4-1/2 Stars

che fascino!
storie di fantasmi (come da titolo) di inizio '900, fatte di magioni solitarie, in situazioni climatiche estreme (neve, nebbie, freddo...), di destini a cui non si può sfuggire, di dubbi e nevrosi, e di paura, tanta tanta paura.
la wharton si deve esser divertita assai a scriverle e noi con lei a leggerle (anche se -arrivati alla fine- ci si stanca per certe ripetizioni di ambienti e situazioni), e diverse farebbero la loro figura se trasposte sullo schermo: chissà se qualcuno ci ha mai pensato...
ah, da urlo le illustrazioni di laszlo kubinyi, perfettamente in linea con le storie.

Edith Wharton, delicate yet cruel, casts a cold eye on the misdeeds and toxic egos of men, and an occasionally more empathetic one on women and their struggles, in this collection of beautifully written stories. Precise prose: each sentence has a crystalline clarity, a careful distillation of words and ideas. Gorgeously atmospheric imagery: Wharton knows her way around sprawling manors of course, but has equal talent at evoking lonely moorlands, quiet roads at dusk, even a nearly empty fortress in the Middle East. The sort of menacing ambiguity in which Robert Aickman would eventually specialize: there is no jarring, thudding obviousness in any of the horrors. A rather sour tang of misanthropy that makes the collection less than perfect - often coming out in some unnecessarily mean-spirited descriptions of various characters. And yet a clear genius in showing the depth and relatability of her characters: many times I saw myself in these disparate protagonists, be they men or women, young or old.

My favorite stories:

"All Souls'" was written the year of Wharton's death. An unnerving and surprisingly strange story about an inexplicable loss of time, of sorts. This portrait of an older woman recovering from an injury, waking up in a house where everyone else seems to have disappeared, was both prosaic and nightmarish.

"Kerfol" has a young man visiting a French manor, a tragic tale within a tale about a wife suffering appalling emotional abuse from her noble husband, the well-deserved, bloody end of said nobleman, and a winsome yet eerily silent band of diverse ghost dogs who haunt the manor grounds.

"Pomegranate Seed" has an unhealthy attachment between living husband and dead but still quite controlling wife. It also has the most resonant title in the collection - and the myth the title comes from isn't even mentioned in the story. Loved both the subtle irony of that title and how it enhances the mystery of the tale.

and especially "Mr. Jones", which includes many features of prior stories: an independent, not-so-young heiress and a sprawling, creepily underpopulated mansion, a menacingly passive-aggressive ghost, and another horrific tale within a tale of an emotionally abused wife... and yet for me this was the most striking of the stories. All of those elements coalesced into perfection, delivering a story ripe for contemplation. Plus an especially ghastly murder at the end, when the ghost - in a fit of temper - becomes rather less than passive.

⌛

I actually read the Appleton Century hardcover edition of this collection, published in 1937. I was unable to find this book on Goodreads, so had to go with the collected stories published in 1973, eye roll. Oh the petty things that frustrate me to no end! I think I would make a good ghost.

n  n

I loved this collection of short stories. The writing is absolutely excellent - the perfect balance of intrigue, satire and subtlety, with a hint of humour. The tales are just macabre enough to hold your attention without being too obvious or sensational, and they're all the perfect length. My favourite thing about many of these stories was that they are very open-ended, open to all kinds of interpretation - the ghostly, the metaphorical, the satirical. 'The Eyes' was genuinely frightening, aside from being brilliantly original, and I thought 'Kerfol', with its (literally) haunting dogs, was fantastic. I took this out from the library but will probably buy it at some point as I know I will want to read these stories again.

- Stamp in library book shows it was added to collection September 1973 - bookflap states it was $8.95. Looked it up: That's $62.50 in 2023 money. Ouch.

- Some of these ghost stories could be rightly categorized as vampire tales.

- Ian McEwan, in his remembrance of Martin Amis, said that up til the end Martin was rereading the complete works of Wharton until he could no longer hold a pencil in his hand. This seemed the easiest entrypoint into her bibliography for a newbie. Was MA reading her for final pleasure of what he was saying goodbye to?

- The subdued yet Goreyesque illustrations by Lazslo Kubinyi leant the reading experience a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark feel

- Fave observation (from "The Eyes"): He'd drop into his place as a charming parasitic thing, the kind of chronic Cherubimo for whom, in old societies, there's always a seat at the table... I saw him take his place as 'the poet'who doesn't write. One knows the type in every drawing room.

