https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-unsettled-dust-by-robert-aickman/

This is a collection of eight spooky stories, with a foreword and afterword expanding on Aickman’s life and career. He has a particular gift for atmosphere, of making places that were slightly odd in the first place become more sinister and threatening. Two of the eight stories, to my surprise, are actually set in Belgium, one in the catehdral in Gent and the other in Brussels in the Wiertz Museum and surroundings (now the EU Quarter). I must go to the Wiertz Museum some time, it’s less than ten minutes’ walk from my office.

Peter McClean, to whom I am very grateful, sent me this book ages ago, with a strong recommendation which I can now endorse. I admit I had not heard of Aickman previously, but his modest output is clearly of very high quality. ( )

I'd heard that Aickman was the master of subtlety in his stories. Unfortunately, in the four stories I got through, I found myself zoning out on all the various details that are unrelentingly delivered, along with bits of story in between. I enjoyed the typical one sentence downbeat endings, but found the lead-up wasn't worth the payoff.

Just not for me.

So, I bailed. DNF, so no rating.

The thing I'm finding about Aickman's later and posthumous collections is they only contain reprints of stories I've already read. This is no detraction to the quality of the content, always excellent, but caveat lector. I have already read all but one of these stories here.

I'm going to stick with the more expensive, way more expensive, Tartarus reprints since I can buy one of those for what it is costing me to get two of these retreads. Besides they are more beautiful to look at, keep their value, and seem to be definitive.

That said this is a five star collection which I would only warn one off of for the above caveat, look carefully at the contents of Aickman collections before you buy them, you may have read most or all the stories.

All that said, the stories are uniformly great, full of baffling allegory. The rest are some of my favorite Aickman stories. All of these are in some way disturbing and some truly frightening: Ravissante, The Cicerones, The Stains. In all cases you will be saying: "What exactly is going on here?" although in many cases nothing overtly supernatural is happening. If you dig deeper you will find layers and layers of potential meaning but in most cases this meaning will be somewhat relative to what the reader puts back into the story. Aickman is never going to provide you with a nice neat explanation like a Stephen King would.

These are best savored in small bites. Take your time and read one story at a time. Take at least a day to think about it before moving on to the next. There are precious few Aickman stories anyway, and each is a little gem, so you don't want to race through his oeuvre but enjoy it in the slow fashion it deserves. ( )

This Robert Aickman anthology, Unsettled Dust, provides all the earmarks of his unique brand of “strange stories.” This collection is on a par with his other excellent anthologies: Dark Entries; The Wine Dark Sea; Painted Devils; and Cold Hand in Mine (and a handful of stories here overlap with those anthologies).

These stories have the requisite uncanny occurrences and eerie atmosphere that are characteristic of Aickman’s tales. The stories are not straightforward: events and circumstances are often sketchy; there are likely valid clues throughout, but since the endings are often open-ended or ambiguous, it's hard to connect the dots to a firm conclusion. Much is subject to interpretation. A recurrent theme in this collection is things (people, houses, furry little animals) seemingly popping out of nowhere, oddly out of place - and then perhaps suddenly disappearing, blurring reality, leaving the protagonists and the reader equally confused and uneasy. The following stories are the standouts:

The Unsettled Dust - Mr Nugent Oxenhope, a Special Duties Officer for the Historic Structures Fund, pays a extended visit to Clamber Court in Bedfordshire, one of the properties under the aegis of the Fund. There he encounters Agnes and Olive Brakespear, an odd pair of middle-aged sisters, and a strange preponderance of dust. You’re of course familiar with the phrase “when the dust settled,” used to describe the aftermath of some calamitous event? Well, here the dust has not quite settled yet...

The Houses of the Russians - An old man at a bar has just miraculously escaped death by seemingly supernatural means. He takes from his pocket a kind of coin or medal. He calls it “a token. A visible symbol of invisible grace” and then tells the story of his visit as a raw lad to the town of Unilinna in Finland many years ago, and the events that transpired across a dilapidated footbridge on a small mist-shrouded island...

No Stronger Than a Flower - Curtis has persistently, but vaguely, suggested that his fiancée Nesta do something about her physical appearance. Eight months after their marriage, Nesta takes action, and via a magazine advert arranges a consultation with a Mrs de Milo. Unexpected changes ensue.

The Cicerones - On holiday John Trant visits the Cathedral of St Bavon in Belgium to see some of the renown artwork housed there. As he tours the interior, young boys randomly appear to serve as guides along the way, as a distinct otherworldly atmosphere intensifies.

