What do you think?
Rate this book
The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen #2
The White People
The White People (1904) is a short story by Arthur Machen. Originally published in Horlick’s Magazine , the story was later printed in The House of Souls (1906), a short story collection. Condemned as decadent and obscene upon publication, Machen’s writing earned praise from Oscar Wilde and H. P. Lovecraft. Throughout the years, Machen’s work has been referenced and adapted by such figures as Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Josh Malerman for its masterfully unsettling blend of science, myth, and magic. As the sun sets over the lush countryside, Cotgrave and his friend Ambrose discuss the thin boundary that separates sorcery and the sacred. Unable to agree about the nature of good and evil, on what defines a sinner as opposed to a saint, Ambrose offers his comrade a book to borrow. Surprisingly well-kept for its age, the green book accompanies Cotgrave on his journey home, where he opens it to discover a strange, mysterious tale. Its pages contain the diary of a young girl who, encouraged by her nurse, immerses herself in the world of magic. As she grows adept in the ways of witchcraft, the girl begins referring to strange beings and unknown places, all while doing her best to conceal her secret life from friends and family. When he reaches the diary’s end, Cotgrave will wish he had never looked past its binding. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Arthur Machen’s The White People is a classic of British horror fiction reimagined for modern readers.
48 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1904
417 people are currently reading
10697 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Machen
1,055 books983 followersArthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 436 reviews
November 11, 2019
This collection makes for both an inspiring and a melancholy reading experience, for here we see Machen first at the height of his powers and then at the beginning of his decline.
The pieces that begin this collection are worthy of high praise. “The White People”—although not as viscerally terrifying as some of Machen’s earlier tales—is superb in its subtle use of a naïve narrator to evoke, by degrees, a sense of existential menace. The prose poems in“Ornaments in Jade”—experimental attempts to forge a new style free of the influence of Stevenson--are both sonorous and original in their language, and delicately suggest—with a hint of sexuality and a dash of horror—the existence of doors to other worlds. “A Fragment of Life,” though much greater in length, is in its mood much like these prose poems. Similar to his masterpiece “The Hill of Dreams,” it is written in Machen’s finest style, and suggests—although admittedly not much happens in the course of the narrative—the existence of shining doors to hidden worlds, a pulsing life of sensuality and beauty and possible terror lurking just beneath everyday existence, and shows how this magnificence can sometimes be released by the transformative power of something as simple as a walk.
After that, though, the quality of the work falls off. The short pieces written during WW I are sentimental and conventional in conception, the “Great Return” (Holy Grail returns to Wales) is subtle and evocative but lacking in force, and “The Terror” (the creatures of the earth revolt against humankind) is original—take that, Daphne du Maurier!—but unfortunately. at least in its present form, not very interesting. (This is the 1917 short story Century Magazine abridgement of the serialized short novel which appeared in the Evening News the year before.)
What is most dismaying about these last works is the almost complete absence of Machen’s characteristic style. The rhythms and melodies of this prose are virtually indistinguishable from the work of any British journalist of the early ‘20’s.
My theory is that Machen’s strength—his absolute conviction that a world more real than ours lurked behind the veil, filled with beauty and terror-was profoundly shaken by the Great War. The veil had indeed been rent, revealing the terror, but beauty was nowhere to be found, and whatever horror might subsequently be unleashed was greater than anything Machen wished to imagine. He contented himself with journalism and reminiscence, and the once magnificent style was no more.
October 29, 2018
Penguin has done a great service in publishing this splendid selection of writings by Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947), which includes a most insightful introductory essay by S. T. Joshi along with a Forward by Guillermo Del Toro. A listing of the tales in this collection runs as follows: The Inmost Light, Novel of the Black Seal, Novel of the White Powder, The Red Hand, The White People, A Fragment of Life, The Bowmen, The Soldiers' Rest, The Great Return, Out of the Earth, The Terror. Rather than making overarching observations, to provide a reader with a more specific taste of the author's distinctive voice and vision, I will focus on two of my personal favorites: The White People and Novel of the White Powder.
THE WHITE PEOPLE
Arthur Machen looked askance at his surrounding late nineteenth-century society’s infatuation with material progress and thinking all the vast mysteries of the universe can be reduced to the findings of science or the innovations of technology. His tale, The White People, one of the most influential works of horror/supernatural fiction ever written, addresses the consequences of such misguided notions in the personage of Ambrose, a devotee of occult literature, who tells his visitor Cotgrave that modern man is rapidly losing spiritual depth and the capacity to know the meaning of true sin and evil.
As part of his teachings, he permits Cotgrave to borrow one of his rare treasures, The Green Book, a thin volume written by a young girl now long since dead. The contents of The Green Book is, in effect, the main body of Machem’s tale. And, let me tell you folks, The Green Book makes for one captivating and exhilarating read, touching on many alluring topics and themes, the following among their number:
Secret Knowledge and Gnostic Wisdom
“I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons.” So begins the young narrator (picture her as you would Alice in the tales of Lewis Carroll) about the secret knowledge she speaks of. And it is a knowing she was told as a very little girl: “the little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learnt their language and talked to them in it about some great white place where they lived.” We hear echoes of the great Gnostic text, The Hymn of the Pearl, of how we truly belong to a higher, more spiritual realm that we have since long forgotten.
Paganism and Nature Cults
She tells of her adventures with her nurse when she was five, how they went along a path through a wood and how they came to a deep, dark, shady pool. She’s left by her nurse to play with white people who emerged from the wood to dance and play and sing. Further on she sees the white people drink a curious wine and make images and worship them. Arthur Machen was steeped in the pre-Christian pagan religions and the various descriptions here – woods, pools, singing, dancing, playing, drinking wine, creating and worshiping images – are common to all nature cults not only in Europe but throughout the world. When the little girl relays her experiences to nurse, the nurse becomes frightened and tells her she was only dreaming and never to repeat what she has seen. And for good reason! Nineteenth century Wales is still very Christian and all of what she experienced would be labeled as “pagan” by her parents and others and she could be severely punished.
Goddess Worship
The narrator conveys more detail of her encounter, how there was “a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile.” Along with paganism and the natural world, goddess worship played its part in pre-Christian religions and still is a vital presence within many other world religions such as Buddhism and the various Hindu religions from India. Of course, the appearance of a goddess would pose a serious threat to the prevailing male-centered, male-controlled Christian religion. And the narrator being female adds an additional charge of danger to the equation since females, even little girls, possess such a direct connection to intuition, emotions, feelings and the earth.
Jungian Archetypes
As part of her adventures, the narrator comes upon “the big round mound.” The University of Reading in England has an entire project dedicated to prehistoric round mounds. And round mounds have so much affinity with mandalas thus they can be included in an analysis of the mandala archetype as developed by psychologist Carl Jung. As Jung has written, “The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man.” As we follow our young guide through her Green Book, we can read between the lines to detect how rich the connections Arthur Machen has made of his narrator’s account to the world of myth, spirit and the quest for psychic wholeness.
Shamanism
Again and again our little girl writes of her fantastic encounters, as when she “crept up a tunnel under a tree” and “the ground rose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall, and there was nothing but the green wall and the sky.” This is the language from the world of the shaman. Anthropologist Michael Harner has engaged in years of research of tribal cultures and writes extensively on the “shamanic state of consciousness” where the shaman will enter either the lower world or the higher world to gain knowledge and power so as to benefit the health and well-being of the tribe. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how in tribal cultures our narrator would quickly be initiated as one of its shamans.
NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER
The tale is told by Leicester, sister of her only brother Francis, a scholarly, handsome young man who returns home following his brilliant career at University. Francis decides to become an expert lawyer and to this end shuts himself away in a large room at the top of the house with his law books, dedicating hours and hours every day to intense study.
Weeks pass and Leicester suggests Francis take some time off, relax, get some fresh air, even go to the theater or read a novel, but her brother laughs off her suggestions. However there comes a time when Francis begins to look a bit worn and anxious - occasionally waking in the night with frightening dreams and in a cold, icy sweat, he’s forced to admit he is no longer in perfect health. Leicester persuades her brother to call the doctor.
The doctor prescribes a medicine and Francis takes the prescription to an old chemist to have it made up, an innocent-looking white powder that dissolves in a glass of cold water. Initially, Francis appears to return to good health, any weariness vanishes and he becomes more cheerful, so much so, he suggests he and his sister take a holiday in Paris.
Before any trip to Paris, Francis decides to spend his evenings in London. Leicester observes an unexpected change in her brother’s character: he becomes a lover of pleasure. Alas, this is only the beginning. His sister remarks: "But by degrees there came a change; he returned still in the cold hours of the morning, but I heard no more about his pleasures, and one morning as we sat at breakfast together I looked suddenly into his eyes and saw a stranger before me.”
