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A review by verosnotebook
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
4.0
One of my intentions this year is to read more short stories, not just to go through all the ones I have on my shelf but also to be introduced to new authors, both old and new.
To get me started, I went for a re-read of a famous one. 'The Monkey’s Paw' appears in many anthologies and has been adapted innumerably into various media. Quite a success for a short story published in 1902. Reading it, I noticed how Jacobs spent a big proportion of the narrative showing us the happy family, ensconced in their warm home while being surrounded by the cold and wet. In contrast, the 'scary’ bits are much more sparse and I believe the author did that so that we the readers would use our own fears to flesh it out. Smart, and probably why this works so well.
This re-read has made me curious about W.W. Jacobs. I literally just found this morning, in a charity shop, an old penguin of his from 1937, titled Deep Waters. Couldn’t resist getting it :O)
To get me started, I went for a re-read of a famous one. 'The Monkey’s Paw' appears in many anthologies and has been adapted innumerably into various media. Quite a success for a short story published in 1902. Reading it, I noticed how Jacobs spent a big proportion of the narrative showing us the happy family, ensconced in their warm home while being surrounded by the cold and wet. In contrast, the 'scary’ bits are much more sparse and I believe the author did that so that we the readers would use our own fears to flesh it out. Smart, and probably why this works so well.
This re-read has made me curious about W.W. Jacobs. I literally just found this morning, in a charity shop, an old penguin of his from 1937, titled Deep Waters. Couldn’t resist getting it :O)