The Next Glade - While her husband is off traveling, Noelle attends a party and meets an interesting man named John Morley-Wingfield. They take a walk through the nearby woodland, he leaves her saying he is just taking a brief walk over to the next glade, but he does not return. So begins a tale in which Aickman deftly blurs and subtly shifts the line between what is real and what is imaginary - all of which just may be subjectively in the eye off the beholder.

Bind Your Hair - Newly engaged to Clarinda Hartley, Dudley Carstairs invites her to meet his family and friends in Northampton. Spending the weekend there Clarinda meets an odd woman, Mrs Pagani, who lives in a churchyard in an abandoned chapel. Bored with the Carstairs family, Clarinda ventures the next day towards the churchyard, with bizarre encounters along the way.

The Stains - After the death of his wife, Stephen Hooper visits his brother Harewood, who is something of an expert on lichens. While taking a walk on the moors, he happens upon an area known as Burton’s Clough. Here he meets Nell, a strange simplistic young woman collecting stones covered with moss and lichen. Stephen quickly becomes infatuated with her. The story rapidly gets darker, increasingly bizarre, and extremely unsettling. This is the one of Aickman’s best, a British Fantasy Award winner. ( )

The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman (Faber & Faber, 2014 pp362)

This is one of the books of Robert Aickman’s stories Faber & Faber re-published in 2014 to commemorate the centenary of the author’s birth. As is appropriate, the most wonderful thing about theses editions is Aickman’s stories. Another aspect that I have found interesting is the “Robert Aickman Remembered” section at the end of each collection in which someone who had met Aickman reminisces about the man and their encounters, even relationships, with him. These memories are excellent and help build a picture of the man and the world in which he wrote. I have found elements of his stories reflect aspects of his life and this has added an extra dimension to my enjoyment of reading these books.

One criticism I have of the Faber & Faber editions is the content of the introductions. As a rule I do not read introductions to a book of fiction lest they contain detail of the stories within. With “The Unsettled Dust” collection, I have had to abandon the introduction totally having discovered that not only does if contain spoiling detail of the stories in the collection it accompanies, but also gives away key details of stories in other collections that I have not yet read. My abhorrence of inappropriate introductions is reinforced and my conviction to avoid introductions to fiction strengthened.

Of the stories in, “The Unsettled Dust”, I can only say one thing: wonderful.

I find that when I am in a reading slump I am always reinvigorated by reading an Aickman story. His stories delight me in many ways and these are ways that I have come to love and enjoy. Below I try to be specific about some aspects of Aickman’s writing that pleases me and that I find missing from the writings of so many other authors.

Aickman, as he has said himself, was from another era. This has given him a viewpoint of life, which he obviously observed and understood, that is not commonly found in this modern age. It also provided him with a vocabulary that permitted his describing events, people and situations in ways that have been forgotten or which may be considered quaint of archaic.

He had a wonderful way of presenting the mundane and turning it into a source of mystery and even fear.

Aickman never explains the weird events that have taken place. His stories give rise to many thoughts on where the story is going, what is behind the weird, and how uncertainty swallows up reality. His stories end in many cases with a myriad of possible explanations.

His sense of humour was obviously very droll. This can be seen in his very clear description in the title story of the collection of the civil servant’s dilemma and the consequent behaviour this engenders. It is with a calm, matter of fact fashion, that he describes how one can advance within the ranks of the civil service by following all the traits the public scoff at in civil servants, e.g. not having initiative and not supporting the initiatives of any colleagues.

I always find my Aickman books end up with phrases or whole paragraphs underline and noted on the inside of the back cover. With some of his collections my list of interesting sections cover several pages.

I must provide you with some quotes that I find very entertaining and that I consider unusual but effective in getting across the idea Aickman is trying to convey. For example, in, “The Stains”, Aickman is describing the protagonist’s brother and in an effort to explain how dynamic a person the brother is he writes:

“Harewood himself cared more for rock growths than for controversies about South Africa or for other such fashionable Church preoccupations. He had published two important books on lichens. People often came to see him on the subject. He was modestly famous.”

Of a developing relationship:

“He surmised that there was now what is termed an understanding between them, even though in a sense he himself understood very little.”

He will often use a term and then humorously question his use of the term:

“…and Stephen saw that there was a curious serpentine rabbit-run that he had failed to notice – except that rabbits do not run like serpents.”

Rather than simply say it was a cloudy day Aickman writes:

“If he had been in the Alps, his shadow might have fallen in the early-autumn sun across the figure below, but in the circumstances that idea would have been fanciful, because, at the moment, the sun was mo more than a misty bag of gleams in a confused sky.

I enjoy Aickman’s stories. His works are never simply the story. They have multiple explanations and yet their power is in the unexplained. His writing is erudite, humorous and conjures up images galore. ( )