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    Couching at the Door
    Couching at the Door
    Couching at the Door
    Ebook288 pages4 hours

    Couching at the Door

    By D.K. Broster

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    In this collection of dark, supernatural tales the esteemed author D. K. Broster gave full reign to her vivid imagination. Sometimes—as in “The Window” or “The Pestering,” or “All Soul’s Day”—these are what we might call ‘explainable’ ghost stories: apparitions or hauntings whose origin is to be found in some violent or unjust action in the past. Other stories, “Couching at the Door” and “From the Abyss,” have little or no explanation, even in supernatural terms. Add to these an elegant reworking of the Persephone myth, “The Taste of Pomegranates,” the downright bloodthirsty “Clairvoyance,” and the psychological studies, “The Promised Land” and “The Pavement” which so well merit the heading ‘Madness and Obsession’, and you have a collection to disturb and unsettle the strongest nerves.

    Literary historian Jack Adrian describes Couching at the Door as “a pure masterwork, one of the most satisfying weird collections of the century”.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNormanby Press
    Release dateOct 21, 2016
    ISBN9781787201675
    Author

    D.K. Broster

    Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born in 1877 near Liverpool. She attended St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and earned an Honours degree in Modern History in 1898, but the degree was not officially awarded until 1920, when the university finally allowed a generation of women scholars to receive their degrees. During the First World War, Broster volunteered as a nurse, and in 1915 she went to France with the British Red Cross. In peacetime she worked as the secretary for the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and during this time she began writing historical fiction. Her name was made by her bestselling Jacobite trilogy, The Flight of the Heron (1925), The Gleam in the North (1927), and The Dark Mile (1929). Most of her supernatural fiction appears in two collections: A Fire of Driftwood (1932) and Couching at the Door (1942). Broster never married but had a close friendship with Gertrude Schlich which lasted from the time of the First World War to Broster’s death in 1950.

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    Reviews for Couching at the Door

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Only one duffer in this book for my money, and even then it's less of a duffer and more of a slightly hackneyed attempt at the haunted house story others have done better in the past (plus it has the faintly ludicrous title "The Pestering"). Otherwise this is surprisingly strong stuff, with the emphasis on the macabre rather than straightforward spook or weird tales. Broster's a really enjoyable writer on her own merits and it's a nice bonus that her supernatural fiction is for the most part bang on the money. Quietly very impressive indeed
    • 4/5
      Couching at the Door is an anthology of nine of D. K. Broster’s supernatural tales. The title story, first up in this collection, is not indicative of the author’s usual straightforward style. Here, Broster’s narrative is perfectly ornate and flowery with its pinkie perpetually raised in clear and precise mimicry of the flamboyance of the main character, the pretentious, decadent, and dandified poet Augustine Marchand. And the story itself is a memorable one, as Marchand’s plan to rid himself of a black magic curse (or are those infernal wriggling creatures merely hallucinatory?) has unexpected consequences. A most frightening story, very well-executed on all levels.And most of the remaining tales are also quite engaging and effective supernatural excursions. “From the Abyss” is perhaps the best, a little masterpiece of cinematic writing in which a woman transforms into physically split personalities after a horrific automobile accident. It’s fast-paced and builds to a stunning climax. Another highlight is “The Promised Land”, an intriguing psychological study of accelerating madness, wherein a meek elderly woman, exasperated by her well-meaning but irritating travel companion, goes to extreme lengths to enjoy a few days on holiday in Italy on her own terms. “The Taste of Pomegranates” is an interesting (albeit a bit melodramatic) time travel story with a neat Twilight Zone twist at the end. Not all of the stories, however, are up to those standards. "The Pestering" is a decidely pedestrian ghost story, somewhat promising at the start but ending with a meager payoff.

    Book preview

    Couching at the Door - D.K. Broster

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