Francis’ change of character becomes more extreme – his sister observes to her shock and extreme consternation that her brother is beginning to look scarcely human. Action must be taken so she decides to call the doctor. The old doctor arrives and has occasion to pay a visit to the scholar in his room on the top floor. The doctor returns and tells Leicester: ""I have seen that man," he began in a dry whisper. "I have been sitting in his presence for the last hour. My God! And I am alive and in my senses! I, who have dealt with death all my life, and have dabbled with the melting ruins of the earthly tabernacle. But not this, oh! not this," and he covered his face with his hands as if to shut out the sight of something before him.”
The tale continues and things becomes decidedly worse. Much, much worse. No question, The Novel of the White Powder is one of the most terrifying tales a reader will ever encounter.
"We had dined without candles; the room had slowly grown from twilight to gloom, and the walls and corners were indistinct in the shadow. But from where I sat I looked out into the street; and as I thought of what I would say to Francis, the sky began to flush and shine, as it had done on a well-remembered evening, and in the gap between two dark masses that were houses an awful pageantry of flame appeared—lurid whorls of writhed cloud, and utter depths burning, grey masses like the fume blown from a smoking city, and an evil glory blazing far above shot with tongues of more ardent fire, and below as if there were a deep pool of blood." - Arthur Machen, Novel of the White Powder
July 12, 2020
3.25 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
My recent read of T. Kingfisher's 2019 horror novel The Twisted Ones, which is by way of a sequel (set many years later) to Arthur Machen's 1904 novelette “The White People,” led me to seek out this classic horror work (which is free online here at Project Gutenberg). Cotgrave's friend has taken him to visit a recluse named Ambrose, who has unusual views on the nature of sin. Real evil, Ambrose argues, is when men improperly or in an unnatural way try “to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels”. As proof, Ambrose loans to Cotgrave an old green book containing the diary of a young girl, raised primarily by her nurse, who over the years initiates the girl into occult secrets, and even an eerie hidden supernatural world.
The bulk of “The White People” consists of the girl’s diary, and it’s rough sledding: an extremely long, disjointed and breathless tale told in stream-of-consciousness fashion, with almost no paragraph breaks. (I can’t tell you how much I missed having those paragraph breaks.) Her experiences are partly Lovecraftian, partly Arabian Nights-type stories told by her nurse, and partly terrors of Machen’s own creation, like the strange and beautiful bone-white people the girl sees and the terrible field of rocks that she wanders into:
In any case, reading this novelette did make The Twisted Ones much more meaningful to me, and vice versa. If you read either one, I definitely recommend reading the other as well.
My recent read of T. Kingfisher's 2019 horror novel The Twisted Ones, which is by way of a sequel (set many years later) to Arthur Machen's 1904 novelette “The White People,” led me to seek out this classic horror work (which is free online here at Project Gutenberg). Cotgrave's friend has taken him to visit a recluse named Ambrose, who has unusual views on the nature of sin. Real evil, Ambrose argues, is when men improperly or in an unnatural way try “to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels”. As proof, Ambrose loans to Cotgrave an old green book containing the diary of a young girl, raised primarily by her nurse, who over the years initiates the girl into occult secrets, and even an eerie hidden supernatural world.
The bulk of “The White People” consists of the girl’s diary, and it’s rough sledding: an extremely long, disjointed and breathless tale told in stream-of-consciousness fashion, with almost no paragraph breaks. (I can’t tell you how much I missed having those paragraph breaks.) Her experiences are partly Lovecraftian, partly Arabian Nights-type stories told by her nurse, and partly terrors of Machen’s own creation, like the strange and beautiful bone-white people the girl sees and the terrible field of rocks that she wanders into:
I went on into the dreadful rocks. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid-grinning men; I could see their faces as if they would jump at me out of the stone, and catch hold of me, and drag me with them back into the rock, so that I should always be there. … I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn’t frighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones …H.P. Lovecraft considered “The White People” a story of “enormous power” and a source of inspiration, and scholars consider it a classic in the horror genre. Personally, most of the real horror passed me by, as I got lost in the hallucinogenic maze of the girl's diary. But this story certainly has its moments, and I can see how a deeper study would very likely yield a greater appreciation of its merits.
In any case, reading this novelette did make The Twisted Ones much more meaningful to me, and vice versa. If you read either one, I definitely recommend reading the other as well.
July 12, 2017
"Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange!" Those words from Hamlet kept coursing through my mind as I read this marvelous collection. Machen taps into a deep Gnostic tradition in this work, positing these mysterious tales in deliberate counter-point to the industrial rationalism of his (and our) day. It's quite a heady reading experience and so unlike the typical realistic tapestry upon which most writers work. I felt like I was being led by the hand into magical realms that were both strange and somehow familiar. Machen shows, in glittering imaginative detail, that there truly are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
I am deeply indebted to Glenn Russell's fantastic review for turning me onto this work. I can't describe it any better than he already did: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I am deeply indebted to Glenn Russell's fantastic review for turning me onto this work. I can't describe it any better than he already did: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
November 5, 2017
Curious Younger Fellow: "Tell me, what is True Evil?"
His Esteemed Elder, A Worldly Raconteur: "True Evil is the striving towards a higher place - but choosing a different path to get there; it is the attempt to ascend to Godhood without being godly. A true sinner may have committed no sin but in his striving; a man may murder but not be a true sinner. Stones may blossom stone flowers, flowers may sing strange songs to you, your furniture may rearrange itself on its own accord; all of these are hallmarks of True Evil."
Curious Fellow: "I fear I do not understand what you are saying, but must confess my utter fascination with how you are saying it!"
Worldly Raconteur: "Ah I see that you may already be on that path which I have described. Here, have some more wine, borrow this old diary which I'm sure you'll find quite interesting. There are many things I'd eventually like to show you."
This is my diary my diary of my life my life as a young woman left all on her lonesome by her very busy parents, no one to guide me other than my old nurse, my old nurse with all of her stories and her secrets and her strange wonderful phrases, we said them together, we made that lovely clay doll together and we buried it behind that hedge, my sweet old nurse oh what she showed me oh the stories she told me such odd lovely stories about strange places and strange pits and strange lovely white people, oh so white, they live in the forest and the rivers and under the hill, they will show me the signs they will show me the way they will show me the path ... I explored the forest I found the hill I crawled up the hill; oh look the stones! they are in circles! if I gaze upon them long enough I see their design! they are showing me their pattern, their dance! They they they oh oh oh... and now I am back in my bed, fearful and excited and thinking of all the lovely old stories told to me by lovely old nurse, I am chanting the lovely old phrases she taught me, I quiver under my blankets, oh the lovely fear, oh how I tremble with it... I come back to the hill, to the stones and their faces, their funny faces, angry and happy and expecting me; they surround me, the stones are around me, the pattern the pattern, I am a part of this strange wonderful pattern oh! I dance to their lovely pattern oh! I call to them the lovely white people oh! they come to me oh! they come...
His Esteemed Elder, A Worldly Raconteur: "True Evil is the striving towards a higher place - but choosing a different path to get there; it is the attempt to ascend to Godhood without being godly. A true sinner may have committed no sin but in his striving; a man may murder but not be a true sinner. Stones may blossom stone flowers, flowers may sing strange songs to you, your furniture may rearrange itself on its own accord; all of these are hallmarks of True Evil."
Curious Fellow: "I fear I do not understand what you are saying, but must confess my utter fascination with how you are saying it!"
Worldly Raconteur: "Ah I see that you may already be on that path which I have described. Here, have some more wine, borrow this old diary which I'm sure you'll find quite interesting. There are many things I'd eventually like to show you."
This is my diary my diary of my life my life as a young woman left all on her lonesome by her very busy parents, no one to guide me other than my old nurse, my old nurse with all of her stories and her secrets and her strange wonderful phrases, we said them together, we made that lovely clay doll together and we buried it behind that hedge, my sweet old nurse oh what she showed me oh the stories she told me such odd lovely stories about strange places and strange pits and strange lovely white people, oh so white, they live in the forest and the rivers and under the hill, they will show me the signs they will show me the way they will show me the path ... I explored the forest I found the hill I crawled up the hill; oh look the stones! they are in circles! if I gaze upon them long enough I see their design! they are showing me their pattern, their dance! They they they oh oh oh... and now I am back in my bed, fearful and excited and thinking of all the lovely old stories told to me by lovely old nurse, I am chanting the lovely old phrases she taught me, I quiver under my blankets, oh the lovely fear, oh how I tremble with it... I come back to the hill, to the stones and their faces, their funny faces, angry and happy and expecting me; they surround me, the stones are around me, the pattern the pattern, I am a part of this strange wonderful pattern oh! I dance to their lovely pattern oh! I call to them the lovely white people oh! they come to me oh! they come...
October 17, 2016
“There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.”
― Arthur Machen
Christian mystic, member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a master writer of the weird tale. Arthur Machen was all three, with an interesting evolution as a writer (an uneven career spanning four decades) to boot, which makes him a compelling author to study.
