charlesdee
6/26/2016
Early on in this collection, we encounter a young Polish officer who chases the devil out his bedroom with a garlic sausage and a beloved vicar whose true nature is not revealed until he is reincarnated as a black tom cat. Aiken throws together characters and plot elements taken from the cozy playbook of English village plot lines and does very peculiar things with them. She does not seem determined to undermine the traditional material itself, just the standard means of its presentation. At times her light touch can become, well, a trifle light, but not to worry. When she chooses to show her scary side, as in the story "Hair," she can be as creepy as she is delightful in most other circumstances.