The Late Breakfasters

by Robert Aickman

A novel of disturbing
gaily
rich in
often very
always delightful

Genres: Horror, Audiobook, Fiction, Literature, British Literature

253 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Author of: close to 50 "strange stories" in the weird-tale and ghost-story traditions, two novels (The Late Breakfasters and The Model), two volumes of memoir (The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill), and two books on the canals of England (Know Your Waterways and The Story of Our Inland Waterways).

Co-founder and longtime president of the Inland Waterways Association, an organization that in the middle of the 20th century restored a great part of England's deteriorating system of canals, now a major draw for recreation nationally and for tourism internationally.

Grandson of author Richard Marsh.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all things to come from the mind of Robert Aickman, one of the most unexpected would be this novel: a tender, haunting, elegiac tale of a brief lesbian love affair that changes its heroine's world, and her world view. Griselda starts the novel as a passive, placid young woman who is vaguely discontented with her lot in life yet willing to go with the flow. After the tragic extinguishing of that very brief affair, she is still a placid and passive woman, but one who makes an abrupt life change and is quietly determined to live life how she pleases. This shift is accomplished with all of the subtlety, ambiguity, and off-kilter sense of dislocation that are this superb author's hallmarks. As the Times Literary Supplement described his craft in their October issue: "an 'Aickmanesque' story envelops the reader like a mist, leaving uncertain clues and contradictory rationales." Such is the case with this novel.

Aickman has for many years been one of my favorite authors. I thought I knew him! A man given to telling strange stories, a semi-modern master of the weird tale, expert at conveying oblique threats and horrors in the most ordinary of settings. Also, someone with a distinctly conservative set of mind. And yet, should I have been surprised? He has always been interested in writing vignettes detailing peculiar, often shattering changes, in the inner lives of women, and in the friendships between them. The more I consider it, the less surprising this book becomes. But barely a whiff of the supernatural! The Late Breakfasters is almost defiantly mainstream, given the author's prior output. It still fits well within his oeuvre.

The two things within this excellent novel that gave me the most pleasure: the long time spent at a country manor during a weekend get-together, where Griselda meets the woman who will change her life, and the sublime ending. Regarding the former: I loved the leisurely comedy of manners of the manor chapters (over 150 pages of the book), the mundane yet intriguing characters, the mysteries left unsolved. That part was an immersive experience. To the latter: I love an ending where a character finds not what they have been specifically looking for, but instead has found something just as important. For Griselda, that would be her freedom to live as she sees fit, with people who feel similarly about life. An ideal ending, and one that was actually spelled out in the novel's first paragraph. I should have paid closer attention to that opening; if I had, I wouldn't have spent so much time worrying over Griselda's fate. One does not expect a happy ending from Aickman.

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was supposed to review this in April 2017 and somehow it slipped through the cracks :(

I started and stopped this book several times this week. At one point, I had zoned out so much I think I might’ve lost two hours and just started the entire thing over from the beginning. It’s likely me and my lazy brain, which is still a little foggy from lingering back pain, but I’m not going to lie, this book isn’t what I thought it was going to be and it starts off terribly slow.

I don’t even know how to begin this review because the story doesn’t follow any of the rules and does its own thing. I’m still not sure what that thing was but it might’ve gone over my head. If you pick this story up thinking it’s going to be scary or a little creepy because of the cover art, you will be disappointed because it’s not either of those things. It starts out when a young lady named Griselda is invited to a house party by a family friend who enjoys having pretty eye candy around for the men. At least that was the way it came across to me. Also invited are a whole bunch of Very Important People and Political Big Wigs who debate about politics and other things that didn’t interest me in the faintest. There’s also a dull girl whose only interest in life appears to be mascara. They all eat breakfast and go on walks.

I kept waiting for something bizarre and eccentric to happen as the blurb promised me but it didn’t. There is a ghost that may be hanging about the house but nothing much was made of the fact and it certainly wasn’t a scary ghost. Griselda has a lightning fast love affair with a lovely lady named Louise which is likely scandalous at the time but it’s over nearly before it is started and before the two have been able to exchange contact information. Griselda longs for Louise but resigns herself to a life without her, taking on a job in a bookshop and meeting further quirky people who have some odd adventures and that’s really about it. As I said, it’s a strange little story with some fun moments but there weren’t enough to keep me from struggling to finish.

I’m sure someone is saying, “Why did this fool continue to read this story if all she does is whine and moan about it?” Well, here’s why:

• I am not only a fool but I am a stubborn fool. I’m also not really a quitter.

• The writing was beautiful and thoughtful and there’s quite a bit of social commentary thrown in, if that’s your thing.

• Several of the descriptions were oddly hilarious “He began to read the letter, looking, Griselda thought, like a monstrous sheep dyed green.” That just made me smile.

• The narration by Matt Godfrey was fantastic. He has a warm quality about his voice that lulls you in and makes you feel safe and comforted. If it weren’t for his narration, I seriously doubt I would’ve finished this book because this story isn’t the kind I typically seek out.

I’m giving the audio version a three because of the last three reasons. The story clearly wasn’t to my taste but you may read it and fall in love with the uniqueness of the tale. If it sounds interesting to you I’d recommend grabbing the audio and see where you land.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frustrated lesbian passion. Arch socio-political satire. Several characters of incompatible bias pursuing and fleeing one another. A passive protagonist who receives sudden boons from unfathomable quarters--which boons are, often, just as suddenly removed. An enigmatic ending and two or three moments of dense mystery scattered through a wandering narrative. Pleasant, and frequently startling, prose.