Going through a collection of his best output - from early to late work - proves to be both an invigorating as well as slightly depressing experience. The early work shows Machen at the top of his game. Poetic, sensual prose takes the reader through the various dreamlike worlds that Machen concocts, where aberrant sexuality and horror are forever lurking, trying to intrude on and - more often than not - violently disrupt the natural state of things. This part of the collection would have been perfect, were it not for the unexplainable omission of "The Great God Pan", surely one of Machen's most famous tales. It's found in many anthologies, but it would have been nice to have it included here.
When we get to the pieces that were written during WW I however, we see another Machen. Excepting "The Terror", a tale of animals revolting against human dominion, I found these rather lacklustre, and missing the grand style Machen employed in earlier works. It's far more journalistic in tone, and thus rather dry.
One suspects that the horrors of WW I had dramatically changed Machen's perception of the world, and his hope for the future. Where was beauty, where was God? Was there any such thing? Sadly, Machen's almost orgiastic celebration of the mysterious -both beautiful and horrific- and the hidden divine had taken a hit, and it seems he never recovered. He died in 1947, having lived through another Great War, which produced a horror of a kind even Machen could never imagine. The one that annihilates all.
― Arthur Machen
Christian mystic, member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a master writer of the weird tale. Arthur Machen was all three, with an interesting evolution as a writer (an uneven career spanning four decades) to boot, which makes him a compelling author to study.
Going through a collection of his best output - from early to late work - proves to be both an invigorating as well as slightly depressing experience. The early work shows Machen at the top of his game. Poetic, sensual prose takes the reader through the various dreamlike worlds that Machen concocts, where aberrant sexuality and horror are forever lurking, trying to intrude on and - more often than not - violently disrupt the natural state of things. This part of the collection would have been perfect, were it not for the unexplainable omission of "The Great God Pan", surely one of Machen's most famous tales. It's found in many anthologies, but it would have been nice to have it included here.
When we get to the pieces that were written during WW I however, we see another Machen. Excepting "The Terror", a tale of animals revolting against human dominion, I found these rather lacklustre, and missing the grand style Machen employed in earlier works. It's far more journalistic in tone, and thus rather dry.
One suspects that the horrors of WW I had dramatically changed Machen's perception of the world, and his hope for the future. Where was beauty, where was God? Was there any such thing? Sadly, Machen's almost orgiastic celebration of the mysterious -both beautiful and horrific- and the hidden divine had taken a hit, and it seems he never recovered. He died in 1947, having lived through another Great War, which produced a horror of a kind even Machen could never imagine. The one that annihilates all.
April 28, 2019
If you start reading this are all like, "WTF, Miriam, why did you recommend this boring pseudo-philosophical masturbation?" persevere till you get to the nested "Green Book" narrative. Then you can just tell me I'm weird.
Or, alternatively, just skip the frame narrative. I didn't quite how they worked together, anyway. Maybe Ambrose belongs to some longer work I haven't read.
I'm glad I went ahead and read this despite not very much liking Machen's The Great God Pan. Thanks for the rec, long dead author! Less famous and less complex in plot than The Great God Pan, but definitely finer in atmosphere and general artistic value. --HP Lovecraft
Or, alternatively, just skip the frame narrative. I didn't quite how they worked together, anyway. Maybe Ambrose belongs to some longer work I haven't read.
I'm glad I went ahead and read this despite not very much liking Machen's The Great God Pan. Thanks for the rec, long dead author! Less famous and less complex in plot than The Great God Pan, but definitely finer in atmosphere and general artistic value. --HP Lovecraft
July 21, 2024
رواية "الوجوه البيضاء" هي بداية لا بأس بها للقراءة لواحد من أهم كُتاب الرُعب والماورائيات، وهذا بالتأكيد ليس الرأي الخاص بي، ولكن هذه آراء لكُتاب مثل: "لافكرافت" في السابق، و"ستيفن كينج" حالياً.
بدأت الرواية بداية فلسفية بحتة، وشعرت بالأجواء تماماً، واستحوذت علي، وذلك التساؤل الفلسفي حول معنى الشر الحقيقي، والسجال بين الشخصين كان رائع، به بعض الأشياء التي لم أفهمها بالطبع، ولكن المُجمل كان حوار مُثمر، وجميل، حتى ذهبنا إلى الكتاب الأخضر، وهي حكاية لطفلة، لديها بعض القدرات "لم نتعرف على شكلها تماماً"، تخوض رحلة ما في عالماً ما، وهذه هي المشكلة الأكبر في الرواية، أن كُل شيء، سريالي، فقرات من الخيال تلو الأخرى، تيار وعي كما تم الوصف، أحداث عن قُدرات الفتاة، وبعض الحكايات الأخرى المُصاحبة، وعندما أنهيت الرواية وجدت نفسي لا أستطيع تذكر العلاقة بين الكتاب الأخضر والحديث الأول بين الشخصيات، وأيضاً، لا أستطيع تذكر نشأة الفتاة، ولا أي شيء غير النهاية الغريبة.
بالطبع، هُناك محاولة للمُساعدة على فهم الرواية من المُترجم أو من الدار، كانت عن طريق مقال عن الكاتب وعن الرواية وبعض الآراء المُتفرقة حولها، ولم اقتنع بأياً منهم، حتى أنني أصبحت مُتشككاً من جودة الأدب الذي يكتبه آرثر ماكين، ولكني سأعطيه فرصة أخرى، في عمل أفضل وأكثر شهرة نسبياً.
وعلى الرغم من أن السرد كان كالمتاهة، جاءت الترجمة جيدة، موضحة، لأبعد الحدود، لتجعلك تفهم الغموض وتُفكك شفراته، ولا تزال هذه الرواية أو القصة المطولة مليئة بالغموض والتحليلات عنها التي أشعر أنها أعطت الرواية أكبر من قدرها أساساً.
January 30, 2022
This should have been an easy five stars, but it is marred by some baffling decisions. Arthur Machen, author of one of my all-time favourite novels The Hill of Dreams, along with a selection of truly genius horror tales I can endlessly re-read, was a writer who must be judiciously presented to a modern audience. The man's career was a strained, tortured effort to create in prose impressions of mystery and awe he felt on a profound level – not always to success, as even his greatest admirers will admit – and after the 1890s his work, while entertaining, was generally less powerful, so a collection where his 1890s work is out of the way early on without some major representatives is a poor idea from a structural perspective.
Machen's landmark novella The Great God Pan, his most famous and influential horror work, isn't here, despite Pan being the cover and it being the story most detailed in del Toro's foreword and Joshi's introduction, along with the also absent The Three Impostors. For a volume that claims to include Machen's essential fiction, the lack of TGGP is a glaring, confounding omission. It's Machen's signature piece. What next? A collection of Poe's essential poems sans The Raven? If not TGGP, then why not Machen's classic horror story The Shining Pyramid? Or those ingenious prose poems contained within the underrated Ornaments in Jade volume? The Terror is an effective horror tale, but omitting Machen's legendary novella in what is the most widely available introductory book of his work is an unfortunate error.
I wish this edition were as well handled as Joshi's exceptional Clark Ashton Smith book for Penguin. As it stands, this isn't the perfect Machen starter kit it should have been, which is evidenced by those reviews from those new to Machen citing the lesser quality of the later parts of the book. If you're a Machen newbie, I recommend checking out OUP's The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories instead.
Machen's landmark novella The Great God Pan, his most famous and influential horror work, isn't here, despite Pan being the cover and it being the story most detailed in del Toro's foreword and Joshi's introduction, along with the also absent The Three Impostors. For a volume that claims to include Machen's essential fiction, the lack of TGGP is a glaring, confounding omission. It's Machen's signature piece. What next? A collection of Poe's essential poems sans The Raven? If not TGGP, then why not Machen's classic horror story The Shining Pyramid? Or those ingenious prose poems contained within the underrated Ornaments in Jade volume? The Terror is an effective horror tale, but omitting Machen's legendary novella in what is the most widely available introductory book of his work is an unfortunate error.
I wish this edition were as well handled as Joshi's exceptional Clark Ashton Smith book for Penguin. As it stands, this isn't the perfect Machen starter kit it should have been, which is evidenced by those reviews from those new to Machen citing the lesser quality of the later parts of the book. If you're a Machen newbie, I recommend checking out OUP's The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories instead.
May 30, 2024
The White People is a unique and intellectually engaging short story that delves into themes of Good and Evil, sin and sainthood. The narrative is framed as a debate between two men, one of whom shares a diary he found that was written by a young girl. This diary, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, details the girl's experiences with her mysterious nurse, who inducts her into a cult-like, ritualistic religion.
The story's prose is relentless and fast-paced, creating an almost hypnotic effect that immerses the reader in the girl's perspective. Her diary is written in one singular, unsettling, run-on sentence, and as the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that the girl is encroaching upon womanhood while being exposed to dark, unsettling rituals that she doesn't fully comprehend. This creates a fascinating and horrifying dual perspective where the reader, aware of the ominous undertones the girl cannot detect at her current stage of mental development, feels a growing sense of dread and helplessness for the girl's plight.
