Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
Review of 'The Willows' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
My favorite Blackwood story (though Wendigo is a close second). It takes everything unnerving about a Lovecraftian sort of mythos and distills it into all the essential horrors. Really, this is a timeless work.
"'It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,' he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; 'we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.'"
-pg 43
I could write an entire essay on that paragraph alone. It contains all the dread conjured up by this story. The feeling of powerlessness and of the dark part of ourselves, which might act on murderous impulse when faced with that same power. The horrors …
My favorite Blackwood story (though Wendigo is a close second). It takes everything unnerving about a Lovecraftian sort of mythos and distills it into all the essential horrors. Really, this is a timeless work.
"'It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,' he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; 'we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.'"
-pg 43
I could write an entire essay on that paragraph alone. It contains all the dread conjured up by this story. The feeling of powerlessness and of the dark part of ourselves, which might act on murderous impulse when faced with that same power. The horrors are inescapably all around us in the tale, like the endless droning of the strange willows.
