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caitsidhe's review against another edition
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
nice collection, some I'd read before but more that were new to me. Collection ranges from playful satires to genuinely heartbreaking or frightening.
amrenina's review
2.0
Few stories were to my liking, fewer terrified me. However I must acknowledge the time and effort it must have taken Louise Welsh to put it all together and I was especially excited for every author's paragraph.
Stories I enjoyed:
A terribly strange bed
The romance of certain old clothes
The yellow wallpaper
The room in the tower
The mangler*
Ashputtle or the mother's ghost
Sad, dark thing
Guests*
Grandpa's ghost*
Ghost
Stories I enjoyed:
A terribly strange bed
The romance of certain old clothes
The yellow wallpaper
The room in the tower
The mangler*
Ashputtle or the mother's ghost
Sad, dark thing
Guests*
Grandpa's ghost*
Ghost
rosekk's review
3.0
As with any collection of short stories (especially one featuring multiple writers) there's a great deal of variation in the stories. Some I really liked, and would easily give five stars. Others I had to force myself to finish, and would be lucky to scrape two. Most of the stories in this collection were somewhere in the middle - the truly fantastic, standout stories were few, but the majority of the collection was at least solid. My only problem with the collection itself was that some of the stories really weren't ghost stories at all. I'm quite happy for a ghost story to not be a horror story, or to not be about an actual ghost, but there were a few stories that didn't feature anything like a ghost at all and I wondered what they were doing in there. Something else that struck me was the difference between a lot of the more modern pieces, and the older ones. Though there were a few exceptions to this rule, in general there was something much less self-reflective about the older stories. They appeared to have been written for the sake of telling the story, and what ever other interest they might provoke seemed secondary. A lot of the more modern stories - particularly the ones that came of as being more 'literary' seemed to be making a point of being about more than just the events of the story. I found this especially odd, given that some of the older stories were taken from the work of extremely famous and well regarded writers, whose works have been studded as literature with great success. It makes some of the modern work seem insecure by comparison - as though there are all these old masters from history, who just knew how to tell a good tale and let readers read whatever they wanted into it at their leisure, and now there are all these new writers who want their work to be worthy of the same kind of scrutiny, and have gone to great pains to suggest to readers that there might be something worth studying and talking about in this story. The result is that a lot of the newer stories were less entertaining and more depressing, and in many cases, no better in terms of quality. The stories that stood out in a positive light to me were Oscar Wilde's (for being one of the only funny ones), 'The Yellow Sign', by Robert W. Chambers (it was a good story in itself, but also liked with a longer story of his that I'm yet to read - The King in Yellow), 'The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (though this stretched the definition of a ghost story somewhat, but not featuring anything remotely ghostly), Mars is Heaven by Ray Bradbury, Temporal Anomaly by Kate Atkinson. There were other really good stories in there. I won't single out the ones I felt were particularly bad, mainly because I think I have gotten some of them confused with the ones that left little impression on me either way.
nicktomjoe's review
4.0
As with any anthology there are things that a reader might like, things s/he might not. It was the same with this: "Oh Whistle" by M R James was there, satisfying as ever, but the Virginia Woolf and P G Woodhouse, while interesting, weren't really my cup of tea.
What I hadn't expected were the modern ghost stories, which I got to and saw the Cambridge skyline, the Cambridge authors. My heart sank, imagining we would meet M R James stories in modern guise. Not at all: the satirical "Dinner of the Dead Alumni" was funny, well-paced, achingly accurate about how to take toddlers round a busy town; Joanne Rush's interplay between ghostly migrants and loneliness was genuinely moving. Two last surprises: the short, brilliant coda, "Ghost," was as close as I've ever come to thinking ghosts were real, and I had to finish the collection last night because of the seriously disturbing "Sad Dark Thing" by Michael Marshall Smith, which made me not want to go to sleep.
