Kirjahaku

‘His body was pressed against the wall at the head of the bed, and the face was a mask of agonised horror and fruitless entreaty. But the eyes were already glazed in death, and before Francis could reach the bed the body had toppled over and lay inert and lifeless. Even as he looked, he heard a limping step go down the passage outside.’ E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection. The range and variety of these spooky narratives is far broader and more adventurous than those of any other writer of supernatural fiction. Within the covers of this volume you will encounter revengeful spectres, vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous spectral worms and slugs and other entities of nameless dread. This is a classic collection that cannot fail to charm and chill.

Reigning over a social merry-go-round of dinners and parties, Mrs Ames is the undisputed queen bee of Riseborough. That is, until vivacious new villager Mrs Evans catches the eye of both her son and her husband. Not content with captivating the men in her life, 'that wonderful creature' Mrs Evans becomes not just rival to Mrs Ames' marriage, but rival to her village throne. When the whole of Riseborough is invited to Mrs Evans' masked costume party, action must be taken. As the date looms, the irrepressible Mrs Ames resolves to seize the chance to win back her position, and thus, her man.

Lucia is one of the great comic characters in English literature. Outrageously pretentious, hypocritical and snobbish, Queen Lucia, ‘as by right divine’ rules over the toy kingdom of ‘Riseholme’ based on the Cotswold village of Broadway. Her long-suffering husband Pepino is ‘her prince-consort’, the outrageously camp Georgie is her ‘gentleman-in-waiting’, the village green is her ‘parliament’, and her subjects, such as Daisy Quantock, are hapless would-be ‘Bolsheviks’. In Lucia in London, the prudish, manically ambitious Lucia launches herself into the louche world of London society. Her earnest determination to learn all about ‘modern movements’ makes her the perfect comic vehicle for Benson’s free-wheeling satire of salon society, and of the dominant fads and movements of the 1920s, including vegetarianism, yoga, palmistry, Freudianism, séances, Post-Impressionist art and Christian Science. Meanwhile in Tilling, clearly modelled on Benson’s home town of Rye, Miss Mapp consumed by ‘chronic rage and curiosity’ sits at her window, armed with her light-opera glasses keeping baleful watch on her neighbours. ‘Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil’: and Benson transmutes her boiling into a series of small humiliations in his witty, malicious comedy. In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia and the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth. Carabine also concentrates on the novels’ disturbing, bitchy, ‘camp’ humour whenever ‘that horrid thing which Freud calls sex’ is raised.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury. These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye). Their constant skirmishes ensure that every game of bridge, tea or dinner-party, church service, council meeting or art–exhibition are thrilling encounters that ensure Tilling is always on ‘a very agreeable rack of suspense’. Both Elisabeth and Lucia are gross hypocrites, snobs and bullies, the huge differences in temperament and style ensure the battle is usually unequal. Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited and Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur and personal prestige. Driven by demons of revenge, Elisabeth always acts impulsively, and therefore every revelation of her meanness allows Lucia, the consummate actress, to kill her ally with a sickening kindness. In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth and through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia. Carabine also concentrates on the novels’ disturbing, bitchy, ‘camp’ humour whenever ‘that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised’

Tikhaja selskaja Anglija v rasskazakh E.F. Bensona skryvaet mrachnye tajny i nastojaschie uzhasy. Zdes po nocham k vorotam osobnjaka priezzhaet pustoj katafalk so strannym kucherom, po okruge nositsja prizrachnyj avtomobil razbivshegosja v avarii likhacha, mestnye obkhodjat storonoj stojaschuju rjadom s derevnej piktskuju krepost, a sbezhavshij ot tsivilizatsii khudozhnik vstrechaet v drevnem lesu nechto nevoobrazimoe...Misticheskaja storona tvorchestva Bensona otlichaetsja raznoobraziem i izyskannostju stilja. Chereduja istorii o stolknovenijakh s prividenijami, zlymi dukhami i prochimi sverkhestestvennymi suschnostjami s satiroj na naibolee nelepye zabluzhdenija svoego vremeni, avtor vsegda masterski uderzhivaet vnimanie chitatelej i udivljaet neozhidannoj razvjazkoj.

Ujutnye derevushki provintsialnoj Anglii v rasskazakh E.F. Bensona khranjat svoi zhutkie tajny. Zdes prizraki byvshikh khozjaev pomestij ne khotjat rasstavatsja s sobstvennostju, a dukhi umershikh muzhej dazhe s togo sveta prodolzhajut izvodit zhen. Zdes starinnyj kolodets ispolnjaet zhelanija prosjaschikh, a v lesu nepodaleku skryvaetsja drevnee zlo, mechtajuschee razrushit blagostnuju selskuju pastoral.Na stranitsakh etogo sbornika chitatelja zhdut misticheskie rasskazy o koldovstve i sueverijakh, o vstrechakh s nevedomym i potustoronnim. E.F. Benson masterski sumeet uderzhat vnimanie chitatelja i udivit neozhidannym finalom.