wille44 's review for:

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

5.0

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 Often somewhat reductively referenced as another wrung in the ladder of weird fiction/cosmic horror leading up to and directly inspiring Lovecraft, The Willows is the best of these “Lovecraftian” formative horror stories I’ve read yet, and probably the first to stand firmly on its own outside of the shadow Cthulhu and his ilk cast across all works of this distinct style. 

 Blackwood does an excellent job at establishing the oppressive ambiance of his setting, an ever shifting, marshy island predominated by willows and surrounded by the rushing river rising and falling around it.  These unpeopled marshes in which our two adventurers make camp quickly reveal themselves to be barren for a reason, as Blackwood imbues this environmental hostility with an additional strain of cosmic horror, his two men quickly discovering an unearthly presence that they can hardly detect but which wreaks havoc on their mental stability and boating equipment in equal measure, trapping them on a sinking island on which seem to lurk creatures beyond comprehension. 

While Blackwood attempts to channel his horror into the supernatural, ramping up his suspense and reveals quite well, it actually felt strongest when the oppression came directly from the realm of the mundane.  There is no shortage of man vs. nature driven stories, but rarely do they explicitly attempt to evoke dread the way The Willows so wonderfully does.  It’s one thing to describe a man stranded and surviving in the wilderness, but altogether another to fixate on and fully tease out the growing paranoia and gnawing fear as his options grow slim, as the ground, the water, the very trees themselves all seem imbued with thinly veiled malevolence and hatred towards him.  

When this focus shifts in the second half to the impossible to describe, madness inducing beings we come to expect from these stories, still Blackwood maintains his environmental horror, the willows as proxies for an evil that cannot be described, and his execution of this motif is wonderfully realized and deeply unsettling.  His prose as well is gorgeous, his descriptions of the marshes lush and haunting, and his scene setting is necessary and perfect to succeed in the way The Willows does. 

 The ending of his story perhaps leaves a bit to be desired, seemingly building to a crescendo of madness and action, we instead get neither in our conclusion.  Even so it’s a spectacular mood piece and a beautifully written, uniquely rendered work of horror, while lacking bombast it more than makes up for it in style and a creeping dread that sticks to the brain even after the relentless noises of the willows cease.