Review #14 - The Willows
- Surupa Mukhopadhyay
- Jun 20, 2017
- 2 min read
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Rating: ★★★★
As a child, I never enjoyed classics, no matter how thick or thin the book was. The heavy language and sometimes even the story line, never appealed to me. However, as I started attaining maturity in my thinking (a lot of people will argue against this statement when it applies to me), I started enjoying classics, though only one genre in particular: Horror.
In my opinion, nobody in the current book world, not even Stephen King, sometimes, (the likes of Revival, for example, don't even stand up to good horror fiction) can stand up to the good horror fiction written back in the golden ages of classics. Is it because of the fact that most of the scares like vampires, zombies, etc. were born during this time, or because writers back then didn't mix eroticism to as great of an extent to add the spice to horror as much as they do nowadays (trust me, it's true, read all the Vampire series: Twilight, Vampire Academy, Sookie Stackhouse, etc.)? I am not sure.
The Willows is a story about two men (unnamed), who enjoy travelling and take a canoeing trip down the Danube river, where nature seems to take a personified monstrous behaviour and plays mind tricks on the two men, a lot of times leading them to near self harm experiences.
The book, a mere 54 paged novel, is the perfect way for presenting a supernatural eerie feeling to those interested in horror fiction. Short, scary, good language and no unnecessary details involved. No dramatic events that have nothing to do with horror and no use of extraordinary locale to give a spooky feeling. I make it sound like I'm talking about a movie, but trust me, the fact that it is so well detailed in such a short book, that it gives you a complete idea of what it would have been as a movie. So for all those horror geeks, who want a short and quick read, go for this book.
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