you how many of their anthologies I devoured as a kid. Unfortunately it is now out of print.

“Mother of Monsters” by Guy de Maupassant

This is a truly horrifying story of calculated and twisted cruelty to children in the name of profit and fashion. Maupassant doesn’t need to get graphic to illustrate the tragedy and horror of the situation and of the culture that encourages it.

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Alaya Dawn Johnson

This  fantastic story appears in the YA anthology Zombies vs. Unicorns. It’s about a zombie and a human who fall in love, and the sacrifices they both make to be together. There are many strong stories in the anthology, and it is well worth it to check it out.

 

“Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov

If the stars should appear for just one night in a thousand years, how would humanity react? The answer: not well. This is classic Asimov. I read it first in high school, and I keep coming back to it. Make sure you’ve got the story and not the novel.

 

 

 

Posted on July 30, 2013 by , Reply

Why Read The Classics?

Well, for one thing, they’re available. The Brevard County Library System in Florida pulled the erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey from its shelves this week after determining that it didn’t meet the library system’s selection criteria. Library services director Cathy Schweinsberg said,

“Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”

What I find most interesting about this is that the intrepid reporter covering the story (click here to see it) did a little browsing in the library catalog, and found a variety of well-known erotic titles, including The Complete Kama Sutra, Fanny Hill, Lolita, Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and Fear of Flying (if she ever leaves journalism, she could have a bright future as a readers advisory librarian). When the library director was asked why these titles, with content of a similar nature, were on the shelves, she said:

“I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing… This is not a classic.”

(I wonder if they own Twilight?)

So if I want to check out erotica from the Brevard County Libraries, it has to be well-aged, and well-written. (I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t live in Brevard County). But this whole incident raises an interesting point. There are many who look down on the horror genre- on post 1974 horror in particular (to use Becky Siegel Spratford’s demarcation) and who wouldn’t dream of having those nasty covers, those possibly badly written books, anywhere nearby, because they’re not old enough and haven’t been canonized yet. And a lot of books ARE badly written and never will become classics. But people want them. They want that feeling. It’s not fair to dismiss the desires of your readers and users, whether those desires involve erotic Twilight fanfiction or ravening zombies.

If you happen to have a library that doesn’t have the horror fiction you are looking for, it doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. They are in disguise, lurking in the depths of the library- Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson… Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Victor Frankenstein. If you can’t find the latest, try out the early greats. And then harass your librarian to get you the new stuff while you read… the classics.

Posted on May 5, 2012 by , Reply
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