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Post by wireman on May 17, 2023 12:20:33 GMT
Today's discussion will be The Wood Of The Dead by Algernon Blackwood
Audio version
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Post by wireman on May 17, 2023 14:21:59 GMT
This story has a more gentle grim reaper than usual.  Beautifully told with a little twist. I think the reader (at least I was) is expecting the narrator to be the chosen one to die but it's not to be.
The narrator is almost in a trance and compelled to do what the stranger asks. I like this passage
Even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talking like this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn, for it has always been one of my failings that to strangers my manner is brief to surliness. It was as though we were figures meeting in a dream, speaking without sound, obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world, and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps.
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Post by wireman on May 17, 2023 14:26:02 GMT
Another good line
For one single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was I who moved to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.
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Post by wireman on May 17, 2023 14:28:49 GMT
After I started this, I thought maybe we had read this before because it seemed familiar. But I looked back through the old threads and didn't see it.
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Post by spideyman on May 17, 2023 14:38:28 GMT
Enjoyable short story. Like you, wireman, I kept thinking the narrator was the one to meet the reaper. Very descriptive words use for the scenes. One could easily visualize the inn, the woods, and each character. Did get an eerie feeling when the serving girl became concerned at the narrator seeing the "ghost". Did she know it was her to be the chosen one?
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Post by osnafrank on May 17, 2023 15:51:57 GMT
And when you think you know how it ends, you don't.
I thought the same, wireman and spideyman, i kept thinking
the narrator is the chosen one.
The twist at the end was nice.
Nice story, it's atmospheric,the scene is wonderful for a good,
creepy short story. |
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Post by wireman on May 18, 2023 12:43:59 GMT
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Beautifully told with a little twist. I think the reader (at least I was) is expecting the narrator to be the chosen one to die but it's not to be. 