What I hadn't expected were the modern ghost stories, which I got to and saw the Cambridge skyline, the Cambridge authors. My heart sank, imagining we would meet M R James stories in modern guise. Not at all: the satirical "Dinner of the Dead Alumni" was funny, well-paced, achingly accurate about how to take toddlers round a busy town; Joanne Rush's interplay between ghostly migrants and loneliness was genuinely moving. Two last surprises: the short, brilliant coda, "Ghost," was as close as I've ever come to thinking ghosts were real, and I had to finish the collection last night because of the seriously disturbing "Sad Dark Thing" by Michael Marshall Smith, which made me not want to go to sleep.
markyon's review against another edition
4.0
For a few years now, around Christmas time, it has become a bit of a tradition for publisher Head of Zeus to release a thumping great anthology. Whether it has been Otto Penzler’s Zombies!, or his crime detective collections, the Vandermeer’s The Weird, and their SF & Fantasy Anthologies or the wonderful We, Robots edited by Simon Ings (and reviewed here), they’ve become one of my regular favourite (and heftiest!) reads of the year.
With that in mind, this was a bit of a late arrival this year but a very welcome one. It is a reprint, with the tome-like hardback first published in 2015, but this new edition, as part of the Anthologies collection, is a lovely quality, large paperback version.
The title says what is in the book. There are 100 stories arranged in chronological order, from Pliny the Younger’s The Haunted House, written sometime between AD 99 and 109, to James Robertson’s appropriately titled Ghost, first published in 2014.
With such a huge range to choose from, it is unlikely that every story will suit every reader. But there’s a whole roster of well-known names and unknown (to me) authors that make a generally engaging, if eclectic, mix.
For those who are regular readers of the genre there are the expected names – Sheridan le Fanu (Madam Crowl’s Ghost), Edgar Allan Poe (Tell-tale Heart), Bram Stoker (Dracula’s Guest), H.P. Lovecraft (The Terrible Old Man), H.G. Wells (The Inexperienced Ghost), M.R. James (Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad), Ray Bradbury (Mars is Heaven) and Stephen King (The Mangler), for example.
As expected, I enjoyed re-reading the classic favourites – I still regard M. R. James’ Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad one of the finest ever ghost stories of all time, Sheridan le Fanu’s Madam Crowl’s Ghost still deserves its well-regarded status, Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest is still surprisingly effective considering its brevity and W.W. Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw are all worth admission here. Ray Bradbury’s Mars is Heaven gives us science-fictional ghosts of a sort. H.G. Wells’s The Inexperienced Ghost is one of his lesser known stories, a fireside-told, shaggy dog story. At the other extreme, it may not surprise you that J.G. Ballard unsettles with The Dead Astronaut, a typically dark story about what happens to astronauts who die in space and then return to Earth.
I also enjoyed many of the stories written by well-known literary authors who are less known for their ghostly stories such as Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, P. G. Wodehouse, Dylan Thomas, Frank Kafka, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and Dylan Thomas, for example. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley reminds us that there is more to her writing than just Frankenstein with Captain Walton’s Final Letter, as does Charlotte Bronte with Napoleon and the Spectre. Charles Dickens gives us Christmas Stories which combines Christmas tropes with ghostly happenings, whilst Sir Alec Guinness’s Money for Jam is a WW2-based oddity. Richmal Crompton’s The Ghost returns us to childhood with a story using the author’s famous Just William character.
For those who like their writing more modern, there’s quite a lot to choose from here as well - Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, William Faulkner, Kate Atkinson, Ruth Rendell, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis and Annie Proulx are all here to show that ghosts literal, imaginative and speculative, all exist in the modern world too.
The only downside to this collection was perhaps the chronological order of the stories. I suspect some readers may find some of the older stories hard work, simply because they are not of this time. I quite like the sense of ancient history created by this and the chronological order does give the reader an idea of how the genre has evolved, but I for one struggled with the Scottish dialect in Sir Walter Scott’s Wandering Willie’s Tale (a title that doesn’t work well for a modern audience!) for example. This may mean that less hardy readers of the supernatural may give up before they get to the modern form.
Nevertheless, this is a great collection that is worth buying for your next ghostly read, or perhaps for next Halloween. Like those volumes before it, Ghost is not a book to be consumed in long reads or binges but worked for me best when sampled and savoured, reading one or two stories a night, often at random – one of the reasons why it has taken so long to read! However, Head of Zeus have published another cracker.
I’m now wondering what they will do for next Christmas’s tome!
