The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry.
Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay. Although this collection was uneven, I am already looking forward to his next book.Description: It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. The rest of the volume is mostly represented by fillers which do not deserve particular mention.īrown is an author who, when he is good, is EXTREMELY good. In the insightful, moving “Maria on the Moon”, the son of a terminal cancer patient fights hard to keep death away from his mother. “The Mean Thing Which Lives in the Cellar” is an excellent story in which a disquieting, evil presence in the cellar affects the life of a whole family, while “The Graveyard Game” is a vivid tale of graphic horror taking place in a graveyard during Halloween night. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the second part of the narrative makes it hard to maintain the necessary suspension of disbelief.
The title story (actually a novella), “House of One Hundred Doors”, starts out as a very engrossing, claustrophobic, angsty piece of fiction, a sort of vivid, collective nightmare. The best tale in the volume is, by far, “Something Walks Whistling”, a superb piece about a mysterious, dangerous whistler walking around at night in a nice, “lucky” neighborhood. This is a collection of horror stories of uneven quality (some are actually just examples of “flash fiction”) featuring both some excellent material and some forgettable work. House With One Hundred Doors: And Other Dark Tales by Travis BrownĪvailable: Paperback, Kindle edition ( | )
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