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    The Willows
    The Willows
    The Willows
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    The Willows

    By Algernon Blackwood

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The Willows is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction. (Goodreads)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOtbebookpublishing
    Release dateDec 31, 2017
    ISBN9783962721947
    Author

    Algernon Blackwood

    Algernon Blackwood was a master of supernatural fiction, known for his ability to create a sense of unease and tension in his readers. His writing often explored the boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds, and the psychological impact of encountering the unknown.

    Read more from Algernon Blackwood

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    Reviews for The Willows

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Review from BadelyngeAs someone who has had a lifetime fascination with ghost stories and mythology I could hardly ignore the works of Algernon Blackwood. If you have ever picked up one of the multitude of anthologies that profess to contain the best ghost stories it is a good bet that one, if not more, of Blackwood's tales will be included. The Willows was first published in 1907 and is not a ghost story. It is, however, a horror story. Blackwood was a great lover of the natural world and it shows in the elegant first person prose characterizing the elements as described by the unnamed narrator of this novella. Two men are attempting to canoe the entire course of the Danube (as Blackwood himself had done) until they are forced by high flood waters to take refuge on a tiny, crumbling, willow infested island. One of the men is the aforementioned narrator and the other is an initially phlegmatic Swede. Once settled on the shrinking island the two men are disturbed by several unsettling happenings. Blackwood is a master of maintaining an eerie atmosphere; no small feat over 80 or so pages. The narrative that began with such imaginative and beautiful imagery starts to deteriorate as the story teller finds himself trying desperately to rationalise and quantify his experiences. The reader is forced to work harder as the psychological aspects of the story push to the fore. The story works on many different levels and is ambiguous enough for the reader to draw his own conclusions or speculate on the nature of reality and whether knowledge of something is something to be feared more than the unknown.
    • 4/5
      A solid plot that will evoke the imagination, accompanied by prose that would inspire future writers. The Willows is an excellent horror story, which, in some ways, retains a contemporary feel.
    • 4/5
      At this point in my reading career, I don't believe I've read better building and rendering of fear than The Willows by Blackwood. The writing--word choice, dialogue--everything around those moments of terror were so evocative, I felt them, all while lying safely beneath a roof, on the sofa. The plot is simple--two men rowing a boat along the Danube River. They camp in an area overgrown with Willows. From that point, the mix of terror in the imagination, and subtle hints in the environment, is simply, excellent. The dialogue too, takes a sinister turn, along with the rushing of wind and gurgle of water. Amazingly well done, this fear, without gore or slashers or zombies. The Willows was a personal favorite of Lovecraft, so I was curious, and now I understand why. I intend to revisit the story and dissect how he did it, but for this first read, I was enthralled.
    • 5/5
      The Willows - 4.5 stars...

      I've been trying to read this for the past couple months for Halloween Bingo & HA and I'm just now getting to it. But hey you do what you can do...

      I'm glad I finally read it though because now it's at the top of my list of favorite novellas and there aren't very many on there. Short stories just don't usually do much for me and I admit when I read the first few pages I wasn't sure if I would like this one either. I was wondering where the author was going with it but once the characters came into play I really liked it. I also liked the island and river setting- add in the willow trees and it made for a very atmospheric read. The author also did a fantastic job of creating that feeling of impending doom.

      This would be a perfect story to read when you're in the middle of nowhere on a camping trip!
    • 4/5
      This is a great suspenseful tale. Blackwood masterfully builds the suspense little by little not giving away to much about the entities which inhabit the sand island our two characters have been forced to land on. This is an example of great writing and I can understand why H.P. Lovecraft considered it the best weird tale ever told.
    • 4/5
      The Willows is an early example of American horror, published in 1907, and cited as a favorite story of H.P. Lovecraft. I don't read much horror, but this was selected as an October book club read and a Kindle copy was free on Amazon, so I was game.To modern tastes, the book has a very slow start. The descriptions are excessive. Blackwood creates a menace in the very atmosphere of a place: a small island in a swampy area off the Danube, where two friends are stranded during a high flood. The two are never named--the companion is simply called "the Swede"--but that doesn't detract from the story at all. Despite the slow start, this novel is still compelling and tense as it builds towards the conclusion. The trees, the wind, the water, the sounds--everything has a terrible, dark sense about it, and yes, it's creepy as all get out. It's not a book to read while you're camping in the wilderness or you'll never be able to sleep.I found this classic to be highly enjoyable. I zoomed through the last half, anxious to see what would happen. If you're up for a very Halloween-appropriate read that's creepy without any gore, grab this free download from Amazon.
    • 4/5
      This was a surprisingly effective short horror story.
    • 5/5
      The utter disregard of nature toward man.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful supernatural tale that will fill you with dread, every time you read it!Synopsis:Two companions set out on a canoeing trip down the Danube river. They laugh and enjoy their time travelling and admiring the scenery. The friends camp for the night on a small island where mysterious things begin to happen. One of their paddles disappear, strange funnels appear in the sand and is it their imagination or have the willow bushes that surround the island moved closer? The two friends must find a way off the island before disaster strikes.Review:I absolutely love this book, I've read it before and it is no less creepy and wonderful the second time around. Personally I think that horror novels/films are most effective when you don’t actually see anything. That eerie sense of not knowing what is there seems to result in such a strong feeling of discomfort. That is very much at play in The Willows. Previously I had never heard of Algernon Blackwood, but this is one of his most popular stories, and part of the reason for that is the complete horror and the story instils. HP Lovecraft stated his belief that it is the finest supernatural tale in English literature. This is a must read for fans of horror and weird fiction.The story is a fairly simple one, but it’s amazingly executed. The two try to deny all that they have seen and the narrator in true human fashion, attempts to find explanations for the various fantastic things that happen, but as their lives become threatened, they admit to all they have seen and find a way off the tiny island they've inhabited. It’s dark, compelling and a truly fascinating read.“When common objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.”The novel makes an interesting study of psychology, and how things that are so ordinary to us, willow bushes, otters and the wind, can turn into something truly monstrous. There is also the question of the reliability of the story, did these haunting things happen to the companions, or is the story simply a hallucination of two people exhausted from travelling?It is easy to see the effect such a story would have on master horror writer HP Lovecraft. It’s a truly wonderful story and if you’re a fan of weird fiction, definitely stick this one on your wish list.

    Book preview

    The Willows - Algernon Blackwood

    THE WILLOWS

    Algernon Blackwood (1907)

    I

    After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.

    In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.

    Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.

    Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.

    Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary, and the muddy waters—sure sign of flood—sent us aground on many a shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky; and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam into the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond—the land of the willows.

    The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

    Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand, sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.

    What a river! I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.

    Won't stand much nonsense now, will it? he said, pulling the canoe

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