This is Aickman’s final original collection, posthumously published in 1985, four years after his death in 1981.
To start with, it contains the novelette “The Trains,” published in the original collection We Are for the Dark in 1951, which I already mentioned in this context.
Then, there are the short story “Mark Ingestre: The Customer’s Tale,” first published in 1980, and the novelette “Rosamund’s Bower,” probably written in the late 1970s, both of which are badly written, badly edited or not edited at all, and in different ways a waste of time.
Next, there are the short stories “Just a Song at Twilight,” first published in 1965, and “Laura,” first published in 1977. Both are full of striking motifs, superbly written passages, and absolute knockout sentences, but neither of the two comes together as a structurally and thematically rounded story—they remind me of that kind of fried country potatoes often served in France which taste really good but are completely hollow inside. (As a friend of mine put it, “guess they heat up some air and wrap a fry around it.”)
Finally, there’s the novella “The Stains,” originally published in 1980, a perfect blend of psychological horror and folk horror with a terrific dramatic structure. Like in many of his best works, it’s not about the ending but the journey, and it is, as I see it, one of Aickman’s most accomplished stories.
This should be my next-to-last post on Aickman’s oeuvre; there are only some uncollected stories left, mostly juvenilia, half of which I don’t have access to in any case. (It’s become spotty, as indicated.)
As an aside, The Stains won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 1981, which would impress me more if Aickman hadn’t been given the same award for the novelette “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal” in 1975, which I mentioned in my post on Cold Hand in Mine. (Then again, by that time the award was still called the August Derleth Fantasy Award, which might explain things.)
As another aside, I found this terrific quote from an introduction to Aickman by Victoria Nelson: “[Aickman] loves oblique, corner-of-the-eye effects, throwaway asides that don’t bear directly on the narrative, and the fact that the uncanny lurks in the margins instead of being front and center makes it doubly unsettling.” Perfectly nails it.
Aickman, Robert. Night Voices: Strange Stories. Golancz, 1980. Reprinted with extra stuff as Night Voices in Tartarus Press, 2013.