Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin (Halloween Buddy Read) October 2025

[Susan]

I can't find a thread for our Oct 25 Halloween Buddy Read - forgive me if I have replicated. Let me know and I can delete this one.

Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark was given a nice, new cover last year and - as I have now read all of Fremlin's novels - it is time to consider her short stories.

Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark (1972) was the first gathering of Celia Fremlin's short fiction, a form in which she had published prolifically - for the likes of She, Playmen, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - while building her reputation as a novelist of psychological suspense.

Female characters predominate in these tales, as does the doom-filled atmosphere that was Fremlin's metier. She explores her familiar theme of strained mother-child relations, but she also delves into the supernatural realm as well as the psychological. As ever, her capacities for making the everyday unnerving and keeping the reader guessing are richly in evidence.

If we enjoy this, there are 2 more collections available in print, including By Horror Haunted: Stories so there may be more Fremlin to come on this exciting reading adventure...

[Susan]

A list of stories may help:

The Quiet Game
The Betrayal
The New House
Last Day of Spring
The Special Gift
Old Daniel's Treasure
For Ever Fair
The Irony of Fate
The Baby-Sitter
The Hated House
Angel-Face
The Fated Interview
The Locked Room

13 stories in all, which is a perfect Halloween number.

[Roman Clodia]

Thanks Susan - you're right, we didn't have a thread so thanks for setting this up.

I'd definitely love to read the two other Fremlin story collections after this - you've turned me into a completist!

[Susan]

Looking forward to this one, even if I rarely read short stories.

[Susan]

I was listening to Locklisted this morning (sister podcast of Backlisted) and Andy Miller had been reading a collection of Halloween stories by Celia Fremlin - By Horror Haunted: Stories, so not our collection. Weird domestic horror in his words and he read the beginning of the first story.

[Nigeyb]

Another fine looking collection


Thanks

[Susan]

Always good to have a Backlisted connection, Nigeyb! Digression, but their next read sounds something that would appeal to us both:

All the Devils Are Here

Twenty years ago, in a series of mysterious, incandescent writings, David Seabrook told of the places he knew best: the declining resort towns of the Kent coast. The pieces were no advert for the local tourist board. Here, the ghosts of murderers and mad artists crawl the streets. Septuagenarian rent boys recall the good old days and Carry On stars go to seed. Clandestine fascist networks emerge. And all the time, there is Seabrook himself - desperate perhaps, and in danger.

Dark, strange and immediate, this is a classic work of sui generis British literature.

There are devils here, and the reader will remember them.

Coincidentally, Seabrook is the name of my maternal grandfather, so there you go!

[Nigeyb]

Susan wrote:


"Always good to have a Backlisted connection, Nigeyb! Digression, but their next read sounds something that would appeal to us both:

All the Devils Are Here"


Thanks Susan.

I've read it

Well worth spending time with....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

^ spoiler free of course


I really thought Backlisted had already done it


It will also inspire you to visit (or more likely revisit) the places in Kent he writes about

[Alwynne]

Nigeyb wrote: "Susan wrote:


"Always good to have a Backlisted connection, Nigeyb! Digression, but their next read sounds something that would appeal to us both:

All the Devils Are Here"


Than..."

I love that book, thought it was brilliant. Truly one of a kind!

[Susan]

I think they are re-visiting a few books for an anniversary.

[Roman Clodia]

I see I've rated this collection though it only feels vaguely familiar to me so doesn't feel like a reread.

'A Quiet Game': I really felt for both sides - the harassed mother and the neighbours having to live with the sounds of other people's children. The real villains are the builders who didn't sound-proof the flats. I'm assuming high-rise blocks were new in the 1960s? The telling detail is the children's unease and then fear.

Off to a great start.

[Susan]

I loved all David Kynaston's books about rebuilding after the war. He pointed out they asked people what they wanted, then totally ignored what they said and assumed they knew best. Tower blocks never really worked out, did they? I grew up in a very deprived part of London in council flats, but not a tower block. I have been told they get very hot and the soundproofing is still terrible.

[Roman Clodia]

And yet there's still that glamorous idea of the penthouse flat - I guess that's a very different type of block!

I've just read the second story, The Betrayal, and am just open-mouthed at the malice of Maisie (view spoiler)[laughing at the idea of that desperate man taking an overdose of vitamins (hide spoiler)]. Fremlin has such a fertile imagination.

[Roman Clodia]

'The Special Gift' is another creepy story, and feels unusual.

I remember reading 'The Hated House' before.

I thought these were quite Freudian with much use of dreams as a way of accessing unconscious wishes and desires, or bringing up what has been repressed.

Like Christie, Fremlin has so many ideas for stories, her imagination seems unstoppable.

[SueLucie]

At last I have time to open this collection. Joining you soon.

[Brian E]

I read this at the very end of the month to ensure I had a few stories left to read on Halloween. I did and it worked fine.

I thought this was a hit and miss collection. Sometimes Fremlin had an intriguing idea but it did not work out on paper. But I accept and appreciate that. An advantage to the short story format is that a writer can try out an off-beat idea that isn't clear or weighty enough for a novel. I treated this read lightly and didn't, as I often do, write individual reviews of the stories so I don't know which ones worked and which didn't. I do know that enough of them worked that, while wavering between 3 and 4 stars through the read, largely dependent on the quality of the last-read story, I came down on a 4-star rating.
I would note than most of these are more psychological thriller rather than horror and that Fremlin avoids being too gruesome, especially with her protagonists.

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Nigeyb]

Psychological is the way I like my horror on the few occasions I read it

You make it sound tempting Brian. Thanks

I have a copy of this and hoped to fit it in but alas it didn’t happen. Maybe I’ll revive this next year.

[Roman Clodia]

I agree that Fremlin is brimming over with intriguing ideas here - I was perhaps less hung up on whether the story was 'horror', suspense etc. and enjoyed these - 4 stars from me too.