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Cargando... A Touch of Chillpor Joan Aiken
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. It's been a few years since I read this book of short, somewhat creepy, stories, but I just remember that most of them were very entertaining with really interesting characters. The one I remember most was the story titled "He" and even to this day I still think about it. The book almost feels like "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark", but directed for a teenage or adult audience in the form of short stories. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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A collection of scary short stories. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.9Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern PeriodClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Some stories are predictable such as 'The Sewanne Glide', where the interest is in the execution and characterisation, or 'Jugged Hare' where a woman with a violent husband tempts fate by having an affair. Some are downright odd, for example, 'Listening', seemingly a disconnected series of events where the teacher protagonist has to sit in on another teacher's lesson to assess her after witnessing an animal's upsetting death enroute - then sees her crumble under a devastating personal tragedy, and then sees himself portrayed rather oddly in a museum. Unsettling, but you are left wondering what it was all about. 'A Game of Black and White' about a boy's misadventures in a world that suddenly turns into a nightmare under the influence of a total solar eclipse is similar in effect.
Others are in the style of fairy tales - 'The Rented Swan' for example, or are more or less traditional ghost stories - 'The Companion'. 'He' is a cautionary folktale about the personal penalties for taking revenge. In 'The Story about Caruso' a woman is driven to take extreme action by the stress of caring for an impossible relative. 'Mrs Considine' is an inconsequential tale of the friendship between an old lady and a young girl who has prophetic dreams, almost a 'tell it by numbers' - the denoument is spelled out in advance although we don't get to actually see it, but it left a feeling of "So what?"
Two stories, 'Power Cut' and 'A Train Full of War-Lords', feature blind protagonists at the mercy of others in their environment, even members of their own families who don't intend their malicious effects - luckily averted quite by chance in the second of the two stories. 'Who Goes Down this Dark Road' and 'The Helper' are downright weird - in the first, we don't really know the reason for the tragedy that has ruined the protagonist's life or its connection with a malicious young woman, daughter of a French Professor, or why he should still intend to help them by registering the Professor's invention of a mechanical companion at the UK Patent Office where he works, and it is unclear whether we are dealing with a haunting or the psychological effects of guilt by the end. The second is a short tale based on a very peculiar "What if?" question posed and answered.
Probably the most effective tale in the collection is 'Time to Laugh', the story of what happens to a boy with criminal tendencies who decides to explore the local - not exactly haunted - house with creepy consequences. Overall a 3-star rating. ( )