The Haunted Looking Glass

The Haunted Looking Glass
edited by Edward Gorey
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics (February 28, 2001)

I had high hope for this collection; loving Gorey and his bizarre sense of humor I expected him to find an odd collection of great stories. Unfortunately, they are mostly mediocre (to my mind), and with very few exceptions not chilling or startling at all.

There was one fantastic story, though: "August Heat" by W.F. Harvey. I'm grateful for this entire collection, for that one story. It is short, tight and incredible. Not a "ghost story", so to speak, but a chilling one none the less. I highly recommend it and was thrilled to find that others liked it enough to type it up online. I found several places, but this particular version seemed to be unaltered and had the easiest to read format. Please, read it--you'll thank me later.

The best part of the book, of course, was the full page illustration, incorporating the title and a bit of the story, before each selection. For a Gorey fan, that made it almost worth slogging through the not-so-good stories.

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Read for the "Short Story" part of my "888" challenge.
See my progress here