With that in mind, this was a bit of a late arrival this year but a very welcome one. It is a reprint, with the tome-like hardback first published in 2015, but this new edition, as part of the Anthologies collection, is a lovely quality, large paperback version.
The title says what is in the book. There are 100 stories arranged in chronological order, from Pliny the Younger’s The Haunted House, written sometime between AD 99 and 109, to James Robertson’s appropriately titled Ghost, first published in 2014.
With such a huge range to choose from, it is unlikely that every story will suit every reader. But there’s a whole roster of well-known names and unknown (to me) authors that make a generally engaging, if eclectic, mix.
For those who are regular readers of the genre there are the expected names – Sheridan le Fanu (Madam Crowl’s Ghost), Edgar Allan Poe (Tell-tale Heart), Bram Stoker (Dracula’s Guest), H.P. Lovecraft (The Terrible Old Man), H.G. Wells (The Inexperienced Ghost), M.R. James (Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad), Ray Bradbury (Mars is Heaven) and Stephen King (The Mangler), for example.
As expected, I enjoyed re-reading the classic favourites – I still regard M. R. James’ Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad one of the finest ever ghost stories of all time, Sheridan le Fanu’s Madam Crowl’s Ghost still deserves its well-regarded status, Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest is still surprisingly effective considering its brevity and W.W. Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw are all worth admission here. Ray Bradbury’s Mars is Heaven gives us science-fictional ghosts of a sort. H.G. Wells’s The Inexperienced Ghost is one of his lesser known stories, a fireside-told, shaggy dog story. At the other extreme, it may not surprise you that J.G. Ballard unsettles with The Dead Astronaut, a typically dark story about what happens to astronauts who die in space and then return to Earth.
I also enjoyed many of the stories written by well-known literary authors who are less known for their ghostly stories such as Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, P. G. Wodehouse, Dylan Thomas, Frank Kafka, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and Dylan Thomas, for example. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley reminds us that there is more to her writing than just Frankenstein with Captain Walton’s Final Letter, as does Charlotte Bronte with Napoleon and the Spectre. Charles Dickens gives us Christmas Stories which combines Christmas tropes with ghostly happenings, whilst Sir Alec Guinness’s Money for Jam is a WW2-based oddity. Richmal Crompton’s The Ghost returns us to childhood with a story using the author’s famous Just William character.
For those who like their writing more modern, there’s quite a lot to choose from here as well - Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, William Faulkner, Kate Atkinson, Ruth Rendell, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis and Annie Proulx are all here to show that ghosts literal, imaginative and speculative, all exist in the modern world too.
The only downside to this collection was perhaps the chronological order of the stories. I suspect some readers may find some of the older stories hard work, simply because they are not of this time. I quite like the sense of ancient history created by this and the chronological order does give the reader an idea of how the genre has evolved, but I for one struggled with the Scottish dialect in Sir Walter Scott’s Wandering Willie’s Tale (a title that doesn’t work well for a modern audience!) for example. This may mean that less hardy readers of the supernatural may give up before they get to the modern form.
Nevertheless, this is a great collection that is worth buying for your next ghostly read, or perhaps for next Halloween. Like those volumes before it, Ghost is not a book to be consumed in long reads or binges but worked for me best when sampled and savoured, reading one or two stories a night, often at random – one of the reasons why it has taken so long to read! However, Head of Zeus have published another cracker.
I’m now wondering what they will do for next Christmas’s tome!
talentedmisfit's review against another edition
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
balancinghistorybooks's review against another edition
4.0
I did not want to rush through Louise Welsh's edited collection of ghostly short stories too quickly (if such a thing is possible when reading an 800 page tome!), and so spread it out over January and February, sometimes reading several stories per day, and other times forgetting to pick it up entirely. There were lots of rereads for me within Ghost; it features a sweeping collection of stories from the Ancient to the modern. Many of the stories were new to me, and will certainly hold appeal for different readers. Surprisingly, very few of these tales were chilling, and quite a few left me underwhelmed. I would not have personally termed some of them 'ghost stories', as they do not feature anything akin to ghosts or ghostly happenings, but Ghost is certainly a varied book. The chronological organisation of the stories worked so well, and I found the Victorian and contemporary stories particularly strong.
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