'A Game of Black and White' sends the book back into the realm of the weird as a young boy celebrating his birthday during an eclipse finds himself trapped in a very unpleasant predicament of a far more surreal kind than the unpleasantness that seems likely to be about inflicted on the hapless teen burglar in 'Time to Laugh'. 'The Companion' is a slight twist on the classic haunted house tale, 'The Rented Swan', in a bizarre love story whilst 'Jugged Hare' feels like an Agatha Christie pastiche. As a fan of experimental music and the tenets of 'deep listening' the story had me from it's second paragraph and whilst this aspect was only one part of what turned out to be a sublimely rolling narrative that begins with a dead cat and ends with a memory of a painting. Next up is probably my favourite piece in the book, 'Listening'. The book is right back on track with the second story, 'Mrs Considine', a lightning fast tale of witchcraft and premonitions and with the third, the wonderfully vindictive, 'The Swanee Glide'. It's not a bad story, it just feels a little unfinished especially in it's ending. It concerns a creepy husband and wife who take up the empty rooms in the house of an overworked single mother with two poorly children. The opening story 'Lodgers' is perhaps one of the weakest but strangely is also one of the stories here that is perhaps most characteristically Aiken. The other probably has the edge in my affections but there is much to like here. 'A Touch of Chill' is the second anthology of those I've encountered. Obviously she's most widely known for her various books for children especially the 'Wolves of Willoughby Chase' novels and the 'Arabel & Mortimer' series but she also accumulated an impressive array of more adult fiction including many shorts of the weird, macabre or ghostly variety. Aiken's imagination but I've been deliberately holding back on this one for when I had a real craving.
I'm always happy to go for a trip into the estimable Ms. Of horror guaranteed to send chills up the spine of any sleepless The macabre and witty stories are a melange
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