- "All Souls" was scary AF. Think of it as an ancestor of the movie Hereditary

- Elegant yet crystal prose - thanks, Martin, for introducing (via Ian) a new literary obsession

02/2018

I quite like Edith Wharton's writing, but not every story here penetrated with me. A couple of them did. Kerfol is very emotional, with the ghosts of the murdered dogs. I really loved The Pomegranate Seed, with its mysterious mythological title, vague creepiness and open ended.ness

An elegant and classy version of ghost stories, where it is not a horror or a gory mess to meet one, just a spooky queer experience to be told around a fire with friends. Perfect for October.

This is my first Edith Wharton and I was not disappointed. What a brilliant, first-class writer and engaging story-teller. She is superb at building atmosphere and tension. Indeed she uses the conventions and tropes of a gothic story in most of these. Her ghost stories are in the same vein as those of Henry James - with a psychological bent and rich in interpretation. Her main characters often exhibit the anxiety and pressure of social mores, which is underscored by the interplay between the haunted setting and the emotional instability of the characters.

In "Triumph of Night" Wharton describes the desperation of anxiety and terror as the protagonist strives to deny the ghost standing behind his dinner host: n  
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His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr. Grisben’s genial “Hear! Hear!” and Mr. Batch’s hollow echo. He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his lips: “I won’t look up! I swear I won’t!—” and he looked.

The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.

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As with this genre (as well as "Weird" horror fiction) the ending is rarely spelled out in detail, but leaves dangling ambiguity and readers to ponder the complexity of the characters and events, replaying the story in their minds. Some people may find this frustrating but, in this genre, I think she is excellent.

This book also gave me a nice change from my other book interests in post-modernism and science.

My favorites:
The lady's maid's bell (1904)
The eyes (1910)
The triumph of night (1914)
Miss Mary Pask (1925)
Mr Jones (1928)
All souls' (1937)

A nice variety of ghost stories from Edith Wharton, with her wonderful descriptions that make you feel like "you are there"!

Difficult to review because the Kindle/Hoopla version I read has a different mix of stories than all other editions of this book (created a new version in GR to reflect this).

Here are the stories in the version I read, with a asterisk next to those also included in the primary editions:
The Duchess at Prayer
The Fullness of Life
A Journey
The Lady Maid's Bell*
Afterwards*
The Triumph of the Night*
Bewitched*
A Bottle of Perrier
The Looking Glass*

It didn't have a lot of the stories reviewers rave about. I was able to download "The Eyes" and "Kerfol" from Hoopla in another collection, but still have to find "The Pomegranate Seed" and "All Souls." These seem to be the most beloved stories from the original.

The one upside to this is the addition of The Duchess at Prayer, which was one of my favorites. Similar in theme to Kerfol with a beautiful woman neglected by her vindictive husband and left to an awful fate. My other favorite also involved a beautiful woman - The Looking Glass (although it's hardly a ghost story). Otherwise, a few duds in here.

If you read about ghosts in order to be filled with dread, then Edith Wharton may not be your favorite supernatural author. On the other hand, if you are a fan of elegant realistic fiction but like a few chills from time to time, Wharton's ghost tales may belong at the top of your list.

Each of Wharton's stories is a subtle exercise rooted in everyday reality, and the ghostly presences--such as they are--emerge from the nourishing soil that constitutes her finely crafted realism. Many of her stories touch on the cruelty of domestic power relations, not only between husbands and wives, but also between mistresses and their servants. Specters haunt those who once had the power to change things for the better but did not do so, and visit the living not only as a reproach for past sins, but also as a silent exhortation for redress.

All the stories here are worth reading, but when Wharton's seriousness of purpose and subtlety of style combine with genuine ghostly thrills, the result is a handful of first-rate ghost stories ("The Eyes, "Afterward," "Bewitched," "Kerfol, "The Pomegranate Seed") that should be on everybody's reading list. "Afterward" is not only the finest tale in this volume: it is also a masterpiece of the form that not only rivals the achievement of Henry James but also deepens and enriches the Jamesian theme of how a richer knowledge of evil often derives from young America's encounter with old Europe. In "Afterward," Wharton shows us that the ghosts that haunt Americans in Europe may not be the ancestral specters inhabiting ancient houses, but rather the embodiments of crimes committed by American businessmen in their "wild cat" days back in the States, crimes that cry out for expiation.

Recopilación de tres cuentos de 128 páginas, publicada en 1934. Compuesta por "Después", "Kerfol" y
"La campanilla de la doncella". El segundo me ha parecido más flojo, pero los otros dos cuentos me han encantado. He disfrutado de la exquisita pluma de la autora y de sus ambientes góticos, ideales para leer en esta época otoñal. De lectura ágil y sencilla, sin duda, se trata de una lectura muy recomendada.