Book #20 of 2020: The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman

How have I not read Mr. Aickman before? Perhaps I have, when I used to chug down enormous volumes of collected ghost or horror fiction anthologies as a teen. He must have been in one of those omnibus volumes featuring Machen, Poe, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James...

The quality of the writing is superb. The characters are deftly and subtly realized, and the settings painted with an astute attention to detail. Aickman understood that horror and occult fiction work best when everything is as real and regular and normal as possible, until that moment when it isn't. He also understood that the moment when things go askew should be quiet and unsettling in startlingly insignificant ways. The creep of his fictions develops slowly over a few dozen pages until an absolutely delicious effect is achieved. Often the climax is as much a puzzle as a fright, a bewildering haunt or murky resolution. Where Lovecraft would have the narrator swoon into forgetfulness upon witnessing some cosmic monster, Aickman has the narrator return unsettled to the office on the morning train.

These tales rank with the best--and by the best of course I mean M.R. James and Henry James, whose ghost fictions are of an undeniable literary craftsmanship. I'd throw Shirley Jackson in there as well, but her stories build subtly and then tend toward a garish or nightmarish or wickedly funny reveal. Aickman and the two Jameses are more subtle. Aickmans's narrators are reminiscent of M.R. James' artsy intellectuals and his settings are the same country villages and dark moors, but with modern John Cheever twists and turns. I loved this volume, and will read more!