Machen's story is uniquely eerie and unsettling and very difficult to describe. Despite reading this months ago, I often find myself thinking back on it, both the atmosphere and general malaise induced by the story, but also the vivid imagery it created in my mind. It is best read in a single sitting to fully immerse yourself in the frantic pace of the writing. "The White People" is a haunting exploration of innocence lost and the insidious nature of evil, and it left a lasting impression on me. I can't wait to read more of Machen's work!
Watch the Halloween reading vlog here: https://youtu.be/0vphkBXq6zs
Trigger/Content Warnings: child sexual abuse (implied, not on the page), grooming, religious indoctrination, ritualistic murder (of a child)
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok
You can join our book club over on Patreon...
PBB Book Club
The story's prose is relentless and fast-paced, creating an almost hypnotic effect that immerses the reader in the girl's perspective. Her diary is written in one singular, unsettling, run-on sentence, and as the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that the girl is encroaching upon womanhood while being exposed to dark, unsettling rituals that she doesn't fully comprehend. This creates a fascinating and horrifying dual perspective where the reader, aware of the ominous undertones the girl cannot detect at her current stage of mental development, feels a growing sense of dread and helplessness for the girl's plight.
Machen's story is uniquely eerie and unsettling and very difficult to describe. Despite reading this months ago, I often find myself thinking back on it, both the atmosphere and general malaise induced by the story, but also the vivid imagery it created in my mind. It is best read in a single sitting to fully immerse yourself in the frantic pace of the writing. "The White People" is a haunting exploration of innocence lost and the insidious nature of evil, and it left a lasting impression on me. I can't wait to read more of Machen's work!
Watch the Halloween reading vlog here: https://youtu.be/0vphkBXq6zs
Trigger/Content Warnings: child sexual abuse (implied, not on the page), grooming, religious indoctrination, ritualistic murder (of a child)
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok
You can join our book club over on Patreon...
PBB Book Club
May 14, 2018
The influences this story has had on weird literature and horror in general are very visible, from Lovecraft's 'Necronomicon' to 'Navidson records' in House of Leaves and most probably 'Pan's Labyrinth'. And even to a seasoned reader, Machen's delightful narrative in its misdirections still offers a reading experience that yearns for more.
In structure, The White People, essentially, is a discussion on the nature of evil; with an atmospheric meta narrative suggestive of illusions, witchcraft and occultism. The discussion sounds esoteric in content and is presented in third person; and the Green Book that forms the main narrative is presented as the 'Hobson-Jobson' for understanding this colloquy. After a walkthrough in first person, the green pocket book opens as the diary entry of a little girl. From there on, the manuscript provides a hallucinatory reality as strange as David Lindsay's 'Arcturus'. Probably Murakami< might have modelled his 1Q84 Fuka-Eri on her, with scaled down versions of little people to make Air Chrysalis. Well, it’s a stretch, and I am tempted to propose or accuse in my excitement of finding an alleged mother source. There is plenty of unreliability in her narration, weird scholarship on folk cultures, strangeness and contradictions; and it doesn't have an ending, or rather ends abruptly. The main narrative in itself teases a sequel, and then proceeds to be Gaben and Half-life 3.
Along with the strange vivid imagery, a lot of questions will also haunt readers after the read. How reliable of a source is the Green Book? Did this 'White Helen' succeed where 'Pan Helen' had failed, in completely bridging the gap between our reality and the dimension our senses are handicapped to perceive? Or was she just a delusional 'Calvin' and had created her own white 'Hobbes' in her search for companionship based on nurse's storylines? Or were they either completely insane or even completely sane?
Machen's writing requires a reading with the social time period in consideration, for its easy to find his anxiety on the new Victorian women as something sexist in today's view. After all, the evil might seem to have been portrayed as intrinsic to women who break off the social notions while men seem to be normal anxious overseers. I think the prologue-epilogue discourse tries to draw a line there, mostly in opposition to what might be interpreted prima facie.
The excitement of discovering a less cosmic Lovecraft in Machen is forcing me to consider a single shared universe for this and other de-hyphenated stories. I am badly inclined to consider connect the White People with the missing years of Helen in The Great God Pan. I would even interpret the water reflection scene as Pan projecting himself to our dimension. Or even connect these Helens to the White Powder one. But, that’s just me :)
In structure, The White People, essentially, is a discussion on the nature of evil; with an atmospheric meta narrative suggestive of illusions, witchcraft and occultism. The discussion sounds esoteric in content and is presented in third person; and the Green Book that forms the main narrative is presented as the 'Hobson-Jobson' for understanding this colloquy. After a walkthrough in first person, the green pocket book opens as the diary entry of a little girl. From there on, the manuscript provides a hallucinatory reality as strange as David Lindsay's 'Arcturus'. Probably Murakami< might have modelled his 1Q84 Fuka-Eri on her, with scaled down versions of little people to make Air Chrysalis. Well, it’s a stretch, and I am tempted to propose or accuse in my excitement of finding an alleged mother source. There is plenty of unreliability in her narration, weird scholarship on folk cultures, strangeness and contradictions; and it doesn't have an ending, or rather ends abruptly. The main narrative in itself teases a sequel, and then proceeds to be Gaben and Half-life 3.
Along with the strange vivid imagery, a lot of questions will also haunt readers after the read. How reliable of a source is the Green Book? Did this 'White Helen' succeed where 'Pan Helen' had failed, in completely bridging the gap between our reality and the dimension our senses are handicapped to perceive? Or was she just a delusional 'Calvin' and had created her own white 'Hobbes' in her search for companionship based on nurse's storylines? Or were they either completely insane or even completely sane?
Machen's writing requires a reading with the social time period in consideration, for its easy to find his anxiety on the new Victorian women as something sexist in today's view. After all, the evil might seem to have been portrayed as intrinsic to women who break off the social notions while men seem to be normal anxious overseers. I think the prologue-epilogue discourse tries to draw a line there, mostly in opposition to what might be interpreted prima facie.
The excitement of discovering a less cosmic Lovecraft in Machen is forcing me to consider a single shared universe for this and other de-hyphenated stories. I am badly inclined to consider connect the White People with the missing years of Helen in The Great God Pan. I would even interpret the water reflection scene as Pan projecting himself to our dimension. Or even connect these Helens to the White Powder one. But, that’s just me :)
November 14, 2024
Of the eleven stories chosen for the Penguin Classics compilation of Arthur Machen's "The White People and Other Weird Stories", edited by S.T. Joshi, only about two or three may raise the hairs on the back of one's neck. By today's standards of horror, they aren't that scary.
If, however, you only read one really well-crafted---and truly gruesome---horror story from this collection, read "Novel of the White Powder". Even by today's standards, this story is super-gross. I'm waiting for Shudder to turn it into a movie soon.
Seriously, though, it's important to remember that these stories were written at the turn of the 20th century; what people considered shocking and horrifying was vastly different than what we consider shocking and horrifying today.
Take Machen's most popular horror story "The Great God Pan" (a story which is shockingly absent from this collection, so one will have to look elsewhere for it), which is a supreme example of the Victorian-Era predilection for "Skirting the Issue". The story is basically about Naughty Sex, which Machen (and most Victorian-Era Brits) found not just distasteful but actually terrifying. Sex scared them, mainly because it made people crazy. There was also nudity involved, which was a big no-no.
The brilliant thing about the story (and several other stories in this collection) is how Machen was able to so clearly write about Naughty Sex without actually writing about sex. Everything was hinted at, subtly suggested, and/or implied with (really weird) symbolism. Nuance was everything.
Besides sex, though, the other thing that terrified Machen was secularism. A devout Catholic, Machen didn't like anything that strayed from traditionalism and a posture of reverence toward Nature and the Divine. This helps to explain some stories ("A Fragment of Life") which, to modern audiences, may not seem frightening at all. Indeed, it may lead one to wonder what the point of the story is at all, unless one looks at it from Machen's perspective of anti-materialism and anti-consumerism.
Later stories were very journalistic, owing to the fact that Machen was a journalist. From a documentarian standpoint, many of these stories are wonderful at capturing a time and place, namely Britain during the First World War. Horror and supernatural aspects were often subtle to the point of nonexistence, although the collection's final story (and the longest), "The Terror" is a creepy little story about "Nature Run Amok", one that predates Daphne Du Maurier's "The Birds" by about 30 years.
If, however, you only read one really well-crafted---and truly gruesome---horror story from this collection, read "Novel of the White Powder". Even by today's standards, this story is super-gross. I'm waiting for Shudder to turn it into a movie soon.
Seriously, though, it's important to remember that these stories were written at the turn of the 20th century; what people considered shocking and horrifying was vastly different than what we consider shocking and horrifying today.
