Cold Hand in Mine

by Robert Aickman

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36 ratings, 4.42 average rating, 5 reviews (more data...)

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published

1993 by Lightyear Pr

binding

Hardcover

isbn

0899684165 (isbn13: 9780899684161)

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All ratings | 5 stars (19) | 4 stars (13) | 3 stars (4) | avg 4.42

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Kay rated it:

01/17/08

bookshelves: fantasy_sci-fi, ghost-stories, horror-macabre

Read in September, 2000

Robert Aickman's term for his stories is "strange," and indeed they are, but I tend to think of them as "disquieting." His fiction takes me places that are not merely macabre or frightening; I find myself as adrift as his characters, not quite sure what is real. Much is left to my own imagination, and the most disquieting part is how I choose to fill in the gaps.

I am a great fan of weird and unsettling fiction. Things that don't fall into neat categories please me. ...more Robert Aickman's term for his stories is "strange," and indeed they are, but I tend to think of them as "disquieting." His fiction takes me places that are not merely macabre or frightening; I find myself as adrift as his characters, not quite sure what is real. Much is left to my own imagination, and the most disquieting part is how I choose to fill in the gaps.

I am a great fan of weird and unsettling fiction. Things that don't fall into neat categories please me. And Aickman's ability to render atmosphere -- what I'd consider the essence of weird fiction -- is incomparable.

A favorite story in this collection is ""Niemandswasser." Though I'm writing this review some years after having read it, I can still recall the story vividly, and as I do so, the sense of dreamlike disquiet returns. Anyone who has rowed a small boat over an expanse of cold, dark, deep water will feel the pull of this somewhat fanciful tale, set in Austria before the first world war. The title translates as "No Man's Water," and it has touches of the seafarer's tale to it, but it also reminded me a bit of Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, at least in terms of time and aristocratic setting. However, "Niemandswasser" is written from an unmistakably masculine viewpoint whereas Dinesen, of course, wrote from a feminine one, however romantically grotesque.

Reading Aickman requires a good deal of patience, or should I say a somewhat passive approach. When I read Aickman in a "normal" manner, marching along sentence by sentence, trying to connect things rationally, I grow impatient. When I allow the sentences to weave themselves around me, like tendrils, I find myself entrapped in Aickman's universe. Perhaps there is something essentially masochistic in this process. It doesn't feel particularly healthy, but like any addict, I come back for more.

There are sexual undertones, but there's far more at work than a dark yearning or frisson of the taboo. There is no trace of the sneering goth or woozily sexy vampire story about Aickman. As previously mentioned, there are touches of Dinesen-like grotesqueness, but most of Aickman's effect is achieved very quietly. His stories seem to work mostly on a subconscious level, and understanding why they work is quite beyond me. Or perhaps I simply don't want to examine the why too closely. It's like seeing something in the periphery of my vision, but dreading to turn my head and look at whatever it is directly.

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Cold Hand in Mine

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