Likely influenced, in part, by Norman Douglas's South Wind, a book that Aickman much admired.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Довольно прикольный роман, который чем дальше, тем больше оказывается совершенно блистательным. Игривая комедия манер, из-под которой проступает социально-политическая сатира, из-под которой проступает роман лесбийско-протофеминистского взросления, из-под которого проступает мистико-мифическая игра с читателем, хотя вся фабула предусмотрительно излагается на первой же паре страниц. Подмывает сказать, что из этих двойных определений, разделенных дефисами, и растет, например, Джон Фаулз, но загвоздка в том, что появились "Поздние завтракающие" с "Волхвом" примерно одновременно (Фаулз опубликовал свой первый роман только в 65м, а Эйкмен свой единственный в 64м; есть в этом определенная ироническая конгруэнтность). Но дальнейшие сцены из жизни английских прото-битников, которые так не назывались, конечно, задолго до эпохи свингующего Лондона с его прото-хиппи поистине прекрасны и очень познавательны, хорошо дополняют картину послевоенного зарождения "контркультуры" в Европе. Но под конец, разумеется, все это превращается в фон для кинокартины "О, счастливчик!"

Из прекрасного: если считаете, что женопоучание (мужеумствование) придумали феминистки и этические хунвэйбины 21 века, подумайте еще раз: "foremost in the character of every man is the schoolmaster", считали персонажицы Эйкмена.

Ну и местами это действительно очень смешно: "At a neighbouring table, a child was sick on the floor. It was impossible to believe that so small a vessel could have held so much".
А что немаловажно, часть действия романа происходит в книжном магазине м-ра Тамерлана в известных любимых переулках возле Черинг-Кросса.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a a charming, somewhat inscrutable, novel that never gives you what you expect but is satisfying nonetheless. The tone and prose are full of whimsy that sometimes turns dark, sometimes humorous. Weird and unsettling things lurk at the corners but they are not central.

The reader will experience long tramps in the rain, the eccentricities of the upper class on display during a house party, a couple of unique picnics along with a lightning-strike romance and the aftermath of that encounter. There is an ephemeral quality to everything here as if the reader sort of floats through the novel. Aickman is expressing a lot while saying only a little. If you are a reader who prefers to make up their own mind about things and not be told explicitly what to think this book is perfect for you. There is much to discover here and most of it lies beneath the surface events.

[Andy Weston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expect this is the least strange piece of Aickman's work, and the only novel to be published in his lifetime, and written early in his career, 1964. It makes me wonder that it did not begin life as a short story itself.

Rather than weird, adjectives such as quaint, eccentric or intimate may be better to describe it, though it is bold in its themes. It describes several years in the life Griselda at the turn of the century (1900) as she makes her way in life as a young woman. She is invited to a dance party at a country mansion by an older woman who watches her bathe, taking more than a passing interest in her on her first evening there. Coy at first, Griselda returns her affections, but their relationship is short-lived. Griselda moves away, and for the rest of the piece is in search of this mysterious woman who she spent a weekend with.

Aickman aficionados are likely to be disappointed. Though the mansion is rumoured to be haunted, and the party attended by the prime minister and leading cabinet members, not a lot else happens. Regular readers of his, like me, will expect something sinister and eldritch to be lurking behind the next corner, but, as a great Python sketch once recounted, not a lot happens.

..one glance confirmed his suspicions.
Behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was no severed arm,
no dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties,
no head in a bag...

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wry yet not derisive book, a bit like Jane Austin but with semi-submerged sex magick. It takes place within a genteel yet down-at-heel world, mostly in a London that resembles Little England and occasionally a countryside that recalls semi-mythic Ancient Greece. It's definitely not a work of strange fiction, but Aickman is so much a strange fiction writer through-and-through it's almost haunted by its conspicuous absence of the supernatural. There's only one ghost amongst the characters and we never really see her. Though there is no in-text evidence to actually substantiate this, my intuition is that 'The Late Breakfasters' is speculative fiction, set within an alternative history in which WWII never happened and England continued down the cultural path established in the 1920s and 1930s without that epoch-shaping event. It feels like a novel that comes from that parallel universe.

In short, it's a richer and far stranger book than the above suggests. Quietly yet defiantly strange - as per its eroticism and humour. Nothing like anything I've ever read really, including Aickman's eerie short fiction. 'The Later Breakfasters' isn't precisely eerie; but it isn't precisely strange either.

[Des Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst GO BACK AT ONCE verges on greatness, THE LATE BREAKFASTERS verges on inchoateness.

My review under my name elsewhere is far too long to post here but the above is its conclusion.

Some great Aickman moments in it, albeit inchoate as a gestalt. Found a lot to comment on along the way. Including current political matters!

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really not sure what to make of the novel. There's a breezy charm to the writing, but Louise could have used more stage (?) time. Was Mrs Otter running the period's equivalent of an underground queer zine? Very curious.

"The Customer's Tale" is more what I'm used to from Aickman, though with more burlesque touches.

"My Poor Friend": the venting against Parliament practices is probably based on Aickman's personal experiences? The mysterious central idea is tantalizing, but Aickman sure took a lot of verbiage to get there.

"A Roman Question": the central ritual is fascinating, and the non-resolution satisfying in that Aickman-esque fashion. But did he really have to make us sit through all the setup?

[Clint Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here you’ll find Aickman’s borderline-nightmare style, but with many loose ends that may ultimately leave readers of its centerpiece dissatisfied — probably the same folks who also felt swindled by the endless, scattered Twin Peaks TV series. There are tantalizing hints of The Masque of the Red Death, an enchanted house in the woods, and hazy political intrigues to help see you through. The short stories add to the slog. I appreciated “Larger Than Onesself”, especially the protagonists’ final solution.