Take Machen's most popular horror story "The Great God Pan" (a story which is shockingly absent from this collection, so one will have to look elsewhere for it), which is a supreme example of the Victorian-Era predilection for "Skirting the Issue". The story is basically about Naughty Sex, which Machen (and most Victorian-Era Brits) found not just distasteful but actually terrifying. Sex scared them, mainly because it made people crazy. There was also nudity involved, which was a big no-no.
The brilliant thing about the story (and several other stories in this collection) is how Machen was able to so clearly write about Naughty Sex without actually writing about sex. Everything was hinted at, subtly suggested, and/or implied with (really weird) symbolism. Nuance was everything.
Besides sex, though, the other thing that terrified Machen was secularism. A devout Catholic, Machen didn't like anything that strayed from traditionalism and a posture of reverence toward Nature and the Divine. This helps to explain some stories ("A Fragment of Life") which, to modern audiences, may not seem frightening at all. Indeed, it may lead one to wonder what the point of the story is at all, unless one looks at it from Machen's perspective of anti-materialism and anti-consumerism.
Later stories were very journalistic, owing to the fact that Machen was a journalist. From a documentarian standpoint, many of these stories are wonderful at capturing a time and place, namely Britain during the First World War. Horror and supernatural aspects were often subtle to the point of nonexistence, although the collection's final story (and the longest), "The Terror" is a creepy little story about "Nature Run Amok", one that predates Daphne Du Maurier's "The Birds" by about 30 years.
April 10, 2015
I reread this work, originally written in the 1890s and published in 1904, in preparation for teaching my course on H.P. Lovecraft. In Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft writes that "Machen's narrative, a triumph of skilful selectiveness and restraint, accumulates enormous power as it flows on in a stream of innocent childish prattle."
It is a fascinating story. Two men discuss the nature of evil and then consider the diary of a (now dead by her own hand) young girl, which contains her accounts of the countryside, her nurse, and the secret world of folklore, witchcraft, and ritual magic that the nurse opens up to her. The diary ends before fully articulating its final revelation, but there's enough described to be quite suggestive.
The story is particularly interesting to me in light of how it influenced Lovecraft. For example, there's the fictional document - in this case, the Green Book, the girl's diary - that provides an evocative yet unreliable glimpse into the mystical other world, not unlike Lovecraft's use of Wilbur Whateley's diary in "The Dunwich Horror" - and, of course, his famed Necronomicon. Machen also incorporates invented words and names in this tale, some of which later appeared in other authors' stories. Lovecraft used "Aklo" in connection with the "Sabaoth" invocation, for instance (also in "The Dunwich Horror").
Short and haunting, "The White People" is certainly worthy reading for anyone interested in the Gothic, the Weird, and/or dark fantasy or science fiction.
It is a fascinating story. Two men discuss the nature of evil and then consider the diary of a (now dead by her own hand) young girl, which contains her accounts of the countryside, her nurse, and the secret world of folklore, witchcraft, and ritual magic that the nurse opens up to her. The diary ends before fully articulating its final revelation, but there's enough described to be quite suggestive.
The story is particularly interesting to me in light of how it influenced Lovecraft. For example, there's the fictional document - in this case, the Green Book, the girl's diary - that provides an evocative yet unreliable glimpse into the mystical other world, not unlike Lovecraft's use of Wilbur Whateley's diary in "The Dunwich Horror" - and, of course, his famed Necronomicon. Machen also incorporates invented words and names in this tale, some of which later appeared in other authors' stories. Lovecraft used "Aklo" in connection with the "Sabaoth" invocation, for instance (also in "The Dunwich Horror").
Short and haunting, "The White People" is certainly worthy reading for anyone interested in the Gothic, the Weird, and/or dark fantasy or science fiction.
August 16, 2025
English review below⬇️
--------------------
German Review:
Nachdem ich die Geschichte 'The Dunwitch Horror' von H. P. Lovecraft von einiger Zeit gelesen habe, die mich wirklich begeistert hat und bei welcher im Kommentar vermerkt war, dass eine der Quellen 'The White People' von A. Machen ist, wollte ich die Erzählung unbedingt lesen. Und wenn man beide Geschichten vergleicht, erkennt man einige Elemente bei Lovecraft wieder, sieht aber auch sehr deutlich dessen eigene Akzentuierungen und dessen Ideen. 🖤🖤🖤
Eine auffällige Übereinstimmung ist das Framing bei dem ein Buch innerhalb der Erzählung in den Vordergrund rückt. In 'The White People' ist es besonders die Mischung aus kindlicher Erzählweise mit den Übertreibungen und der angeregten Vorstellungskraft, die in Kombination mit den Sagen von 'Nurse' (eine Nanny) dem Inhalt des Grünen Buches einen ganz besonderen Horror Flair geben. Dazu kommt die äußere Rahmung, in die die Inhalte des Grünen Buches gebettet sind und in der zu Anfang, bevor die Inhalte des Grünen Buches erzählt werden, über das wahre Böse debattiert wird – sowie die story-interne Interpretation am Schluss zum Inhalt des Grünen Buches. Diese einleitende und ausleitende Rahmung hebt die ganze Geschichte nochmals weiter zu einer Horrorerzählung, da eben der Horror ein Element des wahren Bösen sei. 😵
Ich liebe besonders die creepy Vibes der Erzählungen der Figur ‚Nurse‘ und der Bezug zum Jetzt und zur Realität! 🖤🖤🖤Wirklich mal eine spannende und unheimliche Fairy Story! 🖤🧚🏻♀️🖤
Gesamt: 5,0 🌟🌟🌟 (besonders für die creepy vibes!😅☺️)
---------------------
English review:
After reading H. P. Lovecraft's story “The Dunwitch Horror” some time ago, which I really enjoyed and which mentioned in the commentary that one of the sources was “The White People” by A. Machen, I was eager to read the story. And when you compare the two stories, you recognise some elements in Lovecraft's work, but you also see very clearly his own emphases and ideas. 🖤🖤🖤
One striking similarity is the framing, in which a book comes to the centre of the narrative. In “The White People”, it is particularly the mixture of childlike storytelling with exaggerations and vivid imagination, combined with the legends of “Nurse” (a kind of Nanny), that give the contents of the Green Book a very special horror flair. Added to that there is the outer framing in which the contents of the Green Book are embedded and in which the true evil is debated first bevor the content of the Green Book starts, as well as the story-internal interpretation at the end regarding the contents of the Green Book. This introductory and concluding framing lifts the whole story even further to a horror narrative, since horror is an element of true evil. 😵
I especially love the creepy vibes of the stories told by the character “Nurse” and the reference to the present and reality! 🖤🖤🖤Truly an exciting and eerie fairy tale! 🖤🧚🏻♀️🖤
Overall: 5.0 🌟🌟🌟 (especially for the creepy vibes!😅☺️)
--------------------
German Review:
Nachdem ich die Geschichte 'The Dunwitch Horror' von H. P. Lovecraft von einiger Zeit gelesen habe, die mich wirklich begeistert hat und bei welcher im Kommentar vermerkt war, dass eine der Quellen 'The White People' von A. Machen ist, wollte ich die Erzählung unbedingt lesen. Und wenn man beide Geschichten vergleicht, erkennt man einige Elemente bei Lovecraft wieder, sieht aber auch sehr deutlich dessen eigene Akzentuierungen und dessen Ideen. 🖤🖤🖤
Eine auffällige Übereinstimmung ist das Framing bei dem ein Buch innerhalb der Erzählung in den Vordergrund rückt. In 'The White People' ist es besonders die Mischung aus kindlicher Erzählweise mit den Übertreibungen und der angeregten Vorstellungskraft, die in Kombination mit den Sagen von 'Nurse' (eine Nanny) dem Inhalt des Grünen Buches einen ganz besonderen Horror Flair geben. Dazu kommt die äußere Rahmung, in die die Inhalte des Grünen Buches gebettet sind und in der zu Anfang, bevor die Inhalte des Grünen Buches erzählt werden, über das wahre Böse debattiert wird – sowie die story-interne Interpretation am Schluss zum Inhalt des Grünen Buches. Diese einleitende und ausleitende Rahmung hebt die ganze Geschichte nochmals weiter zu einer Horrorerzählung, da eben der Horror ein Element des wahren Bösen sei. 😵
Ich liebe besonders die creepy Vibes der Erzählungen der Figur ‚Nurse‘ und der Bezug zum Jetzt und zur Realität! 🖤🖤🖤Wirklich mal eine spannende und unheimliche Fairy Story! 🖤🧚🏻♀️🖤
Gesamt: 5,0 🌟🌟🌟 (besonders für die creepy vibes!😅☺️)
---------------------
English review:
After reading H. P. Lovecraft's story “The Dunwitch Horror” some time ago, which I really enjoyed and which mentioned in the commentary that one of the sources was “The White People” by A. Machen, I was eager to read the story. And when you compare the two stories, you recognise some elements in Lovecraft's work, but you also see very clearly his own emphases and ideas. 🖤🖤🖤
One striking similarity is the framing, in which a book comes to the centre of the narrative. In “The White People”, it is particularly the mixture of childlike storytelling with exaggerations and vivid imagination, combined with the legends of “Nurse” (a kind of Nanny), that give the contents of the Green Book a very special horror flair. Added to that there is the outer framing in which the contents of the Green Book are embedded and in which the true evil is debated first bevor the content of the Green Book starts, as well as the story-internal interpretation at the end regarding the contents of the Green Book. This introductory and concluding framing lifts the whole story even further to a horror narrative, since horror is an element of true evil. 😵
I especially love the creepy vibes of the stories told by the character “Nurse” and the reference to the present and reality! 🖤🖤🖤Truly an exciting and eerie fairy tale! 🖤🧚🏻♀️🖤
Overall: 5.0 🌟🌟🌟 (especially for the creepy vibes!😅☺️)
July 27, 2017
Dazzling, psychedelic novel about surreal world placed in an Celtic sanctuary.
