'Again'

Dipping a second time in Seven Strange Stories by Rebecca Lloyd I find myself thinking of L.P. Hartley. (Try it yourself, it's free.) 

'Again' is a tale that recalls Hartley's very British  approach to what the French call contes cruels.  If you know your Hartley, think of 'The Travelling Grave', 'The Killing Bottle', or 'The Cotillion'. 

In each of those stories we have a typical English country house setting, with guests that would not be out of place in an Evelyn Waugh novel, or perhaps Wodehouse. But what transpires is strange and disturbing, both unexpected and yet with the hideous inevitability of nightmare.

'Again' has a first person narrator, Richard, who is desperate to avoid his wife's friend Diane from making a scene. The story begins when they meet on the stairs after Richard leaves his guests to replenish the ice bucket. Diane is confused, unsure why she is in Richard's house. Gradually, as he harangues her and she expresses genuine bafflement, the grim truth is revealed.

As well as Hartley there is a touch of Poe about this one. I'll say no more than that, because it is a tale with a twist. While recognisably from the same authorial world as 'The Pantum Burden', 'Again' offers a different take on death and our responses to it. I think I'm getting to know the author a bit better, and we seem to be getting on all right.

Pop back in a while, the running review has just begun.