December 24, 2021
في البداية اعتقدت أن التمهيد المكتوب تابع للمترجم أو لأحد النقاد أو الدارسين ... ثم تداركت الأمر وعلمت أنه جزء من الرواية ... قصة جانبية تمهد للرواية ... حوار فلسفي بين شخصين عن ماهية الشر ... ثم بعده تُقدم القصة بأسلوب أشبه كثيرا برواية هنري جيمس (أرواح شريرة / دورة البرغي)
الرواية نفسها جاءت على لسان بنت عمرها ١٦ عام ... تداعٍ للذكريات الغريبة الأشبه بالهلوسات
الذكريات عبارة عن وصف لطقوس وشعائر وثنية يمارسها أفراد عاديون وحكايات وأساطير وبعضها يمتزج بالطبيعة ويلصق الخرافات بها
جاءت الخاتمة مريحة إلى حد ما، وأعجبتني الملحقات الخاصة بالكاتب وبالرواية
بالفعل شعرت بالتشابه بين أسلوبي آرثر ماكين وألجرنون بلاكوود وإن كنت أحب الأخير أكثر
ملت لتفسير لافكرافت للقصة حتى وإن أنكرها المترجم أو الشخص الذي ترجم عنه هذا الجزء إن كان مترجما
الرواية بها أخطاء طباعية رهيبة لعل أفدحها تمثل في التواريخ الملخبطة جدا
هذا الكتاب بمثابة بداية تعارف بالكاتب والمترجم
الرواية نفسها جاءت على لسان بنت عمرها ١٦ عام ... تداعٍ للذكريات الغريبة الأشبه بالهلوسات
الذكريات عبارة عن وصف لطقوس وشعائر وثنية يمارسها أفراد عاديون وحكايات وأساطير وبعضها يمتزج بالطبيعة ويلصق الخرافات بها
جاءت الخاتمة مريحة إلى حد ما، وأعجبتني الملحقات الخاصة بالكاتب وبالرواية
بالفعل شعرت بالتشابه بين أسلوبي آرثر ماكين وألجرنون بلاكوود وإن كنت أحب الأخير أكثر
ملت لتفسير لافكرافت للقصة حتى وإن أنكرها المترجم أو الشخص الذي ترجم عنه هذا الجزء إن كان مترجما
الرواية بها أخطاء طباعية رهيبة لعل أفدحها تمثل في التواريخ الملخبطة جدا
هذا الكتاب بمثابة بداية تعارف بالكاتب والمترجم
September 4, 2021
رواية المفترض انها مرعبة فتاة صغيرة تري كائنات لا يراها سواها وتقوم بعمل طقوس وثنية علمتها لها مربيتها
عالم مظلم غير مفهوم لا تستطيع تخيلة بشكل كامل
عالم مظلم غير مفهوم لا تستطيع تخيلة بشكل كامل
Read
March 11, 2021I read some of the classic Machen stories decades ago, and have been playing with the idea of revisiting them. I'm not sure this is a good time, or how many of these I'll get through; I remember being bored to tears as a teen by "The Terror", for instance. But hey...
"The Inmost Light" certainly sets a leeeeeeisurely pace. Interesting concept, and I do appreciate Machen not spelling out everything at the end. It's quite clear how one should interpret Dr. Black's experiment with the opal. Joshi is hilarious! (Ok, I'll admit I can't take him seriously. But.) Who does he think his audience is? He finds it necessary to explain the name of a totally inconsequential pub. Then we get a note on the Rosicrucians. I guess he's trying to target a diverse crowd.
To Machen's credit, I actually remember the outlines of Novel of the Black Seal from my first reading. But there's just so much governess handwringing and walks in the misty woods, and the big reveal, while still quite effective, seems tirelessly telegraphed.
I didn't care for Novel of the White Powder the first time around either. The buildup, when we finally get to it, includes a rehash of the "I saw something inhuman in window!" trope from "The Inmost Light". The big reveal was a bit superficial, and had little to support it. (Sabbath wine, ahem.) I know it's the period style, but the handwringing! Oh. Oh.
At the end of the umm color complex (Black Seal, White Powder, Red Hand, White People), I can't say my commitment is particularly strong. Red Hand is a fun little proto-detective yarn, but did people really walk around London looking for troglodytes? The main narrative of White People is obviously influential and unsettling, if rambling. Did we need all those pages of the frame? I guess I'm just not into these endless mystic philosophical conversations beloved of Machen's characters.
I find Machen's later fictions, in his "journalistic" style, to be rather thin. The approach is interesting, with the recounting of a number initially unconnected events, that assemble to give the bigger picture. I can see how weird fiction writers have been influenced by this. I know I'm unfair with my lack of enthusiasm here, but by now we've seen this approach a lot.
(No, I couldn't make myself reread The Terror.)
"The Inmost Light" certainly sets a leeeeeeisurely pace. Interesting concept, and I do appreciate Machen not spelling out everything at the end. It's quite clear how one should interpret Dr. Black's experiment with the opal. Joshi is hilarious! (Ok, I'll admit I can't take him seriously. But.) Who does he think his audience is? He finds it necessary to explain the name of a totally inconsequential pub. Then we get a note on the Rosicrucians. I guess he's trying to target a diverse crowd.
To Machen's credit, I actually remember the outlines of Novel of the Black Seal from my first reading. But there's just so much governess handwringing and walks in the misty woods, and the big reveal, while still quite effective, seems tirelessly telegraphed.
I didn't care for Novel of the White Powder the first time around either. The buildup, when we finally get to it, includes a rehash of the "I saw something inhuman in window!" trope from "The Inmost Light". The big reveal was a bit superficial, and had little to support it. (Sabbath wine, ahem.) I know it's the period style, but the handwringing! Oh. Oh.
At the end of the umm color complex (Black Seal, White Powder, Red Hand, White People), I can't say my commitment is particularly strong. Red Hand is a fun little proto-detective yarn, but did people really walk around London looking for troglodytes? The main narrative of White People is obviously influential and unsettling, if rambling. Did we need all those pages of the frame? I guess I'm just not into these endless mystic philosophical conversations beloved of Machen's characters.
I find Machen's later fictions, in his "journalistic" style, to be rather thin. The approach is interesting, with the recounting of a number initially unconnected events, that assemble to give the bigger picture. I can see how weird fiction writers have been influenced by this. I know I'm unfair with my lack of enthusiasm here, but by now we've seen this approach a lot.
(No, I couldn't make myself reread The Terror.)
September 26, 2023
I read two thirds of this intriguing collection of stories before returning it to the book shelf. There's no doubt about it: Arthur Machen was an intriguing author, with a lot of very strange ideas that definitely earn the title of 'weird stories'.
I think one reason why I didn't stick it out to the end was that, despite the huge amount of variation between the stories (length, context, style) they all seemed to have very similar thematic undertones, i.e. that there is a world beyond this one occupied by (insert strange beings here) that one can uncover by (insert strange act here).
There are some very, very odd moments - including one particularly long paragraph in The White People that I can only really describe as 'deranged'. At points, this story actually became unreadable, and I found myself skim-reading a lot of it.
If you like HP Lovecraft (and I've really been sold on him) then you'll really enjoy this. The collection is beautifully presented, and - certainly for the most part - is a real joy to read.
I think one reason why I didn't stick it out to the end was that, despite the huge amount of variation between the stories (length, context, style) they all seemed to have very similar thematic undertones, i.e. that there is a world beyond this one occupied by (insert strange beings here) that one can uncover by (insert strange act here).
There are some very, very odd moments - including one particularly long paragraph in The White People that I can only really describe as 'deranged'. At points, this story actually became unreadable, and I found myself skim-reading a lot of it.
If you like HP Lovecraft (and I've really been sold on him) then you'll really enjoy this. The collection is beautifully presented, and - certainly for the most part - is a real joy to read.
February 26, 2020
I actually read this as a part of this book-- The White People and Other Weird Stories -- but I'm not sure if I'll read the other stories within, so I'm stopping with this one for now. I picked up this dense, surreal, pseudo-philosophical (?) horror tale after reading The Twisted Ones, and I'm even more impressed how T. Kingfisher used Machen's story as the basis for her creepy folkloric horror novel. The story itself is full of disturbing images and even more disturbing implications, but it's difficult to parse, especially reading on the train to and from work. I should have read it at night in bed by the light of a single candle, only I'm pretty sure I would have fallen asleep from all of the run-on sentences and lack of paragraph breaks.
I've been listening obsessively to The Magnus Archives podcast however, and I found that when I imagined hearing the Green Book portion of this story in the style of one of their statements, especially like Jane Prentiss' story in Episode 32,"The Hive", I was able to get into it more. A shortened version of this would have made a fabulous episode.
I've been listening obsessively to The Magnus Archives podcast however, and I found that when I imagined hearing the Green Book portion of this story in the style of one of their statements, especially like Jane Prentiss' story in Episode 32,"The Hive", I was able to get into it more. A shortened version of this would have made a fabulous episode.
March 14, 2019
"Machen writes of a strange borderland, lying somewhere between Dreams and Death, peopled with shades, beings, spirits, ghosts, men, women, souls."
January 2, 2018
The White People and Other Stories:
The Red Hand – What if a primitive man walked upright in London and murdered citizens as part of some obscure pagan ritual? Thus, is the basis for this tale that follows a somewhat familiar deductive plotline to catch a murderer lurking in the streets of London. Although the tale is somewhat derivative at the beginning it is nonetheless very engaging and suspenseful and the ending and payoff in the story are worth waiting for.
Ornaments in Jade – Beautiful prose poems about unexpected intrusions of beauty, mysticism, and spirituality in various peoples lives. Machen’s dreamlike prose evokes intense images of beauty almost to a point where it becomes unbearable. A truly remarkable piece of work.
The White People – A young girl’s innermost secrets and mystic thoughts are discovered in an old battered notebook, and the account of her journey into occult sin and witchcraft is a startling and excellent tale. Machen’s blend of fantastic imagery, natural beauty mixed with a sense of dread and familial occultism makes this one a very memorable story. Machen’s fantastic prose makes the accounts of the girl’s rituals and journeys into an occult landscape both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
A Fragment of Life – A happily married couple struggle with the small mundane things that make up life, but in the periphery a hidden world, filled with wonder and beauty awaits discovery. Machen makes a strong statement at the end of the first chapter of this tale when he compares a mundane ordinary life to death and man’s refusal to acknowledge beauty and nature to madness. This tale is so beautifully written, and I really become invested and fond of Darnell and his wife, and as I read this a second time I am yet again awestruck at the moments where Darnell seems to behold true beauty in everyday life and is so struck by it that he is unable to convey his feelings to his wife and world around him. A walk through the park at dusk, a balcony bathed in moonlight or the intricate details of a manor house opens a vista of beauty and mysticism around us if we are just willing to stop up and take in the details of our surroundings now and again. This is easily my favorite of the tales featured in this collection.
The tales that make up “The Angels of Mons” are tales surrounding religious miracles manifesting themselves to British soldiers during WWI, and I do enjoy these small fables even though they are perhaps not the most interesting stories in this collection. Machen’s introduction to these tales is a fascinating read, and how one of his tales (The Bowmen) became accepted as fact is a queer and puzzling occurrence that Machen himself can’t quite grasp.
The Great Return - tells the story of a journalist investigating strange occurrences that take place in a small town of Llantrisant in Wales. Machen fully delves into the religious mysticism of the Sangraal here and the effects the miracles have on the inhabitants of the small town. The prose and imagery in this tale are lovely as with the other stories and it is an interesting read to see Machen explore his own beliefs on the holy grail.
Out of the Earth - is another journalistic tale that deals with deranged children who terrorize a small Welsh community. A creepy little story about the little people and their dark ways. The ending to this tale is truly excellent.
The Coming of The Terror - is an abridged version of the longer serialized novel The Terror. I found the novel to be a bit dull, to be honest, and the abridged version makes it a bit easier to read, although I am still a bit perplexed about the ending and statement of the story. This is my least favorite of the stories in this collection.
The Happy Children - Machen’s journalistic alter ego travels to a remote English town in the Midlands during Christmas, where amidst antique buildings, a great number of children are out and about, frolicking and singing carols. A short ghostly tale set at Christmas has a nice blend of evocative prose on the surroundings of the small English town and a creepy, mystic ending.
Through these stories, Machen presents the scientifically minded skeptic as one who has missed the point and portrays them as people who have an awakening when confronted with the mysterious and ethereal. It is very clear that Machen dearly wished more people to share his view on the world through mysticism and religion and wrote these stories as a cry against the increasing materialism of his age and the dwindling importance of the mystic and the aesthetic in people’s lives. Absolutely brilliant when he is at his best, which is the majority of the tales in this collection. An absolute must for those with a taste for the mysterious, fantastic and other-worldly ecstasy.
The Red Hand – What if a primitive man walked upright in London and murdered citizens as part of some obscure pagan ritual? Thus, is the basis for this tale that follows a somewhat familiar deductive plotline to catch a murderer lurking in the streets of London. Although the tale is somewhat derivative at the beginning it is nonetheless very engaging and suspenseful and the ending and payoff in the story are worth waiting for.
Ornaments in Jade – Beautiful prose poems about unexpected intrusions of beauty, mysticism, and spirituality in various peoples lives. Machen’s dreamlike prose evokes intense images of beauty almost to a point where it becomes unbearable. A truly remarkable piece of work.
The White People – A young girl’s innermost secrets and mystic thoughts are discovered in an old battered notebook, and the account of her journey into occult sin and witchcraft is a startling and excellent tale. Machen’s blend of fantastic imagery, natural beauty mixed with a sense of dread and familial occultism makes this one a very memorable story. Machen’s fantastic prose makes the accounts of the girl’s rituals and journeys into an occult landscape both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.
A Fragment of Life – A happily married couple struggle with the small mundane things that make up life, but in the periphery a hidden world, filled with wonder and beauty awaits discovery. Machen makes a strong statement at the end of the first chapter of this tale when he compares a mundane ordinary life to death and man’s refusal to acknowledge beauty and nature to madness. This tale is so beautifully written, and I really become invested and fond of Darnell and his wife, and as I read this a second time I am yet again awestruck at the moments where Darnell seems to behold true beauty in everyday life and is so struck by it that he is unable to convey his feelings to his wife and world around him. A walk through the park at dusk, a balcony bathed in moonlight or the intricate details of a manor house opens a vista of beauty and mysticism around us if we are just willing to stop up and take in the details of our surroundings now and again. This is easily my favorite of the tales featured in this collection.
The tales that make up “The Angels of Mons” are tales surrounding religious miracles manifesting themselves to British soldiers during WWI, and I do enjoy these small fables even though they are perhaps not the most interesting stories in this collection. Machen’s introduction to these tales is a fascinating read, and how one of his tales (The Bowmen) became accepted as fact is a queer and puzzling occurrence that Machen himself can’t quite grasp.
The Great Return - tells the story of a journalist investigating strange occurrences that take place in a small town of Llantrisant in Wales. Machen fully delves into the religious mysticism of the Sangraal here and the effects the miracles have on the inhabitants of the small town. The prose and imagery in this tale are lovely as with the other stories and it is an interesting read to see Machen explore his own beliefs on the holy grail.
Out of the Earth - is another journalistic tale that deals with deranged children who terrorize a small Welsh community. A creepy little story about the little people and their dark ways. The ending to this tale is truly excellent.
The Coming of The Terror - is an abridged version of the longer serialized novel The Terror. I found the novel to be a bit dull, to be honest, and the abridged version makes it a bit easier to read, although I am still a bit perplexed about the ending and statement of the story. This is my least favorite of the stories in this collection.
The Happy Children - Machen’s journalistic alter ego travels to a remote English town in the Midlands during Christmas, where amidst antique buildings, a great number of children are out and about, frolicking and singing carols. A short ghostly tale set at Christmas has a nice blend of evocative prose on the surroundings of the small English town and a creepy, mystic ending.
Through these stories, Machen presents the scientifically minded skeptic as one who has missed the point and portrays them as people who have an awakening when confronted with the mysterious and ethereal. It is very clear that Machen dearly wished more people to share his view on the world through mysticism and religion and wrote these stories as a cry against the increasing materialism of his age and the dwindling importance of the mystic and the aesthetic in people’s lives. Absolutely brilliant when he is at his best, which is the majority of the tales in this collection. An absolute must for those with a taste for the mysterious, fantastic and other-worldly ecstasy.
November 14, 2017
Arthur Machen is a writer I have known about for ages, mostly due to the high praise he got from H.P. Lovecraft. Now my first reading of Machen was a highly enjoyable one, and I really liked the tales in this collection. His anti-materialistic views and reverence of nature make for a great backdrop to his tales and I loved that his stories are filled with stunningly beautiful imagery and strangely hidden terrors. The thing I liked best about his stories was the use of old folk tales and legends from Wales and England, the small folk, the fairies made disturbing and horrifying as they once were. The hidden whispers and rumors by the country folk and the survival of pagan practices and strange pre-roman rites that can be found in veiled corners of England. Favorite stories: The Novel of the Black Seal, The Novel of the White Powder, The White People and A Fragment of Life. Excellent stuff, highly recommended!
September 1, 2018
Dry and boring.
Have you ever sat down and read a book and when you're done sit there and ask yourself "WTF did I just read?" This is definitely one of those books. I mean I can't even really write a description of what this book was about because I didn't seem to understand it. And there is no description on the back of the book in which to copy for you. The text is just so very hard to follow. It's written in an old-fashioned sort of way but not even in an Old English type of way. I'm sorry but it's very difficult for me to describe this book. It was just very very difficult to understand and follow the story lines.
I mean it's supposed to actually be a horror type book... I think...
To make matters worse the book is written in such a fashion that it literally tastes like a dry piece of toast in your mouth. Nothing on it no honey no jelly no peanut butter no nothing. Just dry as dry can be.
I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Have you ever sat down and read a book and when you're done sit there and ask yourself "WTF did I just read?" This is definitely one of those books. I mean I can't even really write a description of what this book was about because I didn't seem to understand it. And there is no description on the back of the book in which to copy for you. The text is just so very hard to follow. It's written in an old-fashioned sort of way but not even in an Old English type of way. I'm sorry but it's very difficult for me to describe this book. It was just very very difficult to understand and follow the story lines.
I mean it's supposed to actually be a horror type book... I think...
To make matters worse the book is written in such a fashion that it literally tastes like a dry piece of toast in your mouth. Nothing on it no honey no jelly no peanut butter no nothing. Just dry as dry can be.
I would not recommend this book to anyone.
July 24, 2013
ok, here we go. I listened to the Librivox recording of this story. I'm glad I did. if I had read this I doubt I would've made it past the 1st part. the recording is broke up into 3 parts. the first part Ambrose & buddy are talking about sin. I felt like that whole section was nothing but him repeating everything over & over and it was very heavy, not idea to listen to while you work!;) the 2nd part is the stories. I enjoyed this part very much. then the last part was Ambrose & buddy talking about the book and just the wrapping up of the story. I felt like the 1st section of the story and the 2nd one was completely different books. overall, it was ok. I would recommend listening to the audio version (just search for it on iTunes or Librivox.org) and skip the 1st & 3rd part.
Read
June 9, 2016After being quite disappointed with The Great God Pan, I felt a certain obligation to give Machen another shot, given all the Lovecraft comparisons he had received. And with this collection, I was pretty legitimately impressed. Time and time again, the Victorian man of science gets his ass handed to him by darker, weirder forces than he could have imagined, all rooted in the pagan past that, in Machen's time, certainly still lurked in the wilder corners of the British Isles. Not every story was a winner -- some were downright dull, in a particularly Victorian way -- but the better stories, "Novel of the Black Seal" and "The Terror" are solid gold.
July 6, 2018
Machen's classic story is almost unique in the weird fiction canon, pre-empting modernist techniques and chronicling a hallucinatory travelogue through parts strange and fearful.
The whole story is full of a dreamlike unease, and evokes in the reader an almost indescribable mixture of dread and wonder. It thoroughly deserves to be read by everyone, irrespective of their relationship to the horror genre.
The whole story is full of a dreamlike unease, and evokes in the reader an almost indescribable mixture of dread and wonder. It thoroughly deserves to be read by everyone, irrespective of their relationship to the horror genre.
May 27, 2020
গল্পটা লাভক্র্যাফটের খুব পছন্দের ছিল, ওর জন্য ইন্সপিরেশন হিসেবে কাজ করেছে। গ্রিন বুক নামক ডায়েরিটাকে কেন্দ্র করে যে গল্প গড়ে উঠেছে, তাতে প্যারাগ্রাফের বালাই বলতে গেলে নাই। সাধারণ পাঠকদের জন্য পড়াটা তাই কিছুটা হলেও কষ্টসাধ্য। তবে এক পুঁচকে মেয়ের জবানীতে যে অস্বস্তিকর ও দুর্বোধ্য কাহিনী ধীরে ধীরে উদ্ভাসিত হয় তা হয়তোবা আপনাকে ভয় পাইয়ে দিবে না। তবে, বিচলিত করবে নিশ্চিত।
গল্পটা আবার পড়ার ইচ্ছা থাকলো। এন্ডিং যথেষ্ট দুর্বোধ্য।
গল্পটা আবার পড়ার ইচ্ছা থাকলো। এন্ডিং যথেষ্ট দুর্বোধ্য।
June 1, 2016
It's a delight to reread Arthur Machen. One can admire his craft, his passion for the otherworldly and for nature. It's even more of a pleasure to read his stories for the first time. I've read some of these before, over the years, and relished the chance to immerse myself in tales of beauty and the supernatural.
November 11, 2024
The main story: good. The other stories: mixed bag. I reviewed each story separately and chose to base my rating on the average of their quality. Here are my reviews:
The inmost light: strange mystery with good superstitious elements. 4.5 🕵️♂️
Novel of the black seal: a creepy Lovecraftian mystery with occult elements. Contains some racial undertones. 3.5 🧙♀️
Novel of the white powder:
supernatural mystery, very similar to the story before this one. 4/5 🛸🐄
The red hand:
Mediocre mystery occult elements. Builds off previous story, uses racially charged language. 3/5👴🏻
The white people: interesting cosmic mystery where theology meets occult. 4/5 🧙♂️
A fragment of life: insufferably boring, it’s as enjoyable as sitting between two people who are arguing. It’s also the longest story. 2/5 🐛
The Bowman: short 3 pager, underwhelming. I didn’t realize vegetarians existed in 1915 lol. 2.5/5 🥗
The soldiers rest: I get the “what”, ie what happens, but not why I should care. There’s no time to care about any of the characters. I guess it’s an English vs German thing, but being neither, I don’t care about the plot and found it to lack any substance. 2.5/5
The great return: Mediocre tale, so cliche that it’s incapable of scaring a 3 year old child. 3/5 🐣
Out of the Earth: loosely connected to the White people. And speaking of white people, Machen seems to have it out for everyone who’s not English! Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, China, man’s welsh and meanwhile he’s stereotyping his own people too? Idk what’s going on here. 2/5 🤦
The terror: I opted to spare myself this story after the first 3 pages. It has something to do with WW1, but I really don’t care what Machen has to say. On one hand he’s “British”, on the other hand he stereotypes everyone who’s not English, and yet he himself is a self hating Welshman for some reason? Dude needs a psychologist and I don’t care about the plot of this. 2/5🍅
The book is certainly over bloated, and I also don’t recommend reading Penguin’s intro because they systematically spoil each plot if you accidentally make the mistake of reading it! At least 4 of the stories I would call “good”, do with that info what you like 😸
The inmost light: strange mystery with good superstitious elements. 4.5 🕵️♂️
Novel of the black seal: a creepy Lovecraftian mystery with occult elements. Contains some racial undertones. 3.5 🧙♀️
Novel of the white powder:
supernatural mystery, very similar to the story before this one. 4/5 🛸🐄
The red hand:
Mediocre mystery occult elements. Builds off previous story, uses racially charged language. 3/5👴🏻
The white people: interesting cosmic mystery where theology meets occult. 4/5 🧙♂️
A fragment of life: insufferably boring, it’s as enjoyable as sitting between two people who are arguing. It’s also the longest story. 2/5 🐛
The Bowman: short 3 pager, underwhelming. I didn’t realize vegetarians existed in 1915 lol. 2.5/5 🥗
The soldiers rest: I get the “what”, ie what happens, but not why I should care. There’s no time to care about any of the characters. I guess it’s an English vs German thing, but being neither, I don’t care about the plot and found it to lack any substance. 2.5/5
The great return: Mediocre tale, so cliche that it’s incapable of scaring a 3 year old child. 3/5 🐣
Out of the Earth: loosely connected to the White people. And speaking of white people, Machen seems to have it out for everyone who’s not English! Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, China, man’s welsh and meanwhile he’s stereotyping his own people too? Idk what’s going on here. 2/5 🤦
The terror: I opted to spare myself this story after the first 3 pages. It has something to do with WW1, but I really don’t care what Machen has to say. On one hand he’s “British”, on the other hand he stereotypes everyone who’s not English, and yet he himself is a self hating Welshman for some reason? Dude needs a psychologist and I don’t care about the plot of this. 2/5🍅
The book is certainly over bloated, and I also don’t recommend reading Penguin’s intro because they systematically spoil each plot if you accidentally make the mistake of reading it! At least 4 of the stories I would call “good”, do with that info what you like 😸
Displaying 1 - 30